‘I love the ’Bridge, but my heart is in Feakle’ – Fr Harry Bohan

Fr Harry Bohan will be doing everything to be present in Cusack Park on Sunday – that’s what the father figure of Feakle and Clare hurling told medics when he was recently hospitalised after a minor stroke, writes Joe Ó Muircheartaigh

A pen picture in the pages of The Clare Champion all of 66 years ago about a Feakle hurling man is as relevant today as it was way back then in the formative years of one man’s love of the game and his native place.
The few lines may be sepia-toned now, but being older hasn’t made them any less relevant as they provide a window into the hurling man that was Harry Bohan in 1958.
Words that ring true today as they were back in August 1958 when he prepared for the biggest day of his hurling life.
A young man barely out of his teenage years, who was part of the Feakle team back in a county final after an interval of 12 years as they prepared to face St Joseph’s in the final in Cusack Park.
“Partners his brother Mick in midfield to make up a sound combination with his ‘never say die spirit’,” The Champion said.
Harry was a 20-year-old clerical student then – now he’s the 86-year-old former parish priest of Sixmilebridge in this county final week as his beloved Feakle prepared to face down the ’Bridge for the Canon Hamilton.
Nothing has changed, however, he still has that ‘never say die spirit’ that was attributed to him so presciently by The Champion’s hurling correspondent of the day – in hurling and in life as he looks ahead to the big day.
“I suppose the fanaticism I had then reflects in a way the way I am now,” admits Fr Harry 66 years on. “In hospital at the weekend I told them no matter what I wanted to get out to see this county final.
“I had nurses come up to me and promise that they’d take me out. There were two great nurses there and they’re big into hurling, and one of them is going to marry Jason Forde from Tipperary,” he adds.
Fr Harry was hospitalised after a minor stroke and was brought to University College Hospital in Limerick for recuperation over a number of days, with the county final in Cusack Park being his target from the moment he went in there.
“I never in my life dreamt that there was such a service in the hospital,” he says. “I have been in a number of them and they were absolutely brilliant. I was in the Stroke Ward and from doctors, nurses, porters and other staff, they were outstanding. I’m home now and looking forward to Sunday.”
He’ll be there, because he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else – same as it ever was, because when he was there as a player back in 1958 it was the very same.
“I was warned not to tog out at all for the final,” he recalls, “but I had to. I got awful pains in my legs and body in the fortnight before. We drew the semi-final against the ’Bridge and we beat them in the replay.
“In the drawn game our captain Dermot Sheedy and Mick Barron from the ‘Bridge were put off and missed the replay. I was as fit as a fiddle and I had the game of my life,” he adds.
The Clare Champion noted “Bohan was a tower of strength for Feakle and had by far the best of matters with Deasy,” but it was as good as it got for Feakle that year, and for many years after it.
“There was fierce bad weather before that county final,” recalls Fr Harry. “Had we had the type of weather we had when we played the two semi-final games, we probably would have won.”
This theory was also backed up in real-time, with The Clare Champion report of the county final that was won decisively in the end by St Joseph’s on a scoreline of 3-6 to 2-2 striking a similar tone.
“One wonders what might have happened on a dry day in the first 20 minutes when Feakle hurled in a manner that might be described as devastating,” said the report. “The whole team worked beautifully.
“Their striking at this stage was far better than that of the opposition. The forwards attacked most dangerously and the defence stood up to fierce assaults with remarkable steadiness. With a team moving on that pattern in congenial weather the fate of the game is very much open to conjecture.”
What wasn’t in doubt was that young Harry Bohan shouldn’t have been there and wouldn’t have been only for that ‘never say die spirit’.
“We trained awful hard before the final,” he recalls. “We were cutting turf in the bog that time and I used to run to the bog and run back, eat the dinner and then go down training.
“I was so bad with the pain I had to sit up with a rug around me and my father would put down a fire. Dr Bill Loughnane told me that I was in deep trouble. There was no way I should have played the final at all.
“I remember we togged out in the Queen’s and it was pouring rain and we walked down to the pitch. When the ball was thrown at centre-field I literally saw two balls.
“After about ten minutes I told one of the selectors to take me off. They left me on until half-time. I sat there for the rest of the game, but when the team went back to the Queen’s for the meal after the match I just couldn’t go.
