![EA OF EMOTION: Munster’s players and supporters celebrate a famous victory.](https://www.irishexaminer.com/remote/media.central.ie/media/images/m/MunsterVAllBlacks1978_large.jpg?width=648&s=ie-362232)
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Limerick | 1-21 – 1-14 | Kilkenny |
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R. Bennis (0-10), M. Dowling (1-1), É. Grimes (0-4), F. Nolan (0-2), N. Rea (0-2), B. Hartigan (0-1), J. McKenna (0-1). | C. Dunne (0-7), P. Delaney (1-1), M. Crotty (0-3), L. O'Brien (0-2), M. Brennan(0-1). |
Ulster is becoming Britain’s Vietnam,” Senator Edward M Kennedy, the youngest of three exceptionally accomplished brothers in the United States’ most famous Irish family, told the US Senate in the autumn of 1971.
This year marks an important anniversary for the Kennedys, the Irish and the world, for it was 50 years ago when Ted Kennedy set his sights on peace in Northern Ireland. And, from that moment to the miracle of Stormont, in 1998, that secured peace, Ted spearheaded the United States’ peace-making efforts. He pushed presidents, worked with key Senate and House members of Irish descent, testified before Congress, delivered speeches, wrote articles, visited the region and met leaders on both sides of the conflict.
Jack, Bobby and Ted Kennedy were all proudly Irish. They all spoke of the anti-Irish bigotry that had plagued their ancestors in the United States. Jack visited Ireland to trace his roots and, while there as president in 1963, called it “the land for which I hold the greatest affection”. Ted came in 1964 in grief after Jack’s murder, and he spent more time trying to end the Troubles in Northern Ireland than on any other global challenge.
Joe and Rose led discussions about the world with the boys over meals, and Joe invited prominent people, such as aviator Charles Lindbergh and media mogul Henry Luce, to dine with them and enrich the conversations
Ted’s peace-making in Northern Ireland, however, reflects far more than the proud Irishness that he shared with his brothers. It also reflects perhaps the most fascinating and consequential story about the Kennedy brothers that hardly anyone knows – a story with important lessons for the United States of today.
Most people know that Joe and Rose Kennedy groomed their sons for success. They started with Joe jnr, who died at war in 1944 at the age of 29, and continued through Jack, Bobby and Ted. What most people don’t know (and what I explore in my new book, The Kennedys in the World: How Jack, Bobby, and Ted Remade America’s Empire) is that, from the time the brothers were little boys, Joe and Rose pushed them not just to succeed but to look beyond the United States’ borders – to learn about the world, care about the world and, once they attained power, shape the United States’ role in the world.
The 1962 All-Ireland hurling final wasn't the first time that the nation had been treated to live coverage of a game from Croke Park. That honour had been claimed by the Railway Cup hurling and football finals six months before when Clonmel's Mick Kennedy, playing for Leinster, had the honour of claiming the first ever score shown on live television. Dublin's Des Foley made his own entry into the annals by winning medals in both codes. Tipperary had seven players on the Munster hurling selection that particular St Patrick's Day. All of them would play again 24 hours later when the county side faced a Rest of Ireland selection in an exhibition in Thurles. Others to double up that same weekend were Christy Ring and Lar Foley. This was an era blessed with players whose talents would transcend time but Moloughney has no doubt that Jimmy Doyle's was the star that shone brightest. And still does.Roughly 500 people had arrived at Shannon Airport from the States and Canada on the morning of the match. A Swissair jet carrying 67 members of Toronto GAA Club was another visitor to Irish shores and these international waves were replicated on the ground. CIE laid on 25 special trains and road works on O'Connell Street made traffic jams inevitable.
All-Ireland football final day, 1949. Meath fans are en route to Croke Park by steam train, and will see their county win its first championship. They stop at Dunboyne. He hears their cheers fall through the billowing steam from the railway bridge. Five-year-old Seán Boylan knows something big is stirring.
Then he was simply a small boy kicking a ball around the family garden. The green and gold throng roared encouragement through fellowship and goodwill, buoyed by the occasion.
In later years he would give them good cause to cheer. Just a snapshot, but the moment seems to have acquired a near-cinematic resonance through what it prefigured. That railway bridge is now known locally as Boylan's bridge.
