Gleeson bidding to get Sars accustomed to glory days again

IT’S A long way from Balbriggan to Thurles, longer still if, like Michael Gleeson, you lived in one but pined for the other.

Gleeson was a member of the Thurles Sarsfields team that won the Tipperary SHC title in 1974 and was there again when they lost to Kilruane McDonaghs in 1979. A few years later, however, work took him to Dublin and he settled into life in the capital where he became a star with the newly-formed O’Dwyer’s junior hurling team.

He spent good years in north Dublin, made a lot of good friends, and, with his wife and Dublin-born three sons and daughter, was adapting to his new surroundings, sure that this was where he would spend the rest of his days.