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Out of stockSuperb Guinness advert publicising their sponsorship of the All Ireland Senior Hurling Championship-unframed print. 44cm x 60cm Guinness were long time sponsors of the All Ireland Senior Hurling Championship.Hurling is an ancient sport ,played for over 2000 years by such mythical Irish legends such as Setanta, who is depicted here in this distinctive Guinness advert fighting off a fierce wolf, armed with just a Hurl and a sliotar! Following on the company’s imaginative marketing and advertising campaigns — with such slogans as ‘Not Men But Giants,’ ‘Nobody Said It Was Going To Be Easy’ and ‘The Stuff of Legend’ — other imaginative adverts brought the message that hurling is part of the Irish DNA. Other campaigns, entitled ‘It’s Alive Inside’ focused on how hurling is an integral part of Irish life and how the love of hurling is alive inside every hurling player and fan.
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Classic retro Guinness advert from the 'Guinnless' advertising campaign .This humorous scene depicts an empty beachfront while a large crowd enjoy themselves drinking Guinness in the nearest watering hole. 30cm x 65cm Dublin Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain before he started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.” Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading. The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test. By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world. Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.” Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.
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Lovely reproduction of vintage Irish Bank Notes - the old £10,£5 & £1 pound notes which existed until the arrival of the Euro. 45cm x 35cm Limerick The Irish Free State, subsequently known as Ireland, resolved in the mid-1920s to design its own coins and banknotes. Upon issuing the new currency, the Free State government pegged its value to the pound sterling. The Currency Act, 1927 was passed as a basis for creating banknotes and the "Saorstát pound" (later the "Irish pound") as the "standard unit of value." The legal tender notes issued under this act began circulating on 10 September 1928. When the Irish Free State came into existence in 1922, three categories of banknote were in circulation. These consisted of notes issued by the Bank of England, the British Treasury, and six Irish banks that were chartered to issue notes. Only British Treasury notes were legal tender within the state. The issuing of banknotes by multiple private institutions was an everyday aspect of banking in Great Britain and Ireland at the time and remains so in Northern Ireland and Scotland. A banking commission was created in 1926, the Commission of Inquiry into Banking and the Issue of Notes,[1] to determine what changes were necessary relating to banking and banknote issue in the new state. The commission was chaired by Professor Henry Parker Willis of Columbia University who was Director of Research of the Federal Reserve Board in the United States. The commission's terms of reference were:
- "To consider and to report to the Minister for Finance what changes, if any, in the law relative to banking and note issue are necessary or desirable, regard being had to the altered circumstances arising from the establishment of Saorstát Éireann."
1929–1953: Consolidated banknotes
This series of banknotes were never legal tender . They were equivalent to "promissory notes" that continue to be issued by some banks in the United Kingdom. Notes were issued as a transitional measure for the eight "Shareholding Banks" of the Currency Commission: Bank of Ireland, Hibernian Bank, Munster & Leinster Bank, National Bank, Northern Bank, Provincial Bank of Ireland, Royal Bank of Ireland, and Ulster Bank. These notes were first issued between 6 May and 10 June 1929 under the arrangement that the banks withdraw previous notes and refrain from issuing further notes. The consolidated notes were only issued by the Currency Commission. The last notes were printed in 1941. The notes were officially withdrawn on 31 December 1953. The front of each note depicted a man ploughing a field with two horses. They are referred to as the "Ploughman Notes." The notes' denominations and the back designs were; £1 (Custom House, Dublin), £5 (St. Patrick's Bridge, Cork), £10 (Currency Commission Building, Foster Place, Dublin), £20 (Rock of Cashel, County Tipperary), £50 (Croagh Patrick, County Mayo), and £100 (Killiney Bay, County Dublin). The name of the issuing Shareholding Bank also varied, along with the corresponding authorising signature.1976–1993: Series B banknotes
The Central Bank of Ireland commissioned the "Series B" notes. They were designed and brought into circulation between 1976 and 1982. Servicon, an Irish design company, designed the £1, £5, £10, £20, £50, and £100 denominations. The £100 note was never issued or circulated. This is the only series of Irish banknotes without a note of this denomination. The theme of these notes was the history of Ireland. Each note featured the portrait of a historical figure. The Lady Lavery portrait, from Series A, was retained as a watermark.1992–2001: Series C banknotes
This series of notes called "Series C" was the outcome of a limited competition, held in 1991, to which nine Irish artists were invited. The winner and designer of the series was Robert Ballagh. This series of notes had denominations of £5, £10, £20, £50 and £100. No Irish pound note was designed because the currency had a coin of this value since 1990. This series was introduced at short notice, with the £20 note being the first to be issued, following widespread forgery of the Series B £20 note. The last banknote of the Series C issue was a £50 note that was issued in 2001. The theme for this series was people who contributed to the formation of modern Ireland. To this effect, it includes politicians, a literary figure, and a religious figure. The political figures do not include anyone directly associated with the Irish War of Independence, which eventually led to the creation of the Irish Free State. -
38cm x 8cm Limerick City
The former beer of choice of An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern,the Bass Ireland Brewery operated on the Glen Road in West Belfast for 107 years until its closure in 2004.But despite its popularity, this ale would be the cause of bitter controversy in the 1930s as you can learn below.
