was the Munster final of
1936 against Tipperary in
Thurles. The men in green
were just back from a tour of
the United States. To say they
hadn’t allowed themselves to
become distracted by their
transatlantic adventure is to
put it mildly; to say Mackey
played a captain’s part in that
provincial decider is to put it
even more mildly. Limerick
won by 8-5 to 4-6 and
Mackey, rampaging all over
the place, hit 5-3.Now try Puirséal on Lorenzo
Meagher, the Prince of
Hurlers, the supreme
stylist. Admittedly Puirséal
was, as he acknowledged,
prejudiced, having watched
and idolised Meagher from
the mid 1920s onwards.
Nonetheless his essay after
the Tullaroan man’s death
has stood the test of time
as a gorgeously evocative
piece of sportswriting.
Puirséal breathes life into
the Meagher of 1929 in New
Ross, “playing such hurling in
torrential rain that men said
afterwards, as they splashed
down the hilly road by the
Three Bullets Gate, that Lory
could talk to that ball and
make the ball talk to him”.
There is the Meagher of the
second replay against Cork
in 1931, confined by injury to
the sideline, wearing his best
suit, “white-knuckled hands
clasped tightly on a hurley,
tears running down his cheeks
because he could not answer
his county’s urgent call”.games correspondent of the
Irish Press, who saw those
finals and in later life would
reminisce at length about
them.
Puirséal, who was born in
1914 and hailed from the
banks of the Suir that flow
down by Mooncoin and who
away from his day job wrote
four well received novels,
was not an old man when
he died in September 1979.
He seemed to have been
around forever, though –
certainly for long enough
to have established himself
as an authority on Meagher
and Mackey. Here’s what he
had to say about the latter.
“Mackey was the devil-may-
care laughing cavalier of the
hurling fields. He had the
appeal that nowadays it is
fashionable to call charisma.
He was a friendly extrovert
on and off the field, a great
leader of his team, a man of
broad shoulders who could
give and take hard knocks
with equal cheerfulness.”The Ahane man was built like
a small tank, meaning that
the solo run was the foremost
weapon in his armoury.
“Securing possession 40 or
50 yards out he would tap the
ball wide of an approaching
defender, snatch it up on
his stick and go charging for
goal to the ever-deepening
roar of the crowd. Yet, on
occasion, you would suddenly
find the same Mackey back
around midfield, sending
long range points sailing
between the posts to the
dismay of the opposing
defenders.” Mackey’s first
match as Limerick captainLORY MEAGHER, KILKENNY