Tommy Mangan was a legend of Clare and Kilrush football who passed away earlier this week in his 90th year. Joe Ó Muircheartaigh pays tribute to the larger than life character from Moore Street in Kilrush through the words of the man himself.
“The backyard of our house on Moore Street in Kilrush is where I first started playing football. It was my Croke Park and in 1947 it was my Polo Grounds. I used to put up posts at either end. I’d be on my own playing the games – Kerry against Cavan. I was Joe Keohane, Paddy Bán Brosnan, John Joe O’Reilly and Peter Donohue. I’d be talking to myself as I was playing and commentating on the game like Micheal O’Hehir was in New York.”
Tommy Mangan
IT WAS Tommy Mangan talking and holding court in the Johnson’s Bar on Kilrush’s Henry Street over 20 years ago as he reeled in the football years that took him from Moore Street to the Cricket Field on the old Vandeleur Estate and well beyond.
It was just after mid-day and Tommy order a whiskey for himself and with a few more with it over the course of a few hours made for a compelling football story, with the most famous All-Ireland final of them all being a reference point of his youth as he aspired to being a county footballer.
He was feeding off those around him in Kilrush where the tradition stretched back to the Shannon Sweepers team in the earliest days of the GAA through to the first great Shamrocks of Erin team that emerged to win county senior titles in…