Founded in 1777 by William Bass in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, England.The main brand was Bass Pale Ale, once the highest-selling beer in the UK.By 1877, Bass had become the largest brewery in the world, with an annual output of one million barrels.Its pale ale was exported throughout the British Empire, and the company's distinctive red triangle became the UK's first registered trade mark. In the early 1930s republicans in Dublin and elsewhere waged a campaign of intimidation against publicans who sold Bass ale, which involved violent tactics and grabbed headlines at home and further afield. This campaign occurred within a broader movement calling for the boycott of British goods in Ireland, spearheaded by the IRA. Bass was not alone a British product, but republicans took issue with Colonel John Gretton, who was chairman of the company and a Conservative politician in his day.In Britain,Ireland and the Second World War, Ian Woods notes that the republican newspaper An Phoblacht set the republican boycott of Bass in a broader context , noting that there should be “No British ales. No British sweets or chocolate. Shoulder to shoulder for a nationwide boycott of British goods. Fling back the challenge of the robber empire.”
In late 1932, Irish newspapers began to report on a sustained campaign against Bass ale, which was not strictly confined to Dublin. On December 5th 1932, The Irish Times asked:
Will there be free beer in the Irish Free State at the end of this week? The question is prompted by the orders that are said to have been given to publicans in Dublin towards the end of last week not to sell Bass after a specified date.
The paper went on to claim that men visited Dublin pubs and told publicans “to remove display cards advertising Bass, to dispose of their stock within a week, and not to order any more of this ale, explaining that their instructions were given in furtherance of the campaign to boycott British goods.” The paper proclaimed a ‘War on English Beer’ in its headline. The same routine, of men visiting and threatening public houses, was reported to have happened in Cork.
It was later reported that on November 25th young men had broken into the stores owned by Bass at Moore Lane and attempted to do damage to Bass property. When put before the courts, it was reported that the republicans claimed that “Colonel Gretton, the chairman of the company, was a bitter enemy of the Irish people” and that he “availed himself of every opportunity to vent his hate, and was an ardent supporter of the campaign of murder and pillage pursued by the Black and Tans.” Remarkably, there were cheers in court as the men were found not guilty, and it was noted that they had no intention of stealing from Bass, and the damage done to the premises amounted to less than £5.
A campaign of intimidation carried into January 1933, when pubs who were not following the boycott had their signs tarred, and several glass signs advertising the ale were smashed across the city. ‘BOYCOTT BRITISH GOODS’ was painted across several Bass advertisements in the city.
Throughout 1933, there were numerous examples of republicans entering pubs and smashing the supply of Bass bottles behind the counter. This activity was not confined to Dublin,as this report from late August shows. It was noted that the men publicly stated that they belonged to the IRA.
September appears to have been a particularly active period in the boycott, with Brian Hanley identifying Dublin, Tralee, Naas, Drogheda and Waterford among the places were publicans were targetted in his study The IRA: 1926-1936. One of the most interesting incidents occurring in Dun Laoghaire. There, newspapers reported that on September 4th 1933 “more than fifty young men marched through the streets” before raiding the premises of Michael Moynihan, a local publican. Bottles of Bass were flung onto the roadway and advertisements destroyed. Five young men were apprehended for their role in the disturbances, and a series of court cases nationwide would insure that the Bass boycott was one of the big stories of September 1933.
