Passion from the pulpit: Fr Martin ready for another Croke Park pilgrimage with Sars
DIVINE INTERVENTION: Fr Martin Barry, former Sarsfields player who won a county medal in 1957 pictured at the club. Picture: Eddie O'Hare
IT'S Sunday December 29th, the hours running down on 2024, and in Glanmire church Fr. Martin Barry, an 88-year-old native of the parish is just coming to the end of Mass when he announces in typically upbeat fashion… “And now for the sports news. Golfer Scottie Scheffler is out injured for a month or more as he hurt his hand cooking the Christmas dinner - clearly proving he's a better golfer than cook.”
To uproarious laughter around the church, he then goes on to the main sports items: “A great year for Sars hurlers who won the Munster Club title for the very first time. And for Cork camogie who won two All-Irelands. And not forgetting the Glanmire men who won the football county as well as Glanmire ladies who also did the same last year.”
Watergrasshill’s hurling odyssey is namechecked too for good measure.
This bulletin is a weekly occurrence in Glanmire, as the padre seamlessly blends the two main religions of the parish, Catholicism and sport. The congregation are familiar and thoroughly engaged. “I get positive feedback on it. We go from the sports news to the final hymn."
One wonders, though, how many of the congregation knew of the incredibly rich sporting gene pool from which Fr. Martin emerged and which, at 88, still help to energise him.
At the end of the sports bulletin he mentions the All-Ireland Club final with Sars on January 19. This is his target now. He will be there Sunday. Winter time and nearly touching 90 won’t stop him.
He has already sought cover for Sunday Masses from other local priests - 'the subs are lined up' - and so has Fr. Pat the PP, a Tipperary man and another sports fanatic. They will, as always, travel together.
This journey will be quite different to the first time.
It is early September 1952 and Martin Barry is taking a lift in a hackney car from Glanmire to Croke Park for the first time. He is 16 and can barely contain himself. The Promised Land awaits. His big brother, the legendary Paddy Barry, one of the greatest forwards Cork produced, is not only playing but captaining Cork in the All Ireland Senior Hurling final.
It is sensory overload. Martin will sit along the sideline, engrossed and enraptured as the freewheeling Paddy lifts the cup. His mother, a widow now, attends a match for the first and only time in her life and receives a kiss from Paddy as he walks up the Hogan Stand. It is a mind-bending experience for the young teenager.
“Seeing my brother lift the MacCarthy Cup was the greatest moment in my life up to that,” he reflects.
Now 73 years later it is time to take that journey to Croker again. Will his beloved Sars claim the All Ireland Cub title for the very first time? Is it possible they will do so without the benefit of their own pitch for the majority of the last 15 months and without the benefit of being county champions in 2024?
1952 is a lifetime ago and there can’t be many left now who were present and remember it.
Paddy Barry, a favourite of Mícheál O’Hehir and a Cork and Munster Team of the Millennium player, had nearly all of his 10 siblings present that day, the first and only Sars man to lift an All-Ireland Senior Cup in Croke Park.
Martin’s recall is crystal clear: “It was unbelievable really. On the Monday the cup came back to Glanmire and the club at that time had only a galvanised shed near the Riverstown field so they went for the homecoming to the Glanmire Recreation Club Hall.” The Barry family, indeed pretty much everyone in Glanmire were present, all squashed in like sardines.
Fr. Martin’s house is easy to find. Situated less than 100 metres from the family’s original home where they lived over the family shop. A Sars flag hangs out of the top window and a Glanmire flag out of the bottom window. He shows the photo of the homecoming in 1952. There is so much to unpack here. He shows his father Jim’s county senior hurling medal with Carrigtwohill from 1918! The pitch in Carrigtwohill is named after him.
Like most of the Barrys, Martin was no mean player himself, he has a Harty Cup medal with the Mon and a Cork senior medal with Sars in 1957. He also captained Imokilly footballers.
He saw Paddy play in three further All-Ireland finals, winning twice.
So much front loading of sports for the youngster and then his life changed pretty dramatically - even if it was as he planned. At the age of 25 he went forward for ordination with the St. Patrick’s Missionaries, the Kiltegan fathers, and left Glanmire and Sars and Cork and all of that far, far behind and went to Kenya, where he remained for 50 years, tending the poor and infirm.
A different kind of promised land and a very different kind of mission. The only white man for miles.
“The people were great over there. Very welcoming just like the Irish.”
Recently, I listened as the GAA president Jarlath Burns told the Imokilly Centenary celebration dinner, “If there were five people in the world that I have most faith in then Fr. Martin is one of them."
“In 2016 Jarlath was principal of St. Paul’s High School in Newry, and came out on a visit with a group of students.” Burns and his students hadn't a promisising start as Fr Barry told them how he had made good use of his hurley - killing rats coming in through holes in the wall.
In the 50 years of his missionary work his family wrote to him a lot, keeping him abreast of life, Sars and Cork, though not always in that order. In later years a friend also sent him out the Sports section which he was delighted with. Good news stories about Sars and Cork enlivened him - Tadhgie Murphy captaining the U21s to All Ireland victory and his famous goal against Kerry in 1983; the many successes of the Sars Camogie Club backboned for generations by his nieces Maria and Eithne; and the All-Ireland medals of John Considine and Kieran ‘Fraggy’ Murphy.
Teddy Mac was obviously a high point and cause of pride, especially his double feat of 1990. Fr. Martin is “very happy" with the club’s decision to name the field after him, and that a statue will be erected this year in his honour. In more recent times he is proud of Sars woman Molly Lynch captaining Cork camogie to the All-Ireland Senior title last year and his grand-niece Lucy Allen winning an Intermediate medal with Cork.
But his urgency now is Sunday, and Croke Park.
“When Sars won a few counties in the 50s there was no Munster or All Ireland club titles. When we started winning counties again in 2008 we did not make much progress in Munster. So, seeing the lads beat a really great Ballygunner team in the Munster final was wonderful. I was confident before the game. And one of the greatest feelings of my life was going on and hugging the lads on the field in Thurles afterwards."
Amazingly, no Sars man has lifted an All-Ireland Senior Hurling cup (club or county) in Croke Park since Paddy. Sars captain, Conor O’Sullivan will seek to become the second on Sunday. Would one hand cater for the number of people there to witness both?
Nobody will be so intimately connected to both finals. “My grand-nephew, Aidan Hackett, is on the Sars panel and his brother Luke, who was on this team last year winning a county, but now living in Australia, is home for the final. When the lads heard he was home they brought him in for training and he is travelling up with the team.”
Family and Croke Park on the biggest day…here it is for him again. If Sars beat Na Fianna, Jarlath Burns, in presenting the cup, will surely scan the hordes for his old friend from the African mission. Only one thing is certain - the pulpit news the following Sunday will be box office.
And maybe, just maybe, at 88, Martin may get to feel 16 again.
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