“I had to go home and for about nine months after that, I was laid up. I could have done a lot of damage because rheumatic fever affects the heart.”
Of course, this experience could never dampen his spirits for the game – by then his hurling heart was too invested, because as he freely admits “we thought of nothing only hurling growing up.
“People talk about tradition and there is an incredible hurling tradition in Feakle. In 1934 a Tipperary man called Sean Harrington – he was teaching Brothers in Ennis and came out and got the principal’s job in Feakle.
“He was a great hurler himself and had won a championship (with Ennis Dals) and when he came to Feakle he gathered what hurlers there were in the village that time and organised them and got them trained.
“They won the ’35 final then won four more up to ’44. It meant when I was a young lad growing up in Feakle I didn’t have to go to Manchester or Liverpool for my heroes.
“I saw them on the street; I saw them at mass and we had a pub so I saw them there as well. Some of them would come in for a couple of pints after mass or at night time and I would be sitting looking at them.
“They were my heroes. Players like Flan Purcell, a man called young John Naughton who never grew old, Tom and MP Loughnane, Sikey Moloney and the McGraths.
“When players like Flan Purcell, MP Loughnane or Sikey Moloney walked through the street we would really notice them. They were our heroes. The real impact was that they gave us an absolute passion and love for the game. “We had a far greater identity with the club than we ever did with the county. The county was always secondary and wearing the Feakle jersey was desperately important. There was a full-back line from Feakle for Clare in 1938 – Brud McGrath, Tom Loughnane and Martin Hayes. I was reared on that.”
Reared on five championship successes in ten years, a golden era that kicked in with a famous win over favourites Newmarket-on-Fergus.
They won five, but in Feakle they’ll tell you it should have been much more than that. Flan Purcell once told The Clare Champion that from 1935 to ’45 “we should have won ten championships”.
Meanwhile, Fr Harry grew up on the story of how the 1946 final was lost to arch rivals Scariff only because Feakle were shy of the services of Kevin Hogan and Tim Tuohy, who had returned to their clerical studies in Maynooth, while Flan Purcell was also sidelined by a poison finger.
It’s that ‘holy well’ of Feakle tradition that goes so deep with Fr Harry – it’s why every revival in the fortunes of the team is embraced; it’s why every ball is pucked and if he didn’t see it pucked it’s relayed to him.
In ’58 when he got out of his sickbed for the county final; 30 years later when he was on the sideline as a selector as Feakle beat Ruan by 1-17 to 1-10 to bridge a 44-year gap.
“That team created a huge buzz and huge interest in Feakle again,” says Fr Harry. “It was there in the 1980s when we won all those Under 21 titles and then the senior and it’s there again.
“I missed the semi-final because I wasn’t feeling great,” he continues. “Val Donnellan and Tommy Guilfoyle have been great in keeping me in touch about how they are going.
“I saw them against Kilmaley even though they were beaten, I felt that if they could stay in the group they were going to improve. They have. They have what a team needs, a few stars.
“Goalkeeper Eibhear Quilligan and Adam Hogan from the Clare team and Con Smyth from the panel – he is an outstanding club hurler and then they have Shane McGrath. The fact that it’s so long since Feakle have been in the final makes it special.”
Special on a number of fronts. For the Feakle man, but also the adopted ’Bridge man during the many years he spent there as a parish priest and community leader.
“People have been saying to me that I have a problem in who I am supporting – including the Bishop at one stage,” he admits, “because I was in the ’Bridge 16 years as parish priest and loved it.
“I got involved in a lot of things there and still go back there and I am helping out in the ’Bridge. I love the ’Bridge, love the club and love them succeeding but I have to say, whereas I still love the ’Bridge, my heart is in Feakle.”
Underdogs yes against a ’Bridge team going for a 16th title and sixth since 2013, but the great student of hurling history knows that Feakle’s tradition points to them having every chance on Sunday.
In 1935 they were facing a Newmarket-on-Fergus team also going for a sixth title in just over a decade and were supposed to have no chance – after all, in the Clare Cup semi-final O’Callaghan’s Mills had beaten Feakle only for them to be hit for nine goals by Newmarket in the final.
It was the last ever county final played at the Showgrounds before the opening of Cusack Park the following year and it was when Feakle caused a sensation by putting on a show and winning by 6-1 to 2-3.
A ten-point win – when Sunday comes one point will do for Fr Harry and all of Feakle.