The young men arrested in Dun Laoghaire refused to give their name or any information to the police, and on September 8th events at the Dublin District Court led to police baton charging crowds. The Irish Times reported that about fifty supporters of the young men gathered outside the court with placards such as ‘Irish Goods for Irish People’, and inside the court a cry of ‘Up The Republic!’ led to the judge slamming the young men, who told him they did not recognise his court. The night before had seen some anti-Bass activity in the city, with the smashing of Bass signs at Burgh Quay. This came after attacks on pubs at Lincoln Place and Chancery Street. It wasn’t long before Mountjoy and other prisons began to home some of those involved in the Boycott Bass campaign, which the state was by now eager to suppress.
An undated image of a demonstration to boycott British goods. Credit: http://irishmemory.blogspot.ie/
This dramatic court appearance was followed by similar scenes in Kilmainham, where twelve men were brought before the courts for a raid on the Dead Man’s Pub, near to Palmerstown in West Dublin. Almost all in their 20s, these men mostly gave addresses in Clondalkin. Their court case was interesting as charges of kidnapping were put forward, as Michael Murray claimed the men had driven him to the Featherbed mountain. By this stage, other Bass prisoners had begun a hungerstrike, and while a lack of evidence allowed the men to go free, heavy fines were handed out to an individual who the judge was certain had been involved.
The decision to go on hungerstrike brought considerable attention on prisoners in Mountjoy, and Maud Gonne MacBride spoke to the media on their behalf, telling the Irish Press on September 18th that political treatment was sought by the men. This strike had begun over a week previously on the 10th, and by the 18th it was understood that nine young men were involved. Yet by late September, it was evident the campaign was slowing down, particularly in Dublin.
The controversy around the boycott Bass campaign featured in Dáil debates on several occasions. In late September Eamonn O’Neill T.D noted that he believed such attacks were being allowed to be carried out “with a certain sort of connivance from the Government opposite”, saying:
I suppose the Minister is aware that this campaign against Bass, the destruction of full bottles of Bass, the destruction of Bass signs and the disfigurement of premises which Messrs. Bass hold has been proclaimed by certain bodies to be a national campaign in furtherance of the “Boycott British Goods” policy. I put it to the Minister that the compensation charges in respect of such claims should be made a national charge as it is proclaimed to be a national campaign and should not be placed on the overburdened taxpayers in the towns in which these terrible outrages are allowed to take place with a certain sort of connivance from the Government opposite.
Another contribution in the Dáil worth quoting came from Daniel Morrissey T.D, perhaps a Smithwicks man, who felt it necessary to say that we were producing “an ale that can compare favourably with any ale produced elsewhere” while condemning the actions of those targeting publicans:
I want to say that so far as I am concerned I have no brief good, bad, or indifferent, for Bass’s ale. We are producing in this country at the moment—and I am stating this quite frankly as one who has a little experience of it—an ale that can compare favourably with any ale produced elsewhere. But let us be quite clear that if we are going to have tariffs or embargoes, no tariffs or embargoes can be issued or given effect to in this country by any person, any group of persons, or any organisation other than the Government elected by the people of the country.
Tim Pat Coogan claims in his history of the IRA that this boycott brought the republican movement into conflict with the Army Comrades Association, later popularly known as the ‘Blueshirts’. He claims that following attacks in Dublin in December 1932, “the Dublin vitners appealed to the ACA for protection and shipments of Bass were guarded by bodyguards of ACA without further incident.” Yet it is undeniable there were many incidents of intimidation against suppliers and deliverers of the product into 1933.
Not all republicans believed the ‘Boycott Bass’ campaign had been worthwhile. Patrick Byrne, who would later become secretary within the Republican Congress group, later wrote that this was a time when there were seemingly bigger issues, like mass unemployment and labour disputes in Belfast, yet:
In this situation, while the revolution was being served up on a plate in Belfast, what was the IRA leadership doing? Organising a ‘Boycott Bass’ Campaign. Because of some disparaging remarks the Bass boss, Colonel Gretton, was reported to have made about the Irish, some IRA leaders took umbrage and sent units out onto the streets of Dublin and elsewhere to raid pubs, terrify the customers, and destroy perfectly good stocks of bottled Bass, an activity in which I regret to say I was engaged.
Historian Brian Hanley has noted by late 1933 “there was little effort to boycott anything except Bass and the desperation of the IRA in hoping violence would revive the campaign was in fact an admission of its failure. At the 1934 convention the campaign was quietly abandoned.”
Interestingly, this wasn’t the last time republicans would threaten Bass. In 1986 The Irish Times reported that Bass and Guinness were both threatened on the basis that they were supplying to British Army bases and RUC stations, on the basis of providing a service to security forces.
