REA OF HOPE
OFFALY football legend Paddy Fenning was applauded to his final resting place yesterday as the people of Tullamore lined the streets on his last journey through the town.
With social distancing measures restricting attendances at funerals to just 10 people, teammates from the 1971 and ‘72
Instead, the former Treaty star hasn’t left his home in Knocklyon for eight weeks.
Having sold the bar that bore his name for decades on Dublin’s Parkgate Street some years ago, Rea then resumed work in the pub trade on a part-time basis in the Halfway House in Walkinstown (below), but pulling his next pint seems a long way off.
“Gerry O’malley took me on four days a week, you’d go in in the morning at 12 and finish at six in the evening and it was brilliant,” he said. “It was choc-a-bloc with Cheltenham on, you know.
“I do Tuesday to Friday and I remember leaving that Friday evening, a crazy week, really busy and the next thing that place was closed on Sunday evening and it’s been closed since. It was some shock to the system.
“It’s a tough time for a lot of people. Even when they reopen, what will the reaction be from customers?
Will customers go back or will they be afraid to go back or whatever?
“Will they have got used to wining and dining at home and keep doing that?”
Long since domiciled in the capital, the 1973 All-ireland winner remains a keen follower of Limerick’s affairs and he would almost certainly have been at the LIT Gaelic Grounds last Sunday for the scheduled home game with Waterford and Pairc Ui Chaoimh seven days earlier but for the shutdown.
It would likely have involved a short walk from Heuston Station over to his former premises too.
“I’d love to see it being successful and succeeding. I still go in there if I’m going on the train to a match or back from a match, I still go there. A lot of people from my time still go there.”
Still, he’s coped with the lockdown as well as could be expected.
“The garden is very therapeutic now. It’s brilliant to get out there and do things, thin the shrubs and just mosey around and come in and sit down, have a cup of tea and all sorts of things like that and go to the garage then and tidy up there, what I haven’t done for years and come across old programmes and paper cuttings.
“The fact that we have people going back to work, there’s a bit of hope there now. If it wasn’t happening you’d be saying, ‘Jaysus, where will the light come in the tunnel?’ but I’m finding it great.”
All-ireland winning teams flanked the hearse as it left the Church of the Assumption and a guard of honour from Tullamore GAA clubmates saw him to Clonminch Cemetery.
As well as being a double All-ireland winner, Mr Fenning was a prolific local activist, with the soon to be opened arts centre one of his more recent projects.
He died on Friday having suffered with motor neurone disease for the past year.
A fundraiser he kickstarted for research and support of the condition is ongoing and can be supported here: www. gofundme. com/f/ Mndwalk.