Around Dunboyne, there were local heroes to fire the imagination. His neighbours included Meath players like Jimmy Reilly, Bobby Ruske and 1949 All-Ireland-winning captain Brian Smyth.
"Brian Smyth was a great friend of my father's. I have a memory of kicking a ball around with him in the run-up to the 1954 All-Ireland final.
"He'd call out to the house on a Wednesday night to Daddy, getting the brews. Brian had a very famous dummy and he showed me how to do it. Of course, I practised it and used it all my life after."
He drew inspiration, too, from further afield. The great Gaelic names of his childhood were lent further mystique by Micheál O'Hehir's radio commentaries, which painted bold pictures in his head.
The legends were remote yet vividly present through the voice piercing the static.
"When he was doing matches you'd swear you were at the game. You were trying to be a John Dowling or a Seán Purcell or a Bobby or Nicky Rackard, a Christy Ring when you heard the way he described it."
Not that Gaelic games alone dominated his formative years. Motor races held in Dunboyne thrilled him as a youngster. Even now, his heart quickens a little at the vroom-vrooming of racing engines.
"I was always mad into motorsport, but most kids around Dunboyne were, because you had the racing which started in the '50s.
"It was outside your door so you followed the motorbikes and the cars. Of course, the only thing you could afford to do yourself was the go-karting. You'd go across to Monasterboice, where there was a track, or down to Askeaton in Limerick. The bug is still there."
At the age of nine, he was sent to Belvedere College. Rugby, of course, was on the sporting curriculum and he played with enthusiasm, once certain positional difficulties had been resolved.
"At the time the Ban was in but I played for a few years. In the first match I played I was put in the secondrow. At my height! I ended up in the backs afterwards, but it was very funny."
He chuckles at the thought of himself as a secondrow forward. In later years he was to meet Peter Stringer after an Ireland international. The scrumhalf greeted him warmly, announcing he was delighted to meet someone even smaller than himself.
His participation in rugby at Belvedere was never questioned, despite his GAA and republican family background. He was left to find his own course.
"My father, Lord be good to him, never tried to influence me in any way with regard to what I would play or what I became involved in. He wasn't that sort of man. And, well, in Belvedere, you're talking about the place where Kevin Barry went to school."
He took two of his boys in to see the old alma mater a few years back and was touched at the reception he received.
"I said I'd see if the then headmaster, Fr Leonard Moloney, was around. I hadn't been back in the place much but he invited us into his office. He went over to the press and took out two Club Lemons and two Mars bars for the lads. From then on that was the only school they wanted to go to and they're there now."
He hurled too at Belvedere, but his education in Gaelic games was to be furthered at Clogher Road Vocational School in Crumlin, which he attended after leaving Belvedere at 15. Moving from the privileged halls of Belvedere to the earthier environment of his new school was a jolt, but football and hurling helped smooth the transition.
In Crumlin, he would learn how to use his hands, within and without the classroom.
"The big thing there was the sport end of it. It was Gaelic and soccer we played. The PE instructor was Jim McCabe, who played centre-half back on the Cavan team that won the All-Ireland in 1952. He was still playing for Cavan at this stage. He was a lovely man and a terrific shooter."
He found himself spending Wednesday afternoons kicking a ball around with McCabe and another Cavan player, Charlie Gallagher. The latter's patiently rigorous application to practising his free-taking left a deep impression on the manager of the future.
While at Clogher Road, he represented Dublin Vocational Schools at centre-half back in both hurling and football. The goalkeeper on the football team was Pat Dunne, who would later play with Manchester United and Ireland.
He was on the move again at 16, switching to Warrenstown Agricultural College near Trim. His family background working with the land made the choice seem logical. Besides, the college did a nice sideline in cultivating footballers and hurlers. Again, he found an All-Ireland-winner circling prominently within his youthful orbit, foreshadowing his own relationship with Sam Maguire.
"The man who taught us veterinary was Séamus Murphy, who won five All-Irelands with Kerry in five different positions, an extraordinary record, from corner back to wing-half back to midfield to wing-half forward to corner forward. He brought a few of us from the college to Meath minor football trials."
