As youngsters we all had heroes.
Nowadays the young generation take their cue from the all pervasive
television. As a result, the players of
Manchester United and Liverpool are more likely to provide the focus of attention
for Irish youngsters than anyone on the local sporting scene.
How much different it was in my
young days. I recall my local sporting
heroes as Mick Carolan in gaelic football, Cyril Osborne in rugby and Joe
Aldridge in soccer. Mick Carolan was a local man whose involvement with the
County team assured his status as a local hero.
Cyril Osborne was a rugby player on the Athy senior team whose speed as
an out half always seemed as mesmerizing as the efforts of Cecil Pedlow and
Mick Gibson on the national team. Joe I recall as a sporting colossus who
togged out, as he did every week, as full back on the Athy senior soccer
team.
Joe was born in 1929, the youngest
of son of Bill Aldridge and his wife Rose formerly a Gleeson from
Ardreigh. Interestingly, Bill’s brother
Tom Aldridge married Rose’s sister Bridget and their youngest son Frankie Aldridge
is remembered today in the name of the local soccer pitch “Aldridge Park”. Bill Aldridge was himself one of Athy’s
earliest sporting heroes. His name
features in the Annals of Handball as the Irish singles hardball champion of
1925.
Joe Aldridge left school at 14
years and got his first job as a messenger boy for Murphy’s Commercial House in
Emily Square. A similar job in the Co-op
Stores at the corner of Leinster Street and Stanhope Street proved more
attractive coming as it did with a proper messengers bike complete with a
cavernous basket. When filled with
groceries, the basket proved more than a match for Joe’s young legs. Many a time the young fellow had to dismount
and push the bike, especially when faced with the daunting prospect of
travelling over the railway bridge on the Dublin road. Like many other young fellows in Athy, Joe
when he passed his 15th birthday joined the Asbestos factory. It was to be his place of employment on three
different periods during his working life and it was from there that he retired
on health grounds in 1982.
Joe remembers the canal boats lined
up along the canal side waiting to be unloaded of bags of asbestos in the
1940’s. I was reminded of a similar
scene witnessed some time ago in India
as Joe described workmen carrying bags of asbestos from the canal boats using
narrow planks as walking platforms. Men
worked without a break from the time they clocked in until lunch time and
thereafter until clocking out time. No
tea breaks in those days and if you took one without permission, you were
likely to get the sack.
There is not a street or terrace in
Athy which in the 1940’s and the 1950’s did not see a large part of its community
take the emigrant boat to England. Joe
Aldridge joined the exodus in 1949 travelling to join several Athy men in a
factory in Edgeware in Middlesex, England.
He recalls Pete Day, Johnny Robinson, Jim Kelly and Paddy Scott, as some
of the Athy men he worked with in that English factory. A visit home for Christmas eighteen months
later resulted in Joe taking a job with the D. & J. Carbery’s. While Joe was with Athy’s best known building
contractors, he worked on the building of Scoil Mhichil Naofa and Jack Gorman’s
Garage on the Carlow Road.
In 1955 Joe was on the move again,
this time to Glasgow where he remained until 1958 apart from a short period
spent in Athy while recuperating with a broken wrist. Joe married Pat Whelan in July 1958 and since
then he has lived at 35 St. Joseph’s Terrace.
Joe’s sporting involvement over the
years was not confined to soccer. For
about one and a half years, he played Gaelic Football for Athy and featured on
the Senior team. It was the infamous Ban
which ended his career as an Athy Gaelic Football player, as it did the career
of a number of other young players at the time.
Apparently, Joe together with Cha Chanders, Stephen Leonard, Paddy Ryan
and some others who regularly featured on Athy Gaelic Football teams togged out
one Sunday for the local soccer team.
All were swiftly suspended and thereafter they gave their allegiance to
the Castlemitchell Club which was apparently more tolerent of players
involvement with the local soccer club.
My memories of Joe Aldridge is as
the towering force in the last line of defence for the Athy Soccer team. He played his last competitive game when he
was 44 years old. Throughout his long
playing career he had many team mates including Mick Aldridge, Onie Walsh and
his brother Tommy, Alo Gallagher, Brian O’Hara, Denis Smyth, Jimmy Murray,
Tommy Kiely, Brendan O’Flaherty, Stephen Leonard, John Quinn, Tom Hogan and
Noel Myles.
It wasn’t only soccer that engaged
Joe’s interest during his younger days.
He was a useful boxer, a sport in which he was involved as a member of
the F.C.A. Coached by Peter Bowden, an
Athy man who was a former UK Royal Air Force Champion, Joe and his F.C.A.
colleagues trained at the Barrow yard in St. John’s lane. He recalls some of those involved in the
F.C.A. in those days under Captain Paddy Dooley and Lieutenant Bill
Fenelon. They included Peter Whelan,
Johnny Murphy, Billy Nolan, Tommy Whelan, Peter “Pips” Ryan, Paddy “Gulliver”
Cummins, Joe Brennan and Frank Cahill.
These were the good old days as Joe recalls, when a young man could get
21 pints for a one pound note.
As he said himself “I never won
anything” but even if the trophy shelf is somewhat bare, Joe had many friends
and admirers during his long footballing career. There is however, one medal which Joe won as
a member of the Asbestos team which won the Leinster Factory Championship Final
in 1961.
As the youngest son of one of
Athy’s most famous handballers, Joe, as one might expect was himself a useful
exponent of the game in his younger days.
While he never played handball with his father, he recalls many games
played in the Handball Alley in Barrack Lane where his ability won him many a
three penny and six penny wager. Joe who
will be 74 years old next July has wonderful memories of a sporting career
which stretches across four decades. For
one young fellow who watched him during the early 1960’s, Joe Aldridge will
always be a sporting hero.
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