Much more than hurling out there

The exploits of swimmer Bernard Cahill and boxer Kayleigh McCormack (pictured above) on the national stage over the weekend just show what a great time it is for Clare sport.

by Joe Ó Muircheartaigh

THE story told about the Clare hurlers’ dedication to the cause of winning the All-Ireland is best encapsulated by the expedition they undertook to Killarney last year after their victory over Limerick in the Division 1B final in the Gaelic Grounds.

In generations past a victory like that – even in the second tier – would have to be celebrated by going on the beer for a few days and then putting the feet up for a few more.

We live in different times, however, and Clare ‘celebrated’ by taking on the mountain, in this case the biggest one in the McGillycuddy’s Reeks range and biggest in Ireland in Corrauntoohil.

Of course, they weren’t the first to do this – the late great Kerry footballer and three-time All-Ireland winner Paudie Sheehy used to take on the same mountain regularly, his plan of attack being to run up ahead of his brothers who were also All-Ireland winners, announcing himself at the summit by carving his name and the time of arrival in  stone before turning on his heels and running back down the mountain.

But Clare did it differently – in the dead of night, where the only navigation tools they had were headlamps and the benefit of the local knowledge of the McGillycuddy’s Reeks’ answer to Sherpa Tenzing.

That would make Davy Fitzgerald the Edmund Hillary of the expedition then, I guess.

Thing is, when Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing reached the bottom of the mountain they were celebrated and not shunted into tents at base camp for the night like the Clare hurlers were.

It was team bonding – when team bonding back in the day used to be a euphemism for being called to bar en masse where players could get drunk together and grow tighter as a unit.

The moral of the whole story is that much has changed in terms of team preparation, with county hurlers and footballers everywhere going way beyond what used to be the call of inter-county duty in search of the summit that is All-Ireland final gold.

And they deserve to be celebrated for that – celebrated far and wide as they are with All Stars, All Star Tours, team holidays etc, etc..

All because, in Clare’s context they lifted the hearts of a county and much of the nation in the way they went about their business and succeeded in bringing the Liam McCarthy Cup home to the county for the first time in 16 years.

We should also celebrate others as well though, because the efforts they go to is akin in every way to climbing up Corrauntoohil in the dead of night with only a Sherpa and headlamp for company.

Take Clare’s swimmers, in this case those members of the Ennis Swimming Club who represented the county with distinction at the National Short Course Championships in Lisburn at the weekend.

You could say that the only difference between the swimmers and hurlers is that instead of dead of night training, they do it in the dead of morning – with the elite swimmers from the county who go to the High Performance Unit in the University of Limerick being up so early for training that they’d be likely to bump into their college mates on the way home from the fabled Stables after a night out.

It’s worth it though – day in day out of 5am starts in the pursuit of national championships and Olympic dreams, be it Rio in a few years time or four years further on in Tokyo.

Thing is, it’s probably only the few who are involved in swimming in the county who know of the Ennis club’s exploits over the weekend, when some honour and glory was brought to the club and county with some brilliant performances.

Take Bernard Cahill who was locked in a great duel for supremacy in the 400m Freestyle with Andrew Meegan, just being pipped for gold by .4 of a second. There was more silver in the 50m Breaststroke thanks to Theodore Pender, while Cahill added to his individual medal tally when scooping bronze in the 200m Freestyle as well as winning a silver as part of the 4x100m Freestyle team. Then there was the performance of open water Olympic hopeful Chris Bryan from Shannon, who also swims out of the Ennis club, as he won bronze in the 800m Freestyle.

These were brilliant performances by the Ennis team, just as Kayleigh McCormack’s stunning display in the National Intermediate Boxing Championships was over the weekend.

The Kilfenora fighter won gold in the 60kilo category at the National Stadium, a win which secured her a sixth national title to add to her earlier triumphs at youths, elite and under 23 level.

It all means that 18-year-old McCormack now moves to the elite senior grade in the same weight that’s has been dominated worldwide over a long number of years by one Katie Taylor.

In many ways McCormack is the heir apparent to Taylor’s throne as the Kilfenora club marks itself down as one of the best in Ireland.

McCormack’s clubmate Robbie Cassidy is another who is rising through the ranks of the fight game, having won this year’s intermediate title before being beaten in the All-Ireland stages by Keith Flavin from Kilkenny on a split decision.

It’s a great time for Clare sport – not just on the hurling field. 

Clare Cadets at John Kennedy's Funeral

Clare stood beside President Kennedy on the Shannon Airport runway as he said his farewell to Ireland – less than five months later Clare stood next to his grave in Arlington Cemetery as the world said goodbye, writes Joe Ó Muircheartaigh.

