1909 in Athy

The All Ireland hurling final Sunday found me in the unusual setting of a Cork city household as I sat down to watch the 2022 senior hurling final between Kilkenny and Limerick. Both the setting of my viewing (in rebel territory) and the date of the final perhaps made me a little unsettled, but not as unsettled as the result left me after an enthralling final. There has been some debate in the media about the bringing forward of the date of the hurling final in the sense that the summer has been truncated without the usual August visit to Croke Park. However, delving into the history of All Irelands it was not unusual to find the senior hurling final played at unusual times of the year. The agricultural grounds in Geraldine Park Athy hosted on 27th June 1909 a replay of the All Ireland senior hurling final between Dublin and Tipperary. Athy was selected as the location for the replay as one of the few grounds in Leinster that was fenced at the time and it hosted a crowd of almost 7,000 people. Another reason why the venue was chosen was that Dublin had refused to play either in Thurles or Kilkenny city, while Tipperary were amenable to play at either venue and thus Athy was the compromise choice. Tipperary won the game comfortably by 3-15 to 1-5, but although the final was held in 1909, it actually was the 1908 championship. At the previous instalment of the final which had been held in Croke Park on 25th April, the score ended up Tipperary 2-5 and Dublin 1-8. A journalist reporting on the match described Athy as a ‘cosy town’ and that ‘The ground under the Agricultural Society was also in perfect order with the sod as lively as the most fastidious hurler could wish’. It led me on to reflect as to what a visitor to Athy would have found here in 1909 and what some of the personalities from the town were doing at the same time. The Post Office in Duke Street which is such a fundamental part of our streetscape was under construction in 1909. It was not without controversy when it was revealed that the building contractor engaged to build the Post Office was using Tullamore brick in its initial stages rather than the Athy brick, readily available from the brickyards just outside Athy. Following representations from Athy Urban District Council the postal authorities agreed that only Athy brick would be used thereafter in the building. In that same year the Church of Ireland parochial hall on Church Road was also constructed, designed by the architect Speirs & Co. of Glasgow. Athy Ladies Hurling Club was noted as organising a reunion on 20th July, while a Miss Campbell was listed as Club Captain and a Miss Tierney as Secretary. Older readers will remember the Athy Social Club Players who put on many plays in the Town Hall and the Social Club in St. John’s Lane in the 1940s and 1950s. Their 1951 production was Lennox Robinson’s play, ‘The White Headed Boy’. In 1909 Lennox Robinson had staged his first play in the Abbey Theatre in Dublin following on from which the poet W.B. Yeats offered the inexperienced Robinson the post of manager of the theatre. In Dublin, in November the Kilkea born explorer, Ernest Shackleton, could be found giving a lecture at the National University about his recent exploits in the Antarctic and his dash to reach the South Pole. 1909 was also the year that John Vincent Holland, a former pupil of Clongowes Wood College, after studying veterinary medicine for three years, left Athy to try his fortune in South America where at various times he worked as a rancher and on the railways. Of course he later returned to Athy in 1914, joined the British Army and was awarded a Victoria Cross for his exploits in the Somme campaign of 1916. Another Athy man, slightly younger than John Vincent Holland, was Sydney Minch who while John Vincent Holland was heading across the Atlantic, Minch was making the shorter journey to Clongowes Wood College for the first of his three years of study there. Like Holland he would join the British Army in the Great War, serving with the Connaught Rangers and fighting at the 3rd Battle of Ypres. Returning from the war he took an active role in public life, serving as a Cumann na nGael T.D. from 1930 to 1938, as well as being a member of Athy Urban District Council and Chairman of the Athy branch of the British Legion. Although the defeat of Kilkenny in this year’s All Ireland senior hurling final was a huge disappointment to myself and many others, I can comfort myself with the knowledge that in the 1909 All Ireland senior hurling championship final held in Cork Athletic Grounds, Mooncoin, representing Kilkenny, overcame the club side Thurles, representing Tipperary, with the score of 4-6 to 0-12. This was Tipperary’s first defeat in an All Ireland final and Kilkenny’s fourth victory. Thankfully there have been many Kilkenny successes since then and undoubtedly more to come!