Hurling, though, was the game at which he was most successful as a player. He broke into the Meath minor hurling panel while at Warrenstown. One day shortly after beginning there, he had another chance encounter which was to echo into the future. He was thumbing a lift home to Dunboyne, hurl slung over a shoulder, only to see a fawn-coloured Ford Anglia pull up. Its driver was Des "Snitchy" Ferguson. Thus began a long association. In later years, his two sons would win All-Irelands with Meath under Boylan's tutelage.
Back in his school days, though, nothing could top the feeling of making the Meath minor hurling panel. "The man who brought me for trials was the famous Brian Smyth. I'll never forget him coming to collect me for the trials. Here I was with Brian Smyth! Then when I got picked for Meath, it was just clover."
Fig.2 The chain and circumferentor were still the main tools of the trade in the 1750s. (Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland)
Fig.3 Carrickmacross, from Thomas Raven’s survey of Essex estate, County Monaghan 1634-5. Note the cluster of cabins, center right. (Courtesy of Marquis of Bath)
Fig.4 The manor of Tallow 1774 – part of Bernard Scale’s survey of County Waterford’s Devonshire estates. (Courtesy of the Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement)
Fig.5 The town of Maynooth, County Kildare, from John Roque’s 1757 survey. (Courtesy of Patrick’s College, Maynooth)
Fig.6 Graigsallagh, from a volume of maps of the ‘Manor of Maynooth'(1821) by Sherrard, Brassington and Green. (Courtesy of carton Desmesne)
First Dáil | |||||
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Overview | |||||
Legislative body | Dáil Éireann | ||||
Jurisdiction | Irish Republic | ||||
Meeting place | Mansion House, Dublin | ||||
Term | 21 January 1919 – 10 May 1921 | ||||
Election | 1918 general election | ||||
Government | Government of the 1st Dáil | ||||
Members | 73 | ||||
Ceann Comhairle | Cathal Brugha (1919) George Noble Plunkett(1919) Seán T. O'Kelly (1919–21) | ||||
President of Dáil Éireann | Cathal Brugha (1919) | ||||
President of the Irish Republic | Éamon de Valera (1919–21) | ||||
Sessions | |||||
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Born - March 11, 1858 Died - May 3, 1916
The first signatory on the 1916 Proclamation was Thomas Clarke, who joined the IRB, or the Fenians, in 1878 and with his protégé Seán Mac Diarmada effectively ran it in the run-up to the Rising. In 1915 they formed a Military Committee to plan a rebellion, later adding Pearse, Eamonn Ceannt, Joseph Mary Plunkett, Connolly and Thomas MacDonagh. Though three times the age of some Irish Volunteers, Clarke fought in the GPO throughout Easter Week. He was executed by firing squad on May 3rd, 1916, at the age of 59.Born - February 1, 1878 Died - May 3, 1916
Born in 1878 at Cloughjordan, Co Tipperary, MacDonagh attended Rockwell College and followed his parents into teaching. During a trip to the Aran Islands he met Pearse and the two became friends. A poet like Pearse, he became the first teacher on the staff of St Enda’s. With Joseph Plunkett he edited the Irish Review and helped Edward Martyn to found the Irish Theatre in 1914. He joined the Irish Volunteers in November 1913 and in 1915 the IRB. He was drafted on to the military council a few weeks before the Rising. He was in command of the Jacob’s factory garrison on Bishop Street (now the National Archives) during the Rising. A signatory of the Proclamation, he was executed on May 3rd 1916.Born - May 07, 1868 Died - May 05, 1916
“A drunken vainglorious lout,” is the poet William Butler Yeats’s famous description of Major John MacBride. Yeats may have been motivated by jealousy as MacBride had been married to Maud Gonne, the great love of the poet’s life. MacBride was a nationalist hero before the Easter Rising for his part in commanding the Irish Brigade which fought with the Boers in South Africa. He was not even supposed to be in the Rising, but chanced upon it while on his way to meet his brother. He was appointed second-in-command by Thomas MacDonagh at Jacob’s factory. Many historians believe he was executed not for his fairly minor part in the Rising, but for his actions with the Boers. His son, Séan MacBride, went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.The Pub has been at the forefront and epicentre of Irish life for hundreds of years. Often humble but always unpretentious, it has served many and varied functions. A place where strangers become friends and friendships are solidified. A refuge from the stresses of everyday life, the headquarters of local life.