Mount Sion to the bone

FRANKIE WALSH was a high-scoring half forward on a magnificent Waterford hurling team but though his honours are great, they are not the whole man.

Frankie captained Waterford to the county’s last All-Ireland SHC triumph in 1959. He was on runner-up teams in the 1957 and 1963 finals and won three Munster SHC medals. He won a National Hurling League medal in 1963. Like so many of the greatest hurlers of his era, Frankie played with distinction on six Munster Railway Cup inter-provincial teams between 1957 and 1966. With his club, Mount Sion, he won 13 Waterford senior hurling medals and four senior football medals.

To those of us reared in the working class ‘top of the town’ and who went through childhood and early teens revelling in the success of a great Waterford team, he was — above all else – a Mount Sion man to the marrow. It is as that, as much as for his many other feats, that we remember him.