Origins : Co Galway
Dimensions:35 cm x 45cm
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Humorous sketch of the enigmatic genius Brendan Began with typical irreverent quote attached. 37.5cm x 25.5cm Dublin BRENDAN BEHAN 1923-1964 PLAYWRIGHT AND AUTHOR Behan was born in Dublin on 9 February 1923. His father was a house painter who had been imprisoned as a republican towards the end of the Civil War, and from an early age Behan was steeped in Irish history and patriotic ballads; however, there was also a strong literary and cultural atmosphere in his home. At fourteen Behan was apprenticed to his father's trade. He was already a member of Fianna Éireann, the youth organisation of the Irish Republican Army, and a contributor to The United Irishman. When the IRA launched a bombing campaign in England in 1939, Behan was trained in explosives, but was arrested the day he landed in Liverpool. In February 1940 he was sentenced to three years' Borstal detention. He spent two years in a Borstal in Suffolk, making good use of its excellent library. In 1942, back in Dublin, Behan fired at a detective during an IRA parade and was sentenced to fourteen years' penal servitude. Again he broadened his education, becoming a fluent Irish speaker. During his first months in Mountjoy prison, Sean O Faolain published Behan's description of his Borstal experiences in The Bell. Behan was released in 1946 as part of a general amnesty and returned to painting. He would serve other prison terms, either for republican activity or as a result of his drinking, but none of such length. For some years Behan concentrated on writing verse in Irish. He lived in Paris for a time before returning in 1950 to Dublin, where he cultivated his reputation as one of the more rambunctious figures in the city's literary circles. In 1954 Behan's play The Quare Fellow was well received in the tiny Pike Theatre. However, it was the 1956 production at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Royal in Stratford, East London, that brought Behan a wider reputation - significantly assisted by a drunken interview on BBC television. Thereafter, Behan was never free from media attention, and he in turn was usually ready to play the drunken Irlshman. The 'quare fellow', never seen on stage, is a condemned man in prison. His imminent execution touches the lives of the other prisoners, the warders and the hangman, and the play is in part a protest against capital punishment. More important, though, its blend of tragedy and comedy underlines the survival of the prisoners' humanity in their inhumane environment. How much the broader London version owed to Joan Littlewood is a matter of debate. Comparing him with another alcoholic writer, Dylan Thomas, a friend said that 'Dylan wrote Under Milkwood and Brendan wrote under Littlewood'. Behan's second play, An Giall (1958), was commissioned by Gael Linn, the Irish-language organisation. Behan translated the play into English and it was Joan Littlewood's production of The Hostage (1958) which led to success in London and New York. As before Behan's tragi-comedy deals with a closed world, in this case a Dublin brothel where the IRA imprison an English soldier, but Littlewood diluted the naturalism of the Irish version with interludes of music-hall singing and dancing. Behan's autobiographical Borstal Boy also appeared in 1958, and its early chapters on prison life are among his best work. By then, however, he was a victim of his own celebrity, and alcoholism and diabetes were taking their toll. His English publishers suggested that, instead of the writing he now found difficult, he dictate to a tape recorder. The first outcome was Brendan Behan's Island (1962), a readable collection of anecdotes and opinions in which it was apparent that Behan had moved away from the republican extremism of his youth. Tape-recording also produced Brendan Behan's New York(1964) and Confessions of an Irish Rebel (1965), a disappointing sequel to Borstal Boy. A collection of newspaper columns from the l950s, published as Hold Your Hour and Have Another (1963), merely underlined the inferiority of his later work. When Behan died in Dublin on 20 March 1964, an IRA guard of honour escorted his coffin. One newspaper described it as the biggest funeral since those of Michael Collins and Charles Stewart Parnell.
