The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
AMONGST the most intriguing of the items which will be on display at a 1914 All-Ireland hurling exhibition in the county museum in Ennis will be an oil stock used to anoint Biddy Earley when she died. Historian Tomás MacConmara is hoping that this element of the exhibition will finally dispel the belief that Biddy Earley had cursed the Clare hurling team, thereby playing a role in denying Clare an All-Ireland title between 1914 and 1995. “It’s time to refute that story for once and for all. To be fair to Biddy Earley she was an incredibly important historical figure and actually a very liked figure, certainly in her native Feakle,” Tomás MacConmara said. The fact that Biddy Earley died decades before 1914 suggests that apportioning blame to her on the subsequent short comings of the Clare hurling team was stretching things. “To be very clear on it, she died in 1874; the GAA was formed 10 years later and …
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