Teammates carry coffin of young handball champion Nash

A sister of a teenage GAA star told mourners how true it is that what makes your local team so special is that it is your teammates that will carry your coffin when you die.

At the funeral Mass of Barry Nash, 18, the current All-Ireland minor doubles handball champion in Scarriff, Co Clare, Dervla Nash yesterday quoted from Christy O’Connor’s book The Club when describing the deep connection between GAA players and their local team.

She said: “How true it is in Barry’s case.”

Ms Nash said “it was a great privilege for Barry to play with his two brothers for the entire 2013 senior campaign” for Scarriff, where his brother, Cathal was captain of the team.

Later in emotional scenes in the rain outside the church, members of Scarriff’s senior hurling team wearing the club colours took turns to carry their teammate’s coffin to the local cemetery.

The second-year animal science student at UCD died last Sunday night in a car crash near Roscrea — a town where he spent five years as a boarder at the Cistercian College.

Ms Nash told mourners her brother “had that road to Roscrea worn, so I am not going to say ‘be careful on the roads’, because Barry was careful. On Sunday night, God decided that he wanted the best, so he took Barry from us all.”

Mr Nash’s youngest sister, Clodagh is a boarder at the Ursuline Secondary School in Thurles and Ms Nash told the congregation, “I can’t say sorry enough”, as the scene described in Seamus Heaney’s poem Mid-Term Break of a boy returning home from school for the funeral of his brother “became a reality for Clodagh last Sunday”.

The church was full to capacity one hour before Mass got under way, with hundreds more outside.

In his homily, first cousin of the young man’s father, Jim, Fr Ger Nash said Barry’s death “has brought the Facebook generation and the pension book generation and every generation in between all together struggling to come to terms with Barry’s loss”.

Fr Nash advised the teenager’s male friends to talk to each other about him and keep his spirit alive and “it is a way to peace — and understand what a gift Barry was in your life and how much of a gift it will continue to be to live the example of Barry’s life”.

Ms Nash told the congregation “our world was shaken on Sunday, but at least we had each other”.

She said her brother, who held handball world titles at under-13 and under-15 grades, “was an all-rounder, the loved his farming, his hurling, his handball, his socialising and, would you believe, gossiping with his sisters, but most of all, he loved his family and his friends.

“I’m finding great comfort in the knowledge that Barry had a fantastic life, he never wanted for a single thing. My brilliant parents are to thank for that. Barry was a carbon copy of our mother and a best friend to Dad.

“There aren’t many 11-year-old boys who wake up on Christmas morning to find two sheep in a pen on the side lawn from Santa.”

Mr Nash who is survived by his parents, Jim and Mary, and siblings Cathal, Diarmuid, Dervla and Clodagh, was laid to rest at New Cemetery, Moynoe.