Hearing hurling voices

INTERVIEWS carried out over 20 years form the basis of Ollie Byrnes’ latest work, Clare Hurling Voices 1910-2010.

It is the sixth book from the Ennis historian, his fifth on hurling and it will be launched on December 6.
Many of the interviews were carried out while researching his previous works and he says that everyone whose voice is heard in the new book is a lover of the game.
“It covers hurling in all parishes from Kilkee to Whitegate. Everybody in the book, I would consider to be a connoisseur of the game. Everything they said to me is backed up by my own research. I have been through this stuff several times, going back 20 years and it’s all spot on.”
While all Clare hurling followers know about the Jimmy Cooney affair of 1998, this book has information about another controversy 60 years earlier, which another Jimmy Cooney was central to.
After attending a rugby match in defiance of the Ban, the then Tipperary star Jimmy Cooney was suspended for his county’s clash with Clare in 1938 but played anyway.
“When Tipp played Clare in the first round of the championship Pappy Callaghan, who was captain, and Larry Blake, who was the most senior man on the team, asked the Tipperary captain not to play Cooney. But Tipperary played him anyway and they won the game.
“After the match, the Munster Council suspended Tipperary and they were thrown out of the championship. Clare were correct to object under the laws, Tipperary had played an illegal man. Clare went through to the Munster final and they were beaten by Waterford.”
In an ideal world, politics and sport might not mix but that doesn’t always happen in the GAA and Clare hurling was deeply divided after the Civil War, according to Ollie.
“After the Civil War in Clare, there were two county boards, based on the anti-treaty and pro-treaty groups. The two boards were there in 1924 and 25 and for that reason the Clare teams were hammered. You didn’t have unity and you probably didn’t have the best 15 going out.” Clare were also suffering at the time because of a rule preventing players from lining out with their home county, if they were living away.
The oldest person he spoke to was the late Elizabeth Crimmins from Newmarket, who attended the 1914 All-Ireland final. He says some people don’t realise that the system of club champions representing the county had already ceased by then.
“The Clare team was comprised of Newmarket, Ennis Dalcassians, Tulla, Feakle, O’Callaghan’s Mills, Quin and Whitegate. It’s often put down as a Quin selection but that’s because the captain was from Quin, Amby Power.”
There is an interview with Brother Seán McNamara about Michael Cusack and according to Ollie, Cusack wanted to unite all sides in a divided Ireland.
“It’s important to state that a lot of unionists were involved in the GAA but when the IRB infiltrated the GAA in 1887, they pulled out for obvious reasons. It was a pity. Cusack was an out and out nationalist, who wanted people to come together outside of religion and politics to find common ground.
“The fact that he brought a lot of unionists into the GAA proves the type of man he was. he was an outstanding Irish man and unfortunately he was forced out of the organisation he founded and the ban came in after his demise and it was there until 1971.”
The book isn’t limited to Clare people, featuring interviews with Jimmy Barry Murphy and Justin McCarthy, two men whose company the author really enjoyed.
“I’ve a great love of Cork hurling. I loved the style of hurling they played in the ’70s, great wristwork, very fast on the ground, great ground strikers. I remember ringing Jimmy Barry Murphy when he was manager of Cork in 1996 and I thought that he’d refuse me.
“Cork were playing the following Sunday in the Munster Championship and I thought he’d have enough to be doing but he said to me to come down that Friday morning and he was fantastic. He’s a great love of the game and he’s a man of great charisma. He talked about what was expected of the young Cork hurlers who were coming up at that time, like Sean Óg Ó hAilpín. He spoke of the Munster finals in ’77 and ’78 and his respect for the Clare teams of that time.
“When I called to Justin McCarthy he asked if half an hour would do and I said it would. Three hours later he was bringing down his scrapbooks. He had fantastic scrapbooks going back to the ’60s and he had a lot of information about the Clare team of that time, people like Naoise Jordan and Jimmy Cullinane. he had great regard for that team.”
One thing that many people may not realise is that Cork’s record championship defeat came against Clare.
“Cork suffered their biggest defeat ever in the championship to Clare in 1936; Clare beat them by 19 points. No Cork team has been hammered by such a margin. At one stage this year in the Cork Kilkenny game I thought that Kilkenny were going to go to town on them altogether but in the end they won by around 10 points.”
Ollie also has a lot of regard for the Clare team of the late ’70s, which went so close to winning a Munster title.
“The best match I ever saw was the 1976 replay at Thurles, between Wexford and Clare, which went to extra time. Clare won by 3-24 to 4-16 and it was a superb exhibition by both counties. I felt they played with greater freedom in ’76 than they did in ’77 and ’78. They played with an abandon that they didn’t play with in the 78 Munster final.”
He says Ger Loughnane was typically frank in the interview he gave. “He was very honest. He went back to his own influences in Feakle and he spoke about the 1964 Feakle team that won the Clare Cup. That included Dermot Sheedy, who was captain and one of the great hurlers of that period. That was Loughnane’s first memory of coming to Cusack Park. He spoke about his time in Flannan’s up until 1998. His interview is very honest and Tony Considine was also very honest.”
Considine didn’t dwell on his ousting as Clare manager, Ollie says. “He played it down but he didn’t know why he had been let go. He wasn’t in any way bitter about it though. I found him very upbeat and he spoke about the real high points in Clare hurling.”
In his career as a historian, Ollie claims he has interviewed in the region of 260 people, while he says the current book has a lot of pictures, some of which haven’t reach a large audience up until now.
“There’s an awful amount of material on the club scene and indeed interprovincial hurling. I have 132 photos in it and many of them haven’t been published before.”
While he holds his own views on matters of history and hurling, he says it was important to keep them out of the book.
“I don’t believe in putting my own slant on anything. These are the views of players and people who were involved. I express them as they give them to me and my views aren’t important,” he concludes.