Sarsfields chasing immortality
Tom Semple was a Thurles Sarsfields man, and after he led the Premier County to the All-Ireland titles in 1906 and 1908, at a time when the club champions represented their county, he took an interest in a premises in the town that was up for sale.
“Tom Semple was a great leader,” says Liam O’Donoghue. “He was a great hurler but he was also a leader off the field. He saw that there was a showgrounds in the town which had gone bust, so he led the group which bought it and it eventually became Semple Stadium.
“That wasn’t the end of his involvement in local matters. He took an active role in the War of Independence as well, but he deserves huge gratitude from the GAA for being the driving force behind the acquisition of what’s now Semple Stadium.”
O’Donoghue is one of the men in Thurles Sarsfields who are putting together the history of the club. They’re not short of material. Ten times club members have led Tipperary to All-Ireland success, for instance; more than any other club in the county.
They can also point to some dazzling names who have worn the Sarsfields’ blue and white: Mickey ‘The Rattler’ Byrne, the great defender who told Christy Ring, ‘we’ll have to shoot you’ (‘You’ve tried everything else,’ was Ring’s answer); Tony Wall, the cornerstone of the greatest Tipperary team; and the great stylist, Jimmy Doyle.
No wonder they were so successful, though collecting 32 senior county titles means disappointing a lot of opponents, of course.
“There would have been great rivalries over the years, with the likes of Moycarkey and Holycross, and Boherlahan going back a bit further,” says O’Donoghue.
“Was it town versus country? I don’t think so — I wouldn’t have thought it was a case of softies from the town, anyway. Certainly they wouldn’t have won what they won if they were soft.
“When you’re winning that many county titles, there probably is a bit of resentment — you have to remember that that was a time when winning the county meant you had a big say in the selection of the county team, so if that didn’t go well, you can guess who got the blame.”
Not all of Thurles Sars’ opponents were within the Tipperary borders, either. Hurling fans of a certain age become distinctly misty-eyed at the mention of the Cork Churches Tournament of the 50s.
“Those were probably the glory years for us,” says O’Donoghue. “We had a very good team and we were invited to those fund-raising tournaments to build churches in Cork, a good idea that the Bishop of the time, Cornelius Lucey, had.
“You had the likes of Glen Rovers, St Finbarr’s, St Vincent’s of Dublin, Mount Sion of Waterford — great teams, and it was very competitive. There was no Munster or All-Ireland club championship at that time, so it was almost viewed like that. We had a very successful run in it — and there were five churches built in Cork on the proceeds.”
In the Thurles firmament, one star one sparkled a little brighter than the rest. Jimmy Doyle still lives close enough to the club’s social centre to reach it with one of his elegantly-struck frees, and O’Donoghue says he’s a vital part of the club.
“Jimmy’s a hugely respected member of the club – that might go without saying if you have a member who’s been named on the Team of the Century and the Team of the Millennium, but with Jimmy he’s visible around the club, he’s not a bit distant. He’s here to advise fellas, to cheer on the team — he’ll definitely be in Portlaoise today for the game.”
Reaching an All-Ireland quarter-final might have been an expectation back when the Sars were winning 10 county titles in 11 years (1955-1965), if the competition had existed then.
By the time it became the ultimate in club achievement, though, the men in blue were enduring a 40-year drought, from 1965 to 2005, with just the 1974 title a solitary break from the misery of defeat.
Where did it all go wrong? “You could say we took our eye off the ball regarding the underage development, which is something which happens to a lot of clubs,” says O’Donoghue. “But there were other factors as well.
“We built the social centre, for instance, at a time when it was almost expected that Sarsfields would lead the way in that regard in the county. But the upshot of that was we had a massive debt at a time when interest rates were nearly 20%.”
As a result, adds O’Donoghue, there were plenty of committee meetings which were taken up by brainstorming on debt reduction rather than hurling.
“What helped us hugely was the establishment of Durlas Óg in the town,” he says.
There was a general view in the 70s that underage hurling had been neglected in Thurles, so Durlas Óg was established as an underage club to feed the three adult clubs then in the town — Thurles Kickhams, Thurles Fennellys and Thurles Sars.
O’Donoghue says the Sarsfields benefited hugely at the time and have made sure since that their own underage section is highly competitive — they had three players on last year’s Tipperary minor side, which won the All-Ireland hurling title, and they’ve won three county minor titles since 2006 and three U21 county titles in the same period.
That’s a lot of material for a club’s history.
“It’ll be done within the next 12 months,” says O’Donoghue. “It’d be nice to have an All-Ireland club title to go along with it, but Kilcormac-Killoughey will have something to say about that.”
And Thurles Sars will have something to say in return. You can count on it.
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