Through triumph and tragedy, Borris battle on
Liam Devaney is dead and Timmy Delaney is singing ‘Lovely Fair Ileigh’ in St Brigid’s Cemetery, crushing night back into day.
Two years back, Borris-Ileigh GAA Club sent off one of its own. The best of them all, by common consent. Liam Devaney made the Millennium XV of Tipperary’s finest ever hurlers.
He was primus inter pares even in a club that has supplied so many magnificent hurlers to Tipperary colours, supplied Jimmy Finn, Paddy Kenny, Seán Kenny, Bobby Ryan, Brendan Maher.
Devaney had such effortless control of a sliotar that he sometimes seemed to be playing a different game to everyone else.
“I was there, of course,” says Noel O’Dwyer. “I had the privilege of hurling with Liam for eight years. It was a wonderful moment. Timmy is a fine singer. And not everyone gets that song. ‘Lovely Fair Ileigh’ is our war song. You need to have gone to war for the club, over many years, to have it sung for you.”
This man is sitting in the Abbey Court Hotel in Nenagh, where he has lived since 1975.
Yet O’Dwyer remains a native bloom. He grew up in the aftermath of Borris-Ileigh’s inaugural era, the late 1940s and early 1950s.
That spell yielded three triumphs for Tipperary’s glamorous newcomers.
The first one arrived in October 1949, the club’s second season, after Borrisoleigh and Ileigh amalgamated in January 1948.
Seán Kenny captainedTipperary to All-Ireland success in 1950, a feat repeated by Jimmy Finn in 1951.
Borris-Ileigh came as a comet. Even so, their reputation as supreme in celebration was already established. One of the local newsprint’s most drôle examples of parenthesis can be found in a Tipperary Star account of reaction:
“(It is reported that they could not give the reception earlier as the members and officials of the team could not be found for a few days!)”
This Sunday, Borris-Ileigh take on Ballygunner in a Munster final. The parish has returned to top tier. James ‘JD’ Devaney, grandson of Liam Devaney, will feature.
Three-point victory over Kiladangan three weeks ago granted his club a seventh senior title, the first one since 1986. That season, they went all the way, defeating Rathnure for All-Ireland glory on St Patrick’s Day 1987.
“Having Paddy Doyle as our trainer was crucial,” O’Dwyer emphasises.
“Paddy took no messing from the start, and he got us fit, properly fit. Once we were fit, we were able to hurl at something approaching our best. Winning that county final and the All-Ireland with Paddy aboard was no coincidence.”
Borrisoleigh is a singular inland parish and its club, Borris-Ileigh, draws on this grounding. Despite recent tragedies, there is ever a surge to the place.
They are outsiders for the Munster final but in no way daunted. This Tipperary crew, withthe famous bantam cock as mascot, carries itself with assurance.
I read out a quotation to Noel O’Dwyer. A passage in John McGahern’s criticism, it offers an intriguing comment on mid to late 20th-century Irish life:
“The ordinary farming people had to conform to the strict observances, and to pay their dues to the Church from small resources, but outside that they paid it little attention.
"They went about their sensible pagan lives as they had done for centuries, seeing it as just another of the fictions that they’d been forced to kowtow to, like all the others since the time of the Druids.”
He smiles: “Yes, I can relate to that and Borrisoleigh. Nothing anti-Church or anything. But, yes, it would chime with how Borrisoleigh people are ever so blasé about most things.
"Whether it’s socialising or drink or greyhounds or horses or whatever… They don’t mind. They relax.”
The place’s legendary nonchalance could lead to frustration on one front:
“And this is the key thing with regard to the hurling: to get them into the right frame of mind. I won three county finals and it’s a well known fact that we had teams that should have won another four of them.
"At least another four… But it was this ever so blasé attitude, even about training.
“There were fellas, it was well known, that you’d have to keep an eye on the night before [a game]. They could go away and have four or five pints, not thinking they were doing any harm whatsoever.
"It was that free spirit… It’s difficult to put a handle on it.”
Precisely this quality, however difficult to define, is what makes Borris-Ileigh hurling so popular. O’Dwyer continues:
“The best way I heard it described was by two men I know.
"They met up after the county final, after beating Kiladangan, and both expressed it to each other this way: ‘The people’s champions.’ Spontaneously from both of them!”
Noel O’Dwyer is one of Borris-Ileigh’s Tipperary contingent. He was good young and he was noticed young.
Born on December 26, 1948, a hindrance birthday for a hurler, he nevertheless made, along with Timmy Delaney, the Tipperary U21 team that overcame Dublin in 1967’s All-Ireland final.
He won a Railway Cup with Munster in 1969, shortly before he first played Munster Championship. Two further Railway Cups were added in 1970 and 1976.
1971 meant a senior All-Ireland, when Tipperary dispatched a complacent Kilkenny. O’Dwyer was given the centre-forward role,before being entrusted, for the second half, with going centre-back to mark Pat Delaney. This switch, which involved Mick Roche slotting into midfield, proved pivotal to the result.
“I buried my father the Monday before that All-Ireland in Brigid’s Cemetery,” O’Dwyer reflects. “It was tough. He was only 49. Cancer… I was the eldest, of six, and I was the only breadwinner in the house. Those were challenging days, I can tell you, and for a good while afterwards.”
Borrisoleigh experienced an amount of tragedies in recent years. Its club became a source of succour, a stay against grief. O’Dwyer found the same stability in 1971.
“I was in two minds what to do,” he recalls. “But Babs Keating and Mick Roche, and a few of the other lads I used travel with, got around me to come in to training on the Tuesday evening.
"They said I needn’t tog off. And, of course, once they got me in there, I did tog off. So it went from there, and we beat Kilkenny.”
