I’m making BOD’s last Ireland cap
A HUGE number of caps, years of toil and a glorious talent, highly regarded both here and beyond these shores – no, for once we are not talking about Brian O’Driscoll. Grandmother Florence McGrath has been making caps for the IRFU and the FAI for almost thirty years, and later this morning, in her living room in Leixlip, Co. Kildare, she will put the final stitches in BOD’s illustrious international rugby career.
The 71-year-old will stitch together the old-fashioned ‘cap’ that will be presented to O’Driscoll following this retirement from Ireland duty next Saturday after t he match against France in Paris.
On the front of the cap, Mrs McGrath will embroider O’Driscoll’s name and the date, and alongside it the number 141 – a record in international rugby likely to stand for many years to come. ‘It’s going to have the shamrock and the logo of the French team,’ Mrs McGrath told the Irish Daily Mail from her home yesterday.
She has been making velvet caps for the IRFU and the FAI for 29 years but began her career as the seamstress behind Ireland’s rugby and football caps by chance, when her husband Joe brought an FAI cap back to their Leixlip home in the mid-eighties.
Mrs McGrath recalls being shown a cap, made in the north. ‘I said, “I can make a better cap than that”,’ she recalled and after providing a sample to the FAI committee, i t appeared the f ootball boss- es agreed. Before long t he I RFU was in touch and s witched f r om t hei r Engli s hmade caps to Mrs McGrath’s handmade articles. She learned her skills as a teen seamstress in Dublin in the Fifties. She said: ‘My mother had eight children and my dad died when he was 42. None of us went to secondary school. We all had to work at 14 to bring in the few bob for me mam, it was shocking.’
Mrs McGrath learned her craft in what she describes as a ‘small factory’ on Marlborough place owned by a Jewish couple. She remembers it fondly: ‘There were ten of us and we still meet up every year.’ The factory made outfits for some big department stores i ncluding, Cleary’s and Pim’s on South Great George’s Street. Mrs McGrath says the wi f e of the owner i s now 86 and she still meets her ex-employees. After marrying, Mrs McGrath finished up at the factory, however she kept her skills up by making communion dresses for a little cash and to pay for a holiday now and then.
Ms McGrath can’t even estimate how many caps she has made over the years, but in 2013 she reckons she created more than 250, most of which went to the FAI. She’s even had requests from abroad. She said: ‘I get a lot of phone calls from people, even in England and they ring up and say: “I played for Ireland in 1930 and I never got a cap, will you make me one?”
Now 71, Mrs McGrath, unlike BOD, has no intention of retiring. She said: ‘I love making them... It doesn’t really mean much to them when they’re young but then they retire the cap becomes important.’