From Arbour Hill to Arlington

FERGUS Marshall was at the cinema with a few of his fellow students – he can’t remember what he was watching, only that he never did get to see the end credits roll.

Instead, all he can remember is that duty called, as it did for Limerick-born Eoin Moloney who spent much of his youth in Feakle. Both were 19 and had just moved into the senior class at the Cadet School in The Curragh and now the most important assignment of their military career beckoned.

Their story started at Arbour Hill on June 28, when President Kennedy laid a wreath in honour of the executed leaders of 1916. The cadets had a lead role in the ceremony that Kennedy later called the highlight of his Irish tour.

Less than five months later the cadets would again be catapulted onto centre stage – in this case the world stage as the world paid its respects to the slain president.

It all had its genesis in a personal request made by Jackie Kennedy in the hours after President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas. “I must have those Irish cadets at his funeral,” she said.

“The sequence of events was that Kennedy was given a guard of honour by the 36th Cadet class at Arbour Hill in June – at that time they were the senior class and we were the junior class,” reveals Fergus Marshall. 

“The cadets impressed President Kennedy so much that after the visit he made a request for a film of them performing the drill, because he wanted to show it to the US authorities,” says Eoin Moloney.

“But the way things were working in RTÉ the cameras were on President Kennedy all the time and nobody focused the camera on the drill the Cadets were doing so a new film of the drill had to be made and that’s where our cadet class came into the story.

“The senior class who had performed the drill in June were commissioned and became officers so when the request came we were now the senior class so we to do the drill and that film went off to the States.

“It was an old British Army drill, lying on arms reverse where you put the muzzle of the rifle down onto your toe and you bring your hands in one at a time, very slow,” adds Moloney.

“It’s was called the Queen Anne drill, a funeral drill that’s very dignified and very slow and the Americans have nothing like that,” reveals Marshall. “Their drills are very short and snappy. When he asked for the film I wonder was it his intention to incorporate it in an American funeral drill for Arlington, which is a military cemetery,” he adds.

So began the journey of the 37th Cadet class from Arbour Hill to Arlington. On the Saturday night they were in The Curragh camp cinema, the following morning they were in Dublin Airport and America bound.

“There was an announcement over the public address at the cinema,” recalls Marshall, “and someone stood up and said would all the cadets report back to quarters, report back to the cadet lines.

“We immediately went to the armory – the weapons we had were the Lee Enfield rifles and we had just finished using those and had been issued with the new Steyr rifle. The Lee Enfield rifles had been put into heavy grease and mothballs and put away. We had to withdraw them from stores. We cleaned them up and that took an hour or so and we went and drilled,” he remembers.

“The lights were on in The Curragh at 12 at night,” remembers Moloney, “and we were due to fly out to Washington the following day. We all fell in, as the saying goes, and we were doing this drill, over and over and they picked the 26. The question was were you going to make the 26.”

“We hadn’t even got passports,” remembers Marshall. “Years later there were lots of planes going over Rineanna,” says Moloney, “but I’d say very few of us had ever been in an airplane and very few of us had every been out of the country. That’s the way it was in 1963.”

The first leg of the journey brought them to Shannon before flying on to Gander and onwards to Washington where they arrived on Sunday.

“What I remember about the journey,” says Moloney, “is that when we landed in Washington, the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk came on board to welcome us and to tell us that Jack Ruby had shot Oswald. It was unreality of everything that was happening. It was incredible,” he adds.

“We stayed with Kennedy’s ‘Old Guard’ regiment at Fort Myer in Virginia – they’re first battalion of the third infantry and they made us feel very welcome,” remembers Marshall.

“Fort Myer is right up against Arlington Cemetery and the following morning we went to take up our position at the grave. I would say that we were in position two to three hours before the funeral arrived,” says Moloney.

“We were down in a hollow and there were thousands of people corralled straight up in front of us looking down the grave and all behind us was Washington,” he adds.

“The cortege was coming from St Matthew’s Cathedral and came across the Potomac River to Arlington Cemetery,” reveals Marshall, “and by the time the cortege arrived at the graveside we had been standing for about two and a half to three hours in the one position. 

“I remember that because we were nearly frozen in position. We were in riding breeches, long leggings and they had to be tight across your calves. We were standing at ease but that’s a position in which you don’t move either.”

“As it crossed the river we could hear this muffled drum beat coming closer and closer with all these world leaders following behind it,” remembers Moloney. “There was so much background noise,” recalls Marshall. “From the time the cortege left the church we could hear the band and the drums. Water carries sound and you could hear the noises of the drums and then you couldn’t.

