Eimear Ryan: A new jersey deepens our attachment to club and county colours
This year’s Tipp jersey is in keeping with what’s in vogue, all colour blocking and minimalism. Picture: Dan Sheridan/Inpho
When I was in primary school in the ’90s, it was a rite of passage to play in the school hurling league. From second class upwards, anyone interested in hurling — boys and girls alike — could participate. Captains would be selected from fifth and sixth class and all other interested players would be randomly allocated to a team. For a lot of us, it was our introduction to competitive, organised sport, and we approached the lunchtime fixtures as if walking out onto Croke Park.
We had two sets of jerseys: The red school set (every captain’s first choice) and a maroon set of mysterious origin. The maroon jerseys were well-worn and oversized, falling sometimes to the knees of the Rang a Dó players. It’s only recently, in a chat with my dad and uncle, that I discovered the esteemed provenance of those maroon jerseys. They were in fact the jerseys used by our local club, Moneygall, up until the 1960s, at which point the club colours changed. The story goes that one of the lads was away at boarding school in Kilkenny, where the school jerseys were black and red. His school gear was so admired when he came back to hurl for Moneygall in the summer that the club decided to change their colours to match.
