et al? How many of them have
even seen a copy of Séamus Ó
Ceallaigh and Seán Murphy’s
1982 biography of Mick
Mackey?Hurlers retire and die. Deeds
become memories. Memories
become legends, in some
cases inaccurate legends.
Although Kilkenny and
Limerick meet this evening
as their own men, entities
onto themselves, they also
meet as the heirs of Meagher
and Mackey, for without the
likes of Meagher and Mackey
hurling on Noreside and
Shannonside would not and
could not exist in the form it
does today.Forget the pharaohs and the
Roman emperors. Pádraig
Puirséal was the man with the
gig of a lifetime.There is the Meagher
of the 1935 All-Ireland
final, his finest hour, when
Kilkenny beat Limerick by
a point on another day the
heavens opened and the
lean magician “guided that
sodden ball over the rain-
drenched sod wherever
he willed”. MacCarthy Cup
winners in 1934 and again
in ’36, Limerick might easily
have been a three in-a-row
team. Meagher’s genius
ensured they weren’t. They
weren’t even a two in-a-
row team, although two out
of three was pretty good
going long before the world
had heard of Meatloaf.
As fate would have it,
teeming rain was the order
of the evening when Lory
Meagher made his final
journey back to Tullaroan in
the spring of 1973. Puirséal
could not but think back to
- “Still tall and spare,
hawk-face dark beneath
the peak of his rain-
blackened tweed cap, but
his luminous eyes bright
with joy, lighting up the
thin face and lending Lory
that unique charisma
which he never lacked his
long life through. As I laid
my hand on the coffin in
farewell I found the black
and amber jersey draping it
as rain-soaked as the one
he wore when we carried
him in triumph across
Croke Park that famous
day eight and thirty years
before.”
(As an aside it is curious how
many Kilkenny/Limerick
championship clashes have
been held in bad weather.
The 1935 showdown; the
1973 renewal, the Treaty’s
greatest day for another four
and a half decades; the 2014
All-Ireland semi-final, whose
second half was attended by
a downpour of apocalyptic
proportions; and last year’s
quarter-final in a damp and
drizzly Semple Stadium.)There is a lot of Pádraig
Puirséal in this article, for
which no apologies. How
many people under the
age of 30 here this evening
have read his book The GAA
in Its Time, published after
his death, with its coda of
newspaper articles by the
author on Meagher, Ring,
Seán Purcell, Mick O’ConnellMICK MACKEY, LIMERICK