TO MAKE HISTORY!
to 1959 and the players involved.
Tommy: “Sean Kennedy, for me, was the best hurler I’d ever seen. A Tipperary man, he married into the village. He always had a saying: ‘It’s not every hour you spend in the park, it’s every minute you spend in the park’.
“He played with Dublin in an All-Ireland senior final, Cork beat them in 1952. He won a Leinster hurling medal with Dublin. He scored 2-02 against the great Bobby Rackard of Wexford when Wexford were the team in Leinster at the time.
“He won a Leinster senior medal with Dublin, he won a Leinster Junior championship with Wicklow in ’67 and he won a Leinster minor championship the same year as the senior one. He’s still alive.
“I remember when he first came into the park with the team. He was a different style.
“Pat Doyle and myself, we sat on the palm tree looking at him coming in. We were watching them playing a game of backs and forwards. Bob Douglas was playing centre back but there wasn’t a whole lot going on for ten minutes.
“We had heard about this Sean Kennedy and Pat and myself were kind of saying there wasn’t a whole lot there. And then Bob gave him a bit of a sneaky one and Bob never saw the ball after that. Kennedy won every ball no matter what way it came in.”
In 1960, Glenealy got to the semi-final against Avondale in Ashford and were winning by two points in injury time. A shot was going over the bar but the Glenealy goalkeeper, Lorcan Staines, jumped up to try and stop it. He batted it down and hit one of the Avondale forwards, who had turned around thinking the ball was over the bar, on his heel and went into the goal. The referee blew the whistle when the ball was pucked out.
HURLING IN THE PAST
Tommy: “I enjoyed every minute of it, bangs and all. I often say to myself I’d love to go out and play one more hour. In my time it was a lot more, what’s the word…” Pat: “Abrasive.”
Tommy: “I was going to say dirty. There were a lot of injuries, a lot of off the ball stuff. I still enjoyed it. For every bad fella I met there were 40 or 50 gentlemen.”
Pat: “I suppose at the time in the village there was very little else to do, there was no soccer or rugby, there’s still isn’t any.”
Tommy: “We used to play out there (on the road). You take the back road men, we fancied ourselves at the time.”
Sheila laughs.
Tommy: “We would play from the steps outside the old Church of Ireland school, one lad would stand there, one lad would stand at the gate going into the graveyard, we’d have three or four lads on each side and we’d hurl with a sponge ball for three or four hours.
“If we saw three cars in that time that would have been in it. John Anderson had a car and we knew what time he’d have been coming home from Bray, about a quarter to six. You’d hear the chuck in the car coming along the road. We’d hurl for hours and hours, nothing else to do. We’d hide the hurls in the ditch going to school.”
Tommy described some of his practice drills, writing numbers with chalk on a wall and trying to hit them. Sheila has something similar at home.
Sheila: “I had a goal made out the back on the wall, I had 1 to 6 on different places for the grandchildren”.
That provoked more memories about playing hurling back then, with the children from the different parts of the village playing against each other.
Sheila: “On our terrace it was always jammed with hurling, everyone used to come. The ball used to go into Kathleen Porter’s and she used to take them and then she’d give them all out at the one time and there’d be a row about them all when we were children.”
1986
In 1986, Glenealy won their fifth county title and Pat was Chairman at the time while Tommy was coming to the end of his career.
They had reached the final in 1980 and the semi-final in 1981 but then things weren’t great in the next few years until 1986. There was even a suggestion that the club would go back to Interme- diate. The club went in search of a trainer and Tommy’s brotherin-law, former Mountjoy Prison Governor John Lonergan, was approached. While the club was at a low ebb, the 1982 under-21 winning team pointed towards a bright future.
Tommy: “I trained under Dermot Earley with the county football team but he was nothing compared to what Lonergan did.” Pat: “He was a serious trainer.” The 90s and the success since Sheila: “I think it started from the juveniles, because if you don’t have a good juvenile set up you won’t have a good Senior one. All of mine started as juveniles, my eldest lad was only six when he played under-12. His first match for the county was when he was 12, he was playing in the goal.
