Cathal Dennehy: How a Tipp father guided me towards a Kingdom of Stars
Pat Dennehy. Pic: Cathal Dennehy
“ON All-Ireland final day,” he said, equal parts surprised and appalled.
“On. All. Ireland. Final. Day.”
It was the late ’90s, and my brother and I had just told Dad we were heading out cycling from our home in Limerick City to the sand dunes near Cratloe Woods, spending the afternoon jumping off them like eejits. The activity wasn’t what bothered Dad. It was the timing. There were certain sporting events you didn’t miss, and the hurling final was one of them.
But this Sunday, for the first time in over seven decades, Dad will miss it. And if some part of him is still conscious, 10 days after shuffling off his mortal coil, then Dad will now be just as appalled with himself for the timing.
My father was a Tipp man, and if there’s one thing he cared about, beyond family, it was sport. Any sport could have his attention, but two had his heart, and Tipp was damn good at both: hurling and horse racing.
Pat Dennehy was a native of Cahir and throughout my childhood, and much of adulthood, he’d laugh at us as the Limerick hurlers faced unlimited heartbreak year after year after year. “You’ll be old men before you see Limerick win an All-Ireland,” he’d say, and to be fair, we all had a few grey hairs by the time they did.
In time, though, we wore him down. Granted, if Tipp met Limerick on one of those fizzing Sunday afternoons in the ’90s when there was no backdoor, no second chances, then rest assured he’d have a blue and yellow headband around his neck. But if Limerick were playing anyone else, he’d concede to the green and white. Dad, after all, knew the intoxicating rush that came with seeing your county win an All-Ireland. He’d felt it many times. He wanted us to feel it, too.
Like most Irish men of his generation, Dad would sooner slice off his arm than tell us he loved us, but that sentiment was expressed in ways that went beyond words. Most of my childhood days are long since forgotten, but the majority of those lodged in the vault of core memories concern sport.
One of my earliest is from Thomond Park: being wedged in a scrum of fans on the pitch after a game, trying to lay a hand on David Campese, the Australian legend who let the crowd have his golden jersey which, if memory serves me right, was ripped apart to allow for multiple mementos.
Many childhood Sundays were spent squeezing through turnstiles with Dad, being told to bend my knees so, at six or seven, I’d escape the line of sight of the man on the stile. Or so, at 11 or 12, he might think I was six or seven and turn a blind eye.
Before health and safety was really a thing, there was once a terrifying crush outside the Gaelic Grounds, and Dad hoisted me out of the panicked masses, into the arms of some fans standing on a wall.
At games, we were usually in the terrace – a more visceral, impactful experience than the politeness and personal space in the stands. I was eight years old when Ciarán Carey scored his wonder-point against Clare in 1996, the memory of his free-running solo still singed into my memory, along with that volcanic eruption when the sliotar sailed between the posts. Next time you’re on the fence about taking a kid to a game, remember how well I remember that.
Since I flew the nest almost 20 years ago, about 95% of the dialogue between me and my father was about sport, and once we’d maxed out that topic in calls, I’d get his go-to line, “Hang on, I’ll put you on to mother.” He started each day by buying a newspaper, usually this one, and the sport section was his and his alone for the first few hours. Years later, after I became a sports journalist, I thanked him for always buying a paper, opening as it did my first window into this world.
Dad could admire greatness across any sport, whether it was Lar Corbett banging in three goals in the All-Ireland final, Istabraq winning three Champion Hurdles or Usain Bolt floating over the track at the Olympics. Dad saw all of them do their thing in the flesh, but in truth he achieved something even more impressive: despite having six kids at home, he attended the full Cheltenham Festival for 20 straight years, and never had it end in divorce. But of course, my mother is an understanding woman, whose love of sport runs just as deep.
In his youth, Dad played various sports, and in the ’60s he got banned from Gaelic Games for the absurd crime of lining out for Cahir in a soccer match. He had a wicked left peg, loaded with power, the accuracy not quite as impressive.
Until recent years, my brothers and I would join him for ruthlessly competitive games of pitch and putt, Dad’s lack of golfing talent often offset through psychological warfare. He’d let out a triumphant “weeee” when your downhill putt would miss and slide off the green, while if you left anything more than a couple of inches on the way back, he’d laugh and sing, “bit to doo-oo.”
He was a religious man, who went to mass weekly, but Cheltenham was his heaven on earth. Eventually, he got too old to be dealing with the crowds, the drinking, the chaos, and the baton was handed to his sons. When I returned from my first visit, and told him how class it was, he smiled: “Well, now you know why I went for so many years.”
His bets were never big, just €10 or €20, and the thing they had in common was that we only found out about them when they won, Dad whipping out the docket at full-time or when his horse had passed the post, his after-timing theatrics staying true to Rudyard Kipling’s advice to never breathe a word about your loss.
On his final weekend, Dad sat in my sister’s living room and watched his beloved Tipp hurlers get one over on Kilkenny and knowing him, I know exactly the joy he’d have felt when Oisín O’Donoghue struck that wonder goal in the 69th minute.
His final day, July 9th, was spent doing two things he loved: visiting family and betting on horses. At 5.30 that evening, he strolled down to our local bookies in Caherdavin to place his last ever bet: a €1 Lucky 15 on four horses in Kempton.
Just one out of the four won, and that race was at 7.20pm. Just a few minutes later, he suffered the episode that led to his passing. The horse’s name was Kingdom of Stars, and while I’m not religious, I like to think he’s in some other kingdom this weekend, watching, supporting, reminding us not to do anything else “on All Ireland final day.”
Either way, he went out on a winner.
Dad was married for 48 years, he raised six children and he spent almost four decades alongside his beloved co-workers as a customs officer at Shannon Airport. But his greatest feat of all might be a posthumous one. Because Sunday afternoon, the Dennehy family and its matriarch – a Limerick hurling ultra – will all be looking around to find something blue.
Rest well, Dad. And up, Tipp.