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45cm x 35cm. Dublin Iconic b&w photograph of legendary Actor & Bon Viveur Peter O'Toole outside one of his favourite Dublin Watering Hole's-Toners of Baggott Street. Peter Seamus O'Toole ( 2 August 1932 – 14 December 2013) was a British stage and film actor of Irish descent. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and began working in the theatre, gaining recognition as a Shakespearean actor at the Bristol Old Vic and with the English Stage Company. In 1959 he made his West End debut in The Long and the Short and the Tall, and played the title role in Hamlet in the National Theatre’s first production in 1963. Excelling on the London stage, O'Toole was known as a "hellraiser" off it. Making his film debut in 1959, O'Toole achieved international recognition playing T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) for which he received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He was nominated for this award another seven times – for playing King Henry II in both Becket (1964) and The Lion in Winter (1968), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), The Ruling Class (1972), The Stunt Man (1980), My Favorite Year (1982), and Venus (2006) – and holds the record for the most Academy Award nominations for acting without a win. In 2002, O'Toole was awarded the Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements. He was additionally the recipient of four Golden Globe Awards, one BAFTA Award for Best British Actor and one Primetime Emmy Award. Brought up in Leeds, England in a Yorkshire Irish family, O'Toole has appeared on lists of greatest actors from publications in England and Ireland. In 2020, he was listed at number 4 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors. Situated on Baggot Street, Toners is one of Dublin’s oldest and most famous traditional pubs. To prove this, we were the overall winners of “Best Traditional Pub” in the National Hospitality Awards 2014. In September 2015 we also won Dublin Bar of the Year at the Sky Bar of the Year Awards. Original features in the pub take visitors back in time, including the old stock drawers behind the bar from when Toners first opened in 1818 as a bar and grocery shop. The interior details like the glazed cabinets filled with curio, elaborate mirrors, the brass bar taps and flagstone floors to mention a few, makes you feel like you are stepping in to a museum… A museum in which you can drink in! Frequented by many of Ireland’s literary greats, including Patrick Kavanagh, the pub was also a favourite spot of W.B. Yeats and the snug is said to be the only place he would drink when he took an occasional tipple.
History of Toners Pub
- Acquired first License by Andrew Rogers 1818 – 1859.
- William F. Drought 1859 – 1883, Grocer, Tea, Wine & Spirit Merchant
- John O’Neill 1883 – 1904, Tea, Wine & Spirit Merchant
- James M Grant 1904 – 1923, Grocer, Tea, Wine & Spirit Merchant
- James Toner 1923 – 1970, Grocer, Tea, Wine & Spirit Merchant
- Joe Colgan Solicitor 1970 – 1976
- Ned & Patricia Dunne & Partner Tom Murphy 1976 – 1987
- Frank & Michael Quinn 1987 – Present
Snug of the Year 2010
Toners won “Snug of the Year” 2010, a competition hosted by Powers Whiskey. 110 pubs across Ireland were shortlisted, and after counting the public’s votes Toners was announced the winner. A snug is a private area separated within a pub and is a timeless feature in a traditional Irish pub. Like the one in Toners, it typically has its own door, a rugged bench and is completely private. Back in the day it was where the likes of policemen, lovers and the Irish literati met up.
Toners Yard
Since Toners opened its doors to the yard in 2012 it has been a very popular spot with both locals and tourists. The beer garden is ideal for sunny days as it gets the sun from morning until evening, and if it is a bit chillier the heaters will keep you warm.Mumford & Sons – Arthurs Day 2012 in Toners Yard
Arthurs Day, the annual celebration of all things Guinness, has been hugely successful since it launched in 2009. Diageo launched a “vote for your local” competition for Arthurs Day 2012. The public got a chance to vote and help bring a headline artist to their local pub. Toners, serving the best pint of Guinness in Dublin, got so much support from everyone and ended up being one of the winning pubs. The winning pubs were kept a secret until the night of Arthurs Day and to everyone’s delight, Mumford & Sons walked in to Toners Yard and played an amazing set. -
Excellent framed print of the world famous Australian aviator Sir Charles Kingsford Smith standing in front of his plane, the Southern Cross-have a read below of the links between the Jameson Whiskey Brand and the seminal trans Atlantic flight which took place from Portmarnock Beach,the home of the Jameson Family. 60cm x 50cm
Jameson's Iconic Barrellman
The Story Behind the Barrellman
On every bottle of Jameson whiskey you fill find embossed on the glass the figure of a barrelman, there to symbolise the generations of workers who contributed to the success of the whiskey. In 1930 the Barrelman reached new heights (literally!) when a statuette was carried, as a mascot, on board the Southern Cross aircraft by Australian aviator Sir Charles Kingsford Smith when he took off from Portmarnock Strand in Dublin on his ground-breaking East – West crossing of the Atlantic. The original statuette is now on display in the Jameson Brand Home at Bow Street, and was most likely given to the aviators by one of the Jameson family of Portmarnock. Captain Saul, navigator on the flight, was the brother of one of Jameson’s sales reps in London and probably facilitated the Barrelman being welcomed aboard.