“I remember my brother and my brother-in-law going to Wexford and waited for two years for them to cut out a hurl for him.
“All of my children started as juveniles and then went all the way up. A lot of them were related, the O’Gormans, the Snells, the Drivers and the O’Neills, they’re all the one. They’re all cousins.
“I was just looking at a programme before we came out from 2010, there was a photograph of Flash and Bosco Jnr and Matthew in it, there were three generations on it.”
Did they always know that the likes of Bosco and the likes of Joey and the likes of Leighton and Enan were so good from the start?
Sheila: “Leighton was always brilliant. In that Minor team in the ‘90s, the no-hopers as we called it, when Leighton came on and Wayne and Nigel and a few others, with a few minutes to go we were losing by eight points or 10 points and we turned it around and won by eight points.
“Nigel was good, Wayne was good. They were a good group. If half your panel is outstanding and the other half are good you’re going to have a great team.
“The Minor final (a year after their success) was the first time they were ever bet from under-10.”
Tommy: “That Minor team would have been the catalyst I think. I would say 14 or 15 of them went on to win Senior on the field of play. That was a special group of players.
“I’m a little disappointed that we could have won seven or eight in a row. We won two, and then Carnew beat us by a point in 2009. We won four and then we were beaten by a point going for five in a row in a game we should have won.”
CAMOGIE
The team may be breaking new ground in terms of hurling but they are not the first Glenealy team to reach a Leinster final. The camogie team won 14 Senior championships in a row between 1943 and 1956. After that emigration ravaged the team and it folded.
Tommy: “The only team that could beat Glenealy were from Dublin, and that was a time when nobody could beat Dublin.
“It started back in 1979. I was asked if I could train the team. Jack Hollingsworth, another great man, he asked me if he could restart the team would I get involved. We had a do in Rathnew one year, I think we won something like 100 trophies in 15 years. Underage championships, leagues, shields, we won five senior championships.
“In ’91 we won the Leinster club championship, we beat Drumcullen here in Glenealy. We played Rathnure in a practice match and went out and beat them by 11 points.”
Pat: “Within the county Avoca were the big opposition, they were good.”
Tommy: “We’ve actually won 20 Senior camogie championships along with the 15 hurling, we’ve brought 35 Senior championships to Glenealy.”
THE BAD AND THE GOOD
To finish the chat after all of the forgotten memories had been remembered, Pat, Sheila and Tommy were asked two final questions. What was your worst moment? This question provoked the same reaction from all three, silence as they thought.
Pat: “Probably not getting the new pitch done, all the problems around it. That was probably my lowest point here.”
Sheila: “That would be the same for me.”
Tommy: “Maybe a few of the finals we lost but I suppose it was Leighton breaking his leg against Meath in Cullen Park a few years ago.”
What was your best moment? Pat: “We’re living the dream at the minute, especially with Daniel being captain this year. I think winning the under-21 All-Ireland, that would have to be a great moment, as a father obviously.”
Sheila: “All of my children playing, starting with Joey and then you had David, Anthony, Robert, Nigel and now Alan still plays. And then you have the grandchildren. And the fact I was there when they were playing. But my best memory was when they won the Celtic Challenge in Nowlan Park.”
Tommy: “I remember when Leighton played with the International Rules in Australia, he was down here (in terms of height) and they were up there. I was crying with pride. Also, when Enan won man of the match in the county final and beating the all time scoring record in Wicklow. And the next year when he was captain.”
THE FUTURE
The club is looking towards the future and five years ago they bought some land to develop new facilities. Pat, as Chairman of the Development Committee, is centrally involved in its work. They have hit a few snags and complications along the way but they are hopeful they will get planning permission soon.
Pat: “I’d just like to thank everyone in the community for all of their help and for all of their support in the fundraising that we doing. We are almost over the line.”