From club-less to greatness

KILLINAN END

In September 1981, Pádraig Horan stood on the steps of the Hogan Stand with the Liam MacCarthy Cup and declared, with an elegant simplicity, “This is a great day to be an Offaly man.” It was an understatement which perhaps reflected the man himself. At the end of a life well lived, he would surely have concluded that his entire era was a great time to be an Offaly man too.

Born in 1950, his lifetime bore witness to the greatest hours the Faithful County has enjoyed on the fields of football and hurling. In his early years, that September day in 1981 and a maiden All-Ireland Senior Hurling title were the stuff of pipedreams. Leinster hurling was the playground of Kilkenny and Wexford, with occasional interventions from Dublin.

At club level, the parishes of Banagher and Cloghan were a wilderness in the context of County Senior Hurling titles. In the fifteen championships played between 1950 and 1964, only Tullamore’s three wins prevented a clean sweep between Drumcullen and Coolderry. The local balance of power was as rigid as anything on the inter-county scene. Hurling’s changing landscape was not obvious.

St Rynagh’s was formed in 1961, the same year that Offaly’s footballers played in the county’s first All-Ireland Senior final against Down. The county would bookend the 1960s with another final in 1969, when a narrow defeat to Kerry at least foreshadowed the glory days to come in the early 1970s.

That summer of ’69 was significant for the county’s hurlers too, when they knocked out Wexford — the All-Ireland champions — in the Leinster semi-final, failing only narrowly against Kilkenny in the Leinster final. It was a team which included five players from the young St Rynagh’s club: Damien Martin, Barney Moylan, and three of the starting forwards, Podge Mulhare, Pat Joe Whelehan, and team captain Gerry Burke. This was a club less than a decade in existence, yet it made up a third of a team in a Leinster Senior final. It is testament to the growing strength of Offaly hurling that the remainder came from seven other clubs.

However, maybe it was not entirely the shock it seemed either. In July 1968, a letter from a trenchant Offaly supporter to a local newspaper urged that no stone be left unturned in preparing the county team for the upcoming National League and subsequent championship. The motivation came from the team’s ability to run Kilkenny to just four points in the 1968 Leinster Championship, despite playing with fourteen-men for all but the first ten minutes. Referee Des Ferguson, a former Dublin player, had banished John Kirwan of Ballyskenach from the pitch in a decision which incensed the Midlanders. These green shoots had some substance.

The rise of St Rynagh’s seemed to lift bigger boats. The Banagher club won its first County Senior title in 1965, beating Coolderry in the final. This one had a well-known referee too, when Paddy Buggy of Kilkenny took the whistle. But even a former All-Ireland winner and future GAA President had to doff the cap to the legendary status of St Rynagh’s trainer, one Tony Reddin — one of our own, but one of their own too, being resident in Banagher at that stage. Reddin’s residency was the catalyst that drove St Rynagh’s to another realm. As Barney Moylan put it, “We looked up to him,” and indeed they looked upwards in terms of standards too, as training moved on dramatically.

In 1966, Rynagh’s retained the title, beating Drumcullen. After the match, the County chairman suggested special medals for Drumcullen, given the exemplary sporting attitude they showed on the day. That this was even a talking point probably tells a tale. But praise like this was always tempting fate back in those days. Two years later, the same teams met in the County semi-final and cut rashers off each other on a wild occasion. Donie Nealon was the réiteoir that day, and again it says something that a referee from another county, with a natural authority and status, was sourced. Offaly’s county hurling team was still subordinate to local rivalries. Perhaps a more successful and conspicuous county team binds the natural splits.

At that stage, in 1968, Rynagh’s had a young minor hurler called Pádraig Horan at centre-back when they won a third Senior title in four years — the first of three in a row, mirroring the achievements of Roscrea in the neighbouring county. The clubs would cross swords in the 1971 All-Ireland club final, one of three occasions on which Horan won a Leinster club medal, but the blue riband eluded Rynagh’s.

By the time Pádraig Horan won his last County Senior medal in 1982, the club which did not exist when he was growing up had won a dozen county titles. They also had three All-Ireland-winning captains from Offaly’s four: Pádraig Horan, Martin Hanamy, and Hubert Rigney, alongside Drumcullen’s Pat Fleury. Many great days to be an Offaly man.