KILLINAN END - Rattlers record is an all-timer

As County Final day approaches, the hand of history always beckons.

While new pages enthusiastically await ink, when the leaves are falling we tend to reflect. Talk of the Dan Breen cup causes the mind to wander to surely the most bullet-proof record in Tipperary hurling. Between 1944 and 1965 Mickey Byrne or ‘the Rattler’ as he is forever known accumulated a remarkable fourteen County Senior hurling medals with Thurles Sarsfields. It so probably wise counsel to never say ‘never’ when you see, for example, Dublin winning six All-Ireland titles consecutively, and Limerick’s hurlers now threatening old standards too, but this one will be hard beaten.

In time, people too will look back on the consistency of Toomevara post-1992 and wonder at how it all was achieved. When you look at some of the players who have contributed to their 2022 Junior ‘C’ team heading for a North Final you have to acknowledge that good old-fashioned virtues like love of the game and pride in parish are real and present. Clearly, Mickey Byrne had plenty of this as well though the sheer level of success and the prospect of more of it must surely lift some psychological boats along the way when aching bones and muscles suggest time to call it a day.

Born in 1923, Mickey Byrne hardly knew a bad day in hurling as he grew up in Thurles with that area more or less the centre of operations in the county. Sarsfields had several days in the sun but even when they were not at the top Mid Tipperary generally provided the County champions with Moycarkey-Borris a huge force in those days. Notable in the context of the past half-century is the lack of impact the North was making in the County championship. Despite a rigorous and very active local scene where hurling was as central to life as ever, success in the race for the Dan Breen was elusive for a very long time after the relative decline of Toomevara post-1931.

The division was not without its moments though and Kilruane produced a fine side in the early ‘40s against which Mickey Byrne would win his first County Senior medal. That 1944 final was abandoned towards the end when things go somewhat out of hand with Sarsfields leading well. However, that is to ignore the context for Kilruane and maybe to not get the full significance of their participation in that final. When Tipperary won the All-Ireland the following September against Kilkenny, no less than ten of the Sarsfields’ contingent were on the panel, with not a single starter from the North. No doubt it was a fine Kilruane team even if it did not crack the County final conundrum at that that time.

By the time Mickey Byrne picked up his tenth County Senior medal in 1959 Kilruane were back in the final and fell short again. It was Kilruane’s first North title since that 1944 team with Borris-Ileigh the dominant force in the North and betimes in the County in the intervening years. There were stirrings in North Tipp suggesting the division was poised to become a force, but that process would be stubbornly slow. It might be fair to say that the number of smaller clubs in North Tipp diluted the potential strength of club teams especially when faced with a powerhouse like Thurles which also had the ability to recruit players who came to the town for work.

The latter years of Byrne’s club career saw the most extraordinary period of dominance of any club in Tipperary’s County championship. Only Toomevara’s win in 1960 prevented wholesale hegemony by Thurles, and of course also set up the prospect of Matt Hassett as All-Ireland wining captain in 1961. Five in a row was achieved for the first time in the County championship’s history between 1955-59 and was quickly emulated in the 1961-65 period. Sars became gradually less dominant in that second phase, and there were signs of the North rising not least in the fact that no fewer than nine North Tipp men from eight clubs started the successful 1961 All-Ireland Final against Dublin. A far cry from 1945.

A few footnotes on ‘the Rattler’ – he played Minor with Tipp in the famous ‘foot and mouth’ year of 1941 alongside Phibbie Kenny, Seán Kenny and Jim Prior – there would have been a tasty Minor team in the parish of Borrisoleigh that year you’d fancy. He captained Sarsfields to County title wins twice in the ‘50s and was in semi-retirement by the end of his successes at club level. In 1965 they beat Carrick Davins in a replayed final in what was very much a last hurrah as the team from the South went on to become champions in the following years. A 42-year old Mickey Byrne was coaxed back to stand on the edge of the square in that replayed final, holding back the years for a last time, and subsequently riding off with what is likely an unassailable record of fourteen County Senior hurling medals.