 It was very stressful waiting. Then when the cortege got to the cemetery and was marching through the trees the sound was getting louder and louder. There was fly-pass. Seventy-five jet planes flew over. That made a hell of a noise and then Air Force One flew over on its own. Certainly I was thinking ‘how the hell are we going to hear the orders when they are given’.”

“We had our backs to the whole thing, remembers Moloney, “and the next thing we were literally looking into the grave with all the American troops falling in behind us. The cortege came along and an American bearer party passed in front of us and put the coffin down. Then Jackie and Robert Kennedy and Teddy Kennedy followed,” he adds.

“I remember seeing Jackie Kennedy and Robert Kennedy in my peripheral vision and it was very moving,” recalls Marshall, “but my abiding memory was wondering how it was going to go, wondering were we going to be 100 per cent with the drill. 

“I certainly felt it and I was saying to myself ‘I hope my feet move when I tell them to move’. There was a lull then and the orders were given in Irish by Lieutenant Frank Colclough who was in charge of the guard of honour. The drill was only a few minutes and it went perfectly.”

The 'Art and Science' of Cratloe football

The two great bibles of Kerry football came from Killarney: 'How to Play Gaelic Football' and 'The Art and Science of Gaelic Football'. Even in defeat to Dr Crokes in the Munster final it was the Cratloe men who espoused the above qualities with their brilliant display.

by Joe Ó Muircheartaigh

CRATLOE know that the pats aplenty they received in the back after Sunday’s Munster final epic in The Gaelic Grounds was the very same as getting kicked a few degrees further south.

They knew this because they’re winners and in the excruciating pain of this Munster final that was won and lost, it was no consolation to them that they’d lifted the hearts of Clare football people everywhere with their heroic stand, in the same way that Kilmurry Ibrickane did three years previously on the same ground when beating Portlaoise in the All-Ireland semi-final.

No consolation because they lost a game that was theirs to win in the final minutes as the minnows from Clare football country stared down the giants from the Kingdom country that’s seen as the great guardian of Gaelic Football.

After all, didn’t Dr Crokes’ first immortal superstar Dick Fitzgerald write the book on it, his tome simply titled ‘How to Play Gaelic Football’, while another Killarney man in Dr Eamonn O’Sullivan followed into the world of publishing with his ‘Art and Science of Gaelic Football’.

All the while Kerry teams have had that state of grace about them since Dick Fitz’ and Dr Eamonn’s days, so who were the Poor Clares from Cratloe to upset the weight of football tradition, birthright and breeding in this Munster final showpiece.

Yeah, we know that the great Kilrush Shamrocks team of the 1970s had beaten former All-Ireland champs Austin Stacks in ’79, same way the Doonbeg Magpies beat another All-Ireland winning outfit in Castleisland Desmonds in ’88, not forgetting the tour de force given by the Kilkee Blues when they beat An Ghaeltacht in ’05 and the landmark Munster final win by Kilmurry Ibrickane over Kerin’s O’Rahillys in ’09, but Cratloe in ’13 just a couple of weeks after they won their first ever county title....

Never. It couldn’t be.

But it was. Cratloe may have lost but to borrow the headings from the dust jackets of the ‘bioblí naofa’ penned by Dick Fitz and Dr Eamonn, they brought the ‘Art and Science of Gaelic Football’ alive in their rousing second half display, while at the same time showing 33 to 1 on favourites Dr Crokes ‘How to Play Gaelic Football’.

It was as good a 30 minutes ever produced by a Clare team, not just because they came back from the dead, but in the way they did it with a flurry of points that wouldn’t have been out of place on All-Ireland final day on the third Sunday in September.

It was the way their leaders stepped up all over the field – Conor McGrath who electrified everyone with his running, his points, his passing game and his vision; Cathal McInerney, who can now be said to have one of the sweetest leg pegs in football, not just in Clare football.

Cratloe proved themselves to be serious ball-players on Sunday – they always have been, whatever the code, but it was only through this display that those in the Banner County and beyond really recognised their immense ability, but also their steadfast dedication to the cause.

They were heroic, yet they lost and it’s that bitter taste that must have been very hard to swallow on Sunday and will be until they get back to the same stage.

For the rest of us footballers on the ditch, however, there’s nothing but admiration.

This was best summed up in one of the many social media posts in praise of Cratloe on Sunday evening.

“I want to thank you for the enjoyment ye have given and instilling belief in young boys and girls,” said one Facebook correspondent. “Your team will be held as an example of what can be done when pride, passion and determination are part of what you are,” she added.

Then there was the rider of “by the way I’m not from Cratloe and have no connection with the club”.

You didn’t have to be from Cratloe to celebrate what was an amazing display – one that should have yielded a famous, famous victory for the all too bare cupboard of Clare football history.