From Chapel Lane to Croke Park

A stalwart of Ennis and Clare football in the 1950s Michael Garry from Chapel Lane in Ennis passed away in Australia before Christmas in his 88th year. Joe Ó Muircheartaigh recalls a remarkable football story for club and county.

Michael Garry left his native Ennis for Australia in the mid-1950s, but when it came to the GAA it’s safe to say that he never really left at all, because his heart was always in the games and the Banner.
He showed this to be true in different ways down the years — it was through the letters he wrote to The Clare Champion about club and county games and it was in the pride he had having represented his club Ennis Faughs in county finals and his county in Munster and All-Ireland finals.
Michael Garry’s time was in the early to mid-1950s when he was a key member of two great teams in the county — the Ennis Faughs team at club level and the county minor football team that made it to Croke Park, while he had the distinction of playing minor and senior for Clare in the same year.
The native of Chapel Lane had come up through the ranks of underage football in the town in the late 1940s that had been cultivated by Brother Quinn in Ennis CBS during his short stay in the school.
“Brother Quinn was only there one year,” recalled Bobby Burke, who played with Garry at club and county level. “He was from Kildare and he asked us if we would like to play football. He had a football for us out on the Fair Green one afternoon and we kicked the hell out of one another. He started us off with the rules and the finer points in a teaching and involvement way.”
It was enough and Ennis teemed with young footballers in the early 1950s, while at the same time, the seasoned Ennis Faughs senior team led by the likes of Gerry Moroney, Tony Strand, Sean Connolly and Murt O’Shea was a major force in the county championship.
As a 17-year-old, Garry won a county championship with the Faughs in 1952, while the following year he was a goalkeeper on the Clare minor team that bridged a 33-year gap by winning the Munster title for the first time since 1930 and contesting that year’s All-Ireland final, while also playing against eventual All-Ireland champions Kerry at senior level.
“It was great to make it to Croke Park,” he recalled in 1994 when he returned for a commemoration of the Clare minors’ achievements 41 years previously that was organised by Noel Walsh and staged in the Auburn Lodge Hotel.
“It was a special time. We had great men involved in that team like Frank Burns from Ennis, John O’Gorman from Clohanes and had great players like captain Tommy Mangan from Kilrush, James Power from Doonbeg, and James Drury from Milltown.
“From Ennis, myself and Fr Frank Cassidy made the team, while Sean McCarrick and Bobby Burke were in the subs, and from around the county you had players like Michael McGrath from Lisdoonvarna, Des Fitzgerald from Clonlara, Cyril Comer from Ennistymon and more,” he added.
The seeds for that minor win were sewn the previous year when Clare went to Tralee and beat Kerry, only for them to go down to Cork in the final. However, the following year they avenged that defeat when beating Cork decisively in the Munster Final in Killarney.
“It was brilliant to win Munster,” recalled Garry in 1994, “and when we went on to beat a fancied Louth in the All-Ireland semi-final we were favourites to win the All-Ireland. We didn’t, but it was still great to be there,” he added.
Clare lost that final to Mayo by 2-11 to 1-6 — a defeat still remembered by the bizarre incident early in the second half when the match was still delicately poised at 1-5 to 1-3 in favour of the Connacht champions. The incident happened just after The Clare Champion noted that “Garry again brought off a fine save”.
Mayo were awarded a penalty, with Tommy Mangan going into goal instead of Garry. “I don’t know why I went in for the penalty,” Mangan recalled years later. “I was captain, I suppose,” he added.
“I should have been left in,” said Garry in 1994. “Maybe I could have saved it, as I felt I was having a good game, but it was a good penalty, so maybe he would have scored anyway,” he added ruefully.
Still, there was no hard feelings and when Michael Garry, Tommy Mangan and the other members of that Clare Minor Class of 1953 gathered in the Auburn Lodge Hotel that night 30 years ago it was a memorable get-together to mark the significance of that Munster title and contesting the All-Ireland final.
And it was extra-significant for Michael Garry, because returning from Melbourne for the reunion also helped him revive memories of his playing days at club level with Ennis Faughs. All because the minor gathering was on the eve of the 1994 county final when the reincarnated Faughs were attempting to win their first county final in 40 years.
On county final day the minor team of ’53 was introduced to the crowd, but just as important for Michael Garry was his visit to the Faughs’ dressing room before they took to the field to play Kilrush Shamrocks.
“There was a knock on the door,” recalled the late Pat Fitzpatrick, who was a Faughs selector that day, “and it was Michael and he asked if he could come in and say a few words to the team. Donie Buckley was giving a speech and myself and Tony Honan brought him in and he spoke for a few minutes.”
“It’s a great memory we have from that county final,” recalled Tony Honan, the Faughs manager that day. “He was wearing his Clare jersey, the one he wore in the All-Ireland final and he really spoke from the heart — about playing for the Faughs and what it was like to win a county senior with them and what the Faughs meant. It was great and it was a special moment,” he added.
Michael Garry won county senior medals in 1952 and ’54 — against Kilrush Shamrocks in ’52, while the final two years later was also against the Shams, but it was never played before the Faughs were awarded the title in the boardroom.
In a letter to The Clare Champion in 1999, Garry revealed what he did with his 1954 winners medal: “It meant nothing to me,” he said. “Kilrush refused to play in Miltown as directed by the County Board, so Faughs were declared winners.
“At the medal presentation I sat close enough to Murt O’Shea to hear him say ‘not playing the county final will put Clare football back 40 years’. For the record, my medal went into the River Fergus near the Garda Barracks,” he added.
It certainly put Ennis football back 40 years, but after 40 years a county senior football title finally came back to Ennis thanks to the Faughs once more, with Michael Garry having played his part with that motivational speech.
“We drew the first game and Michael was gone back to Australia for the replay but The Clare Champion match report was sent out to him,” recalled Tony Honan, the owner of Honan’s Antiques in Ennis.
“And, would you believe it but on the week of the final I gave Kenneth Hickey, who was on the team and working in my shop, a bag of medals and coins to go through.
“I had bought them from a fella who had used a metal detector and retrieved them from the River Fergus. In the bag was a junior medal from Clarecastle and two Faughs senior winning medals from 1952 and ’54. You couldn’t make it up. I had two Faughs medals before the team of ’94 had any — we couldn’t lose after that,” he added.
They didn’t and football in Ennis has never looked back.