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35cm x 45cm Caherciveen Co Kerry Framed print of one of there greatest Gaelic Footballers of all time - the legendary Mick O'Connell. Michael "Mick" O'Connell (born 4 January 1937) is an Irish retired Gaelic footballer. His league and championship career with the Kerry senior team spanned nineteen seasons from 1956 to 1974. O'Connell is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of the game. Born on Valentia Island, County Kerry, O'Connell was raised in a family that had no real link to Gaelic football. In spite of this he excelled at the game in his youth and also at Cahersiveen CBS. By his late teens O'Connell had joined the Young Islanders, and won seven South Kerry divisional championship medals in a club career that spanned four decades. He also lined out with South Kerry, winning three county senior championshipmedals between 1955 and 1958. O'Connell made his debut on the inter-county scene at the age of eighteen when he was selected for the Kerry minor team. He enjoyed one championship season with the minors, however, he was a Munster runner-up on that occasion. O'Connell subsequently joined the Kerry senior team, making his debut during the 1956 championship. Over the course of the next nineteen seasons, he won eight All-Ireland medals, beginning with lone triumphs in 1959 and 1962, and culminating in back-to-back championships in 1969 and 1970. O'Connell also won twelve Munster medals, six National Football League medals and was named Footballer of the Year in 1962. He played his last game for Kerry in July 1974. Recollecting his early years on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta and Radio Kerry, O’Connell spoke of how he was introduced to Gaelic football.He also revealed he had regularly played soccer with Spanish fishermen on his native Valentia Island. “Well, I remember I was 11 or 12, my father bought them (boots) in the shop in Cahirsiveen. I remember playing beside the house at home and I remember the first day I got those from the shop I was delighted. But after that there wasn’t a lot of people with football boots. “We would play barefoot often during the summer — and we were happy to play barefoot — that’s the way it was back then. “My father bought us a ball, a size 4. It wasn’t too big but it was fine. We would play at home and coming home from school a lot of people would come in playing with us, schoolboys, and often, very often, the Spanish would come in taking shelter from the weather, they would come in and play soccer with us. “If there was bad weather, they’d take shelter here in the harbour. They wouldn’t have a penny but a drop of wine in bags but they had no money and they’d come in and play. It was nice to watch them. I was practicing left and right but we had no trainers or coaches at the time. It was just a case of practicing between ourselves, nice and gently. There were no matches but games between ourselves and that’s all we had at the time.” It was O’Connell’s father Jeremiah who helped begin his son’s love of Gaelic football although he himself had no background in the game. “My own mother (Mary), she was never at a match and my uncle who was born in 1880 or that, he was living with us on Valentia Island, he was never at a match.“My father had an interest every now and again going to the matches. I remember them coming from Portmagee, Derrynane and Cahirciveen to play. That’s when I remember feeling that was something special about playing sport. “I remember going to a game on a boat with my father. The Islanders were playing, that was in 1945, and those memories from long ago come back to me every so often. And a lot of those players and a lot of the inter-county players are dead now. But I remember the first time I played in a Munster final in Killarney, in 1956, and only two of those players are still alive (Tom Long and Seán Ó Murchú).” But for a job in which he worked at for most of his Kerry playing days, O’Connell said he would never have worn the green and gold. “Between 1956 and ‘66, I worked for the Western Union company on Valentia Island, five full days and a half day on Saturday. It was a very useful job; it facilitated me in a great way. Otherwise, it was a job that would be too demanding and it also meant I was free at the weekends. “Any person playing amateur sport without an appropriate job would find it very hard to find perfection in it. Otherwise, I would never have played for Kerry.” O’Connell has questioned the Government’s grants scheme for inter-county Gaelic players. The Valentia Island man believes the funding mechanism, which will rise to €3 million per annum by 2018, has been signed off without the authority of the Irish tax-payers.Interviewed by Raidió na Gaeltachta on his 80th birthday yesterday, O’Connell criticised the Government for what he determines as directing remuneration towards county footballers and hurlers. “I have no involvement in the games today, except for watching it, but something I don’t agree with... it’s okay for the GAA to generate money in Croke Park and to spend it on the players if they want to, but I don’t agree at all that Government money, money of the Government of Ireland collected through taxes from the ordinary person, is being paid to the players. “I don’t think they have any permission to do that. That money should be spent on health and education rather than what’s