JOHN RIORDAN: Medal of honour unites community of Breezy Point

Jerry Gilson holds her grandfather’s All-Ireland football medal in her hand and suggests the white background of my notepad will help the picture I’m taking comes out right.

She isn’t sure when the old style pocket watch was attached to the thin chain but I’m less interested in that than in the fact that her grandfather, Timothy Fitzgibbon, was on the Limerick Commercials team which won the first ever football championship in 1887.

The medal emigrated to the US with Fitzgibbon, who is listed by a couple of sources at corner back for the victory over Young Irelands, Dundalk, representing Louth. One Hundred Years of Glory, A History of Limerick GAA 1884-1984 by Seamus Ó Ceallaigh and Sean Murphy describes the game as “wonderfully fast … scientific and clever” with Commercials finishing strongly to win 1-4 to 0-3.