Bringing the Mersey beat to Croke Park

THE American Richard Rodgers — of Rodgers and Hammerstein fame — wrote over 900 songs for 40 Broadway musicals but he could never have imagined any of his compositions being chorused at a wintry GAA pitch in Carrick-in-Shannon.

‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ was first aired in the second act of the 1945 musical ‘Carousel’ but it was another 18 years before the Mersey band Gerry and the Pacemakers recorded their version and watched it soar to the top of the charts.

Dozens of other artists, from Frank Sinatra to Alicia Keys, have taken a stab at it since but it is best known on these islands as the de facto anthem for Liverpool FC, even if other clubs such as Celtic and Feyenoord have taken it to their hearts as well.

It was last month when it received its airing in Leitrim. When Liverpool’s John Mitchel’s defeated Mayo’s Killala in the AIB All-Ireland Junior Championship they became the first British side to secure a place in a club final.

Well might they sing.

History has already been made then but they would be following in the footsteps of London’s Robert Emmet’s, who claimed the All-Ireland Intermediate hurling title two years ago, should they defeat Kerry’s Skellig Rangers today at Croke Park.

“We’ve been thinking about this since last year when we lost out to Canovee (Cork) in the quarter-final,” says midfielder John McDermott. “They went on to win the All-Ireland so once that had happened it hit home that we were good enough.”

The geography isn’t the only intriguing angle to this story. The history is pretty astonishing too. Mitchel’s are a venerable old club in Britain but they folded after falling on hard times and only reformed three years ago.

They spent their first year back in the British junior ranks but senior was their birthright and they reclaimed it in 2008. Not bad for a club that hasn’t even a pitch to call home and, as McDermott says, it has been “some rise”.

The pitch itself is in the district of Wavertree, in the eastern suburbs. The pitch is located in a sports centre at Greenbank Park and the presence there of an amateur and social sports entity is entirely fitting given the history of the location.

A local family of philanthropists, the Rathbones, used to live in Greenbank and it became a destination for distinguished visitors to the city who had “some special opinion to propagate or philanthropic scheme to advance”.

“Three years ago the club didn’t even have a pitch,” says McDermott. “They were using scaffolding poles as posts and stuff like that, just in a field. We got our first set of posts and nets last year but we didn’t actually keep them.

“They were actually taken down because it’s a council field and not our own. This year we actually had to keep them because we couldn’t get any work done over the winter.

“As it turned out, that didn’t matter this year either because the pitches were frozen over so we didn’t really have any football played up until the Moynalvey (of Meath) quarter-final. We did well to beat them without any practice.”

That victory carried with it a wider significance — it was the first time a British club side had defeated an Irish one in competitive football on Irish soil and the subsequent win against Killala proved that it had been no mere hiccup.

The man credited with the club’s resurrection is chairman Daniel McDonagh, who hails from Ballina in Co Mayo. If he was it’s lifeline, Ulster is it’s lifeblood and it’s backbone all in one.

Eight of the current squad are from Donegal and the majority of the rest hail from Fermanagh, Armagh, Cavan, Tyrone and Antrim. The three players from Cork, Kilkenny and Kildare are the exceptions to that rule.

Contrary to popular opinion, their current success owes little to the death of the Celtic Tiger. Most of the players have been on the scene since 2005 and John Moore’s University in the city has been a ready supplier of new faces.

Liverpool has been affected by the recession as much as anywhere else in Ireland or Britain. A number of the team work as tradesmen and they have been badly hit by the ongoing economic slump.

“There’s a lot of them hanging around in Liverpool just because the chance of an All-Ireland final was there.

“Whenever this is over, certain lads might go back home and we’ll take it from there.

“We would hope to make up for them with a few lads from John Moore’s University who are finishing up there this year. Hopefully they will stay in Liverpool and come and play for us.”