‘I wouldn’t be a strategist but I like the way they’re playing’ - Eamonn “Ned” Rea
The Halfway House in Walkinstown is as Dublin as you can get. The blue and navy festoons the ceiling but there’s one corner of the premises sporting the green and white. Its owner Gerry O’Malley’s nod to the presence of Eamonn “Ned” Rea behind the bar.
After over 20 years manning the pumps in Parkgate Street, this is where the Limerick hurling great can be found most weekdays.
Names like Charlie Chawke and Tom Moran are synonymous with Limerick’s pub presence in the capital but for years the pre-Croke Park custom for Limerick crowds stepping off the trains in Heuston Station was to make the short walk across the Liffey and in to see Ned.
Now 74, it’s not for the need of work that he occupies himself but activity. Or to cure, as he says, “boredom”.
“When you come from a farm, your father would always have had a job for you no matter what age you were, whether it be picking stones, cutting weeds, or thinning turnips.”
There was always something.
“It’s very hard to drop things all of a sudden. Dave Allen always told a great one about working nine to five, getting home at 6.30pm and bed at 9.30pm. You do that all your life then you retire and what do they give you but a clock or a watch.”
Eamonn Rea’s is now P. Duggans, named after Paul, the late brother of Ger Duggan who took over 25 Parkgate Street after Rea.
Not that he would ever regret Limerick making those big days in Croke Park but they were difficult for them. There were the nerves for a start but then the responsibilities attached too.
“When your name is over the door… say this weekend now, you’d go in Friday and you wouldn’t get out until Tuesday. Crazy stuff. It was just too small for the crowds. I’ve no doubt there’ll be fellas on Saturday night looking for me. If he’s (Paul) smart enough he’ll say, ‘Oh, he’s gone on his break’ or ‘he’ll be back tomorrow.
“1994 was unreal. I mean, the road. It was physically impossible. We took all the furniture out. It was standing room only. The local pubs after it came looking for all their glasses because we had them.
“Fellas were buying pints in them but coming back to ours to be with the crowd. There were a couple of hundred glasses that weren’t ours after it.
“There was no real enjoyment and I couldn’t be part of it. After Croke Park, I was coming straight back. If your name was there, fellas expected to see you there.
“The biggest mistake was going behind the bar because they all wanted to buy off you. They wanted you to know they were there. There could be another barman there twiddling his thumbs.”
He was there too for those last big days for Limerick like 2007 when they saw off a fancied Waterford to reach the All-Ireland semi-final.
“JP (McManus) called in that evening.”
There was 2014 too but the quieter build-up is much more to his liking. It’s on weeks like these that he doesn’t feel he’s missing out but then he’s heavily involved with Club Limerick. It’s 50 years last March that Rea has been living in the capital — “I came up here for a week,” he smiles.
Before the pub trade, there was Galtee Food Products for 24 years in Ringsend but Effin has never left him. He is up to date on most current affairs there, like Nickie Quaid becoming a co-owner of Davy’s Bar in the parish.
“A lot of people wouldn’t have a clue who I am there now. That’s the nature of the game. I’d be asking my brother Tom about who is this and who is that.
“All the same, I don’t think I missed a match when Effin were going well. The most satisfying day for me was winning the Munster (intermediate) championship (in 2011).”
There is a precondition to this interview. Rea is an engaging man but it tires him to talk about 1973. He knows it tires others too and he doesn’t want to “haunt” this current group, he says. “In our time, we were hearing about Mick Mackey and the Clohessys and all that and it would be sort of annoying you. That’s why you would be awful conscious now to leave ‘73 where it is.”
What he has no problem discussing is his duel with brother Gerry in the All-Ireland semi-final that year. Gerry had captained London to a famous quarter-final win over Galway before they squared off against Limerick in Ennis.
Speaking to the Irish Examiner last year, Gerry mentioned that Micheál O’Hehir had mentioned in commentary that the siblings were “having a bit of a word with each other, but I don’t think they are talking about saving hay!”
“I don’t know if O’Hehir was even there,” Rea smiles. “Maybe he was.
“People exaggerate things. In the Munster final, Tadhg Murphy was in goals for Tipperary. A ball went wide, we were a couple of points down and they were going to kill time.
"I actually handed the ball back to Tadhg. A number of people made things up that I said to him that would be libellous. The same stuff was said about Babs (Keating) making a bet with Richie Bennis when he stood over that 65. People like fairytales.
“We hurled each other for Effin and were good mates as brothers go.
“Why would we go out to do damage to each other? It wasn’t like that.
“The Limerick Leader got hold of it and they spoke to my father (Matt). He was saying he was going to shout for London and my mother for Limerick. He was only having the banter.
"He was asked about us going up against each other but his reply was ‘when you have two sons playing in an All-Ireland semi-final you come back to me. It was a great remark.”
He senses a moment of inspiration could be the difference tomorrow.
The reappearance of Clare in Croke Park today reminds him of Domhnall O’Donovan’s equaliser against Cork and his grandfather who was the postmaster in Kilmallock.
“I often think about individual things that happen in matches and what he did that year stuck out for me. There was a guy who was corner-back, the match was virtually over, who had the presence of mind to move up the field and you never know what might happen. It was the incident of that year, more so for his frame of mind that he was thinking positively.”
That’s not to say he is optimistic, though Graeme Mulcahy’s rebirth fills him with hope.“This is the first year we’ve been seeing it and it’s because he’s finally getting decent ball.”
That directness appeals to him. “I believe that the short passing should only be used when a fella is in trouble or a better position and that’s what they have been doing.”
And their points totals are grounds for optimism. “Look at the last Cork game, they picked off 27 points. Against Kilkenny, it was 24 points and (Aaron) Gillane only scored two points from frees.”
He knows how Limerick finished out the game against Kilkenny will stand to them. He knows Anthony Nash might have to emulate the outstanding shot-stopping of Eoin Murphy. But he also knows how excitement has got the better of Limerick in the past.“I wouldn’t be a strategist but I just like the way they’re playing.
“There’s consistency there this year. The Clare game was funny this year because you’d usually have one or two guys standing up when a team is going bad but nobody did, and yet with 10 minutes to go they were only four or five points behind. Then Ennis was always a difficulty for Limerick.
“I think it’s 50-50. You have to give Cork credit for winning another Munster and they’re all well able to hurl and the wide open spaces of Croke Park will be to their liking. Your plus and minus points are all exposed there. I wouldn’t be getting carried away about Limerick. We have in the past and it didn’t amount to anything.”
In a way, Rea is glad Murphy was so good in Thurles. A trouncing of Kilkenny and Limerick would have gone silly.
“You couldn’t ask for a better way to win it. If they won it by 12 points, you would have heard ‘Kilkenny are a spent team’ and that type of thing but anybody who says that now are not in the real world of analysing hurling because Kilkenny are never gone.
"They’re judged by the fact they haven’t won an All-Ireland whereas for other counties getting to an All-Ireland semi-final is massive progress.”
For Rea, it means home comes to his adopted home. Another visit next month wouldn’t go amiss.
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