O’Dwyer soldiered with Tipperary until 1985, undaunted by the so called ‘Famine’ years. He was no less preoccupied with breaking a duck for Borris-Ileigh, as the gap to 1953 grew wider and wider.
Still, he puts the club’s contribution in historical perspective:
“It wasn’t until Borris-Ileigh made the breakthrough that the North started getting a look in. Borris-Ileigh were the first club to bring the Liam MacCarthy Cup to North Tipperary.
"The Mid dominated everything. No selectors in the North, no selectors anywhere else. The Mid controlled everything. Phil Purcell and Paddy Leahy and all those were at the helm, they influenced everything.
“The importance of the Borris-Ileigh breakthrough is generally recognised in the hurling heartlands of North Tipperary, in Toomevara, Kilruane, Roscrea and all those places. You had Seán Kenny defying the hierarchy. Singlehandedly, he took them on.”
The Miller Shield was a divisional competition in Tipperary hurling. Mid, North, South and West each picked a selection to compete for this prize. O’Dwyer elaborates:
“Seán Kenny was a powerful personality, good-looking and charismatic. Sharp and charming kind of guy. Even in the 1940s, the North were winning Miller Shields, but North hurlers were getting little or no recognition with Tipp county teams.
"Kenny changed all that. Kenny succeeded in getting lots of fellas recognition, players from other clubs in North Tipperary.”
Borris-Ileigh came and went as potential county finalists between 1949 and 1955, a mere seven seasons. Philly Ryan, who had won a senior All-Ireland with Tipperary in 1937, became a powerful administrative presence. O’Dwyer glosses another lesson learned:
When the great Borris-Ileigh team ebbed, after they were beaten in the 1955 county final, there was a decline. But Borris-Ileigh were still able to contribute players to Tipp county teams. They have an unusually high number of All-Ireland minor medals in the parish.
“What I always credit Big Philly with is that in the late 1950s and early 1960s Borris should have been regraded. There was no intermediate then, but Borris-Ileigh were intermediate stroke junior standard at the time.
"We had four or five players of senior standard but we weren’t, no disrespect to anyone else playing back then, good enough, overall, for senior. We were beaten in the first round every year, and then into the losers group, and then beaten in that as well.”
One man provided his version of foresight: “Philly wouldn’t, out of sheer stubbornness and pride, allow them to drop down. And he got away with it. He succeeded.
"He wanted to keep Borris-Ileigh branded as top flight. And he was so correct, because look at all the clubs who have gone back and never come back up. Or took years upon years to come back up. Some never recovered.”
Noel O’Dwyer rose as part of a strong group, one that eventually won 1969’s U21 A final. While the climb towards a fourth senior title had begun, there were many slips, many icy disappointments.
Borris-Ileigh did become North Champions in 1973 and lost 1977’s senior final to Kilruane MacDonaghs. Then the peak was reached in 1981, re-ascended in 1983 and camped upon during the 1986 season.
O’Dwyer is not pessimistic about Sunday’s prospects.
“I think Ballygunner will know they were in a game,” he stresses. “I think people will see a right struggle, a good contest. I accept we are outsiders, and for a reason, but I think there might be a surprise.
"Borris-Ileigh are representing not just themselves but Tipperary. And I think our club has a proud record of representing Tipperary in Munster, and beyond.”
The evening outside leaves Nenagh a November bruise. Paper talk is done. Noel O’Dwyer wonders what I will do until my bus arrives. I express a curiosity about Powell’s public house, which brings another smile:
“Úna’s… Good idea. A local, in fact.”
There is a possible shortcut from the hotel across town. “The gate could easily be closed and I’ll have to come back,” the driver concedes.
“But we’ll give it a go.” The gate at the far side is open and out we head. “That might be a good omen for the weekend,” he notes.
Úna’s is a delight, customers and service alike. Meeting Murdo Morrison from Lewis, a connoisseur of whisky, counts as a particular pleasure. “Are you set for the weekend?” asks the lady behind the counter. “As set as I’ll ever be,” says O’Dwyer.
“I hope they do it,” says I, the affable foolish stranger. Comes the reply: “Would you stop… There’d be no listening to him.”
Nenagh remains itself, an entirely different realm to Borrisoleigh, a reality expressed in her customer’s beatific smile.
Off we go, well happy with our interlude, but the bus ends up half an hour late. Gentleman to the last, Noel O’Dwyer insists I wait in the car and explains his life in the lull.
He went from Templemore CBS into a job at a mine in Silvermines, where he met his wife. A correspondence course, followed by further study, led to a job with Boart Longyear, a subsidiary of De Beers.
“I went all around the world,” he recounts. “Maybe was a dozen times in Johannesburg, at head office. Went all over South America.
“A lot of my work came to involve getting the same result for a smaller input. Those were cost-cutting exercises. You had to get the same level of an explosion while using a smaller amount of dynamite.”
The heady days of 1981 were the only time he recalls work and hurling rubbing off each other: “I was meant to be going on a trade mission to Australia after the county final. But the Munster campaign meant I had to miss out on it. But no harm done…”
Twenty eight years after the men of 1953 had taken Borris-Ileigh’s third title, the club had its fourth one. There is a hallucinatory quality, in memory, to those days’ weight:
Before the county final, I parked up and was going in with my gear, and Cracky Burke, a Borrisoleigh native, stopped me. He had The Blue Haven pub in Dublin at the time.
"Cracky seemed an old man to me at that stage, and he was on the stick, but I don’t know was he any older then than I am now. Maybe not even as old.
“Anyway, here he is to me, waving the stick at me: ‘Ye’re to win today. Don’t leave it any longer. I don’t know how long I have left.’ We did win, and I suppose he was very happy.”
And so that surge. There will always be a Borrisoleigh surge, however far the ocean.