being done now that I read in the paper, which is the way it is now.” In a wide-ranging interview with Helen Ní Shé on the An Saol ó Dheas programme, O’Connell also took a dim view of outgoing Kerry minor footballer Mark O’Connor’s switch to AFL club Geelong on a two-year rookie contract. “I’m not too impressed with that game in Australia at all. If Gaelic football was played properly, without pulling and dragging out of each other, and things like that, it would be a much better game than the game in Australia. “But again, in this country, the money isn’t in this country to give money to the players professionally at all and people have jobs now. If they had a good job and time to train, it’s a pastime. It’s a pastime. “Sport is a pastime. And people are saying there is pressure on them because they have to train... it’s a pastime for the trainer too, meeting and in contact with people the same age as them and things like that. That’s a great thing.” O’Connell doesn’t buy the idea more Gaelic players want to be involved in a full-time sport“Ah, that’s the kind of talk the media presents before them, that there is pressure on them. Give it up if you’re not happy, that’s the way it should be. To be good at anything, you enjoy anything that you’re good at, and practice that, you understand.” He marvels at what modern day players are provided with. “They have the facilities now. The facilities weren’t there long ago. But they have a lot of facilities now. Look at Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney, there wasn’t a stand, there wasn’t a dressing room or anything when I started playing. As far as I remember, I don’t know what you called it, the mental hospital, we had a room in that place where we togged out. Every place throughout Kerry and throughout Ireland, the facilities are at a very high standard now in comparison to years ago.” Speaking to Jerry O’Sullivan on Radio Kerry’s Kerry Today programme, O’Connell bemoaned where Gaelic football was going and the negativity attached to it.“The (current) game doesn’t appeal to me. For me anyway it was always ball first, man second. To try and negate the other player it wasn’t my style.” O’Connell insisted he wasn’t criticising current players but the game itself and how it was taken too much from other codes. Although the mark has been championed as a means of safeguarding the high-fielding O’Connell was renowned for, he sees it as another example of a foreign rule. Even in my own time, there was no clear-cut set of rules stated in print for a referee. “I always thought as a player that a referee’s job should be almost to mark the scores and players playing the game should know what the game was and play accordingly.“The purpose of the game was to deliver it (the ball) as distinct from now when carrying the ball, running with it and passing with it. That’s the big change. I don’t blame the players at present. It’s very confusing. Even in my time, the elders never clearly stated a rule about obstruction or anything like that. It’s very hard in Ireland to get a discussion on the game.”
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Framed retro Guinness advert. Will help lend that crucial authenticity to any pub or home bar! 45cm x 45cm Boher Co Limerick Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain before he started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.” Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading. The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test. By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world. Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.” Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.
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Very old & original Players Navy Cut Cigarettes Showcard (made from cardboard) 35cm x 35cm Virginia Co Cavan Navy Cut were a brand of cigarettes manufactured by Imperial Brands –formerly John Player & Sons– in Nottingham, England.The brand became "Player's Navy Cut". They were particularly popular in Britain,Ireland and Germany in the late 19th century and early part of the 20th century, but were later produced in the United States. The packet has the distinctive logo of a smoking sailor in a 'Navy Cut' cap. The phrase "Navy Cut" is according to Player's adverts to originate from the habit of sailors taking a mixture of tobacco leaves and binding them with string or twine. The tobacco would then mature under pressure and the sailor could then dispense the tobacco by slicing off a "cut".The product is also available in pipe tobacco form. The cigarettes were available in tins and the original cardboard container was a four sided tray of cigarettes that slid out from a covering like a classic matchbox. The next design had fold in ends so that the cigarettes could be seen or dispensed without sliding out the tray. In the 1950s the packaging moved to the flip top design like most brands. The image of the sailor was known as "Hero" because of the name on his hat band. It was first used in 1883 and the lifebuoy was added five years later. The sailor images were an 1891 artists concept registered for Chester-based William Parkins and Co for their "Jack Glory" brand.Behind the sailor are two ships. The one on the left is thought to be HMS Britannia and the one on the right HMS Dreadnought or HMS Hero. As time went by the image of the sailor changed as it sometimes had a beard and other times he was clean shaven. In 1927 "Hero" was standardised on a 1905 version. As part of the 1927 marketing campaign John Player and Sons commissioned an oil painting Head of a Sailor by Arthur David McCormick.The Player's Hero logo was thought to contribute to the cigarettes popularity in the 20s and 30s when competitor W.D. & H.O. Wills tried to create a similar image. Unlike Craven A, Navy Cut was intended to have a unisex appeal. Advertisements referred to "the appeal to Eve's fair daughters" and lines like "Men may come and Men may go".WWII cigarette packets exhibited at Monmouth Regimental Museumin 2012
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Nice retro 1980's Rothmans Cigarettes digital advertising clock in perfect working order. Dublin 45cm x 25cm x 10cm Rothmans International plc was a British tobacco manufacturer. Its brands included Rothmans, Player's and Dunhill. Its international headquarters were in Hill Street, London, and its international operations were run from Denham Place in Denham Village, Buckinghamshire. The company was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index, but it was acquired by British American Tobacco in 1999.Its business was strongest in Europe, and it specialised in premium brands.The company was founded by Louis Rothman in 1890 as a small kiosk on Fleet Street in London. In 1900 Rothman opened a small showroom in Pall Mall, from where he launched his famous Pall Mall cigarette brand. His reputation was such that King Edward VII granted Rothmans a royal warrant in 1905. Rothmans was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1929. In 1954 the Rembrandt Tobacco Company acquired a controlling interest in Rothmans. Rembrandt was expanding and in 1958 acquired Carreras, who in turn took a 51% stake in Alfred Dunhill in 1967. In the 1970s Rothmans became involved in sponsorships, sponsoring the British Olympic team in 1972 and the inaugural Hong Kong Sevens in 1976. They also sponsored Rothmans Football Yearbook, an annual football reference book, from 1970 until 2002. In Malaysia, Rothmans was one of the popular brands of cigarette, so much so that one of the roundabouts in Petaling Jaya was named 'Rothmans Roundabout' owing to its proximity to the former headquarters of Rothmans of Pall Mall Malaysia (now British American Tobacco Malaysia). It has since converted to a 4-way junction.[3] In 1988 Lord Swaythling became chairman and chief executive.[4] In January 1996 the Rembrandt Group and Richemont merged their tobacco business under the "Rothmans International" name.[5] Then in 1999 Rothmans was acquired by British American Tobacco.[1] The takeover resulted in the closure of the Rothmans Spennymoor and Darlington manufacturing plants in 2000 and 2001 respectively, with production moved to a larger plant at Southampton. Sponsorship of motorsports[edit] Holden VL Commodore SS Group A of Allan Moffat & John Harvey, winner of the 1987 Monza 500, on display at the Historic Sandown 2009Rothmans was an active promoter of motorsports in the 1980s and 1990s.From 1982 onwards, Rothmans supported the factory Porsche sports car racing effort, winning the 1982 24 Hours of Le Mans with a 1-2-3 finish with their Porsche 956. They would win the event a further three times in the 1980s. Rothmans-Porsche also won the 1985 World Sportscar Championship before the team officially pulled out of the championship in 1987. Rothmans sponsorship also extended to rallying, where they sponsored Walter Röhrl's 1982 World Rally Championship-winning Opel Ascona 400. In 1984 Porsche produced the 911 SC RS rally car specifically for Rothmans with the car being run by David Richards and the newly formed Prodrive. Rothmans also sponsored the winning Porsche team at the 1986 Paris-Dakar rally. When the Porsche involvement in rallying ended at the end of the Group B days, Rothmans transferred its association to the Subaru rally team, also run by Prodrive. Coincidentally, Richards was sponsored by Rothmans when he was co-driving Ari Vatanen to his privateer 1981 World Drivers' Championship success aboard the Ford Escort RS1800. The association with Prodrive would last until 1992, when their sponsorship was replaced by sister brand State Express 555. Between 1985 and 1993, Rothmans supported the works Honda team in Grand Prix motorcycle racing. Rothmans then transferred their association to Williams during the World Championship from 1994 until 1997. However, their time with Williams was marred when Ayrton Senna, considered by many to be the greatest Formula 1 driver of all time, died behind the wheel of the Rothmans-Williams during the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. Damon Hill won the 1996 title and Jacques Villeneuve in 1997. Sponsorship was transferred in 1998 to Winfield, another sister brand. Rothmans was also the naming rights sponsor for Australian team Allan Moffat Racing in the early rounds of the inaugural World Touring Car Championship in 1987 (the Moffat team lad a long association with Rothmans who sponsored the team's Mazda RX-7s in the early-mid 1980s in Australian Touring car racing through their Peter Stuyvesant brand). Driving a V8 powered Holden VL Commodore SS Group A, team boss Allan Moffat and co-driver John Harvey won the first ever WTCC race, the 1987 Monza 500. The pair would later drive the Rothmans sponsored car to outright 4th place in the 1987 Spa 24 Hours.