Thursday, May 22, 2008

A picture's worth a thousand words!

The Annual Gordon Bennett Rally will take place on the 13, 14 and 15 June and this week I reproduce a photograph of a previous rally which took place 55 years ago. The young man on the left of the photograph is eleven-year-old Teddy Kelly and I must have been standing nearby but out of the picture when the camera captured the scene in 1953. The faces from the past will be recognised by many of you and are (in front) Teddy Kelly and Paddy Wright. At the rear (from the left) are Ned Cranny, “Compri” Nolan, Tom Flood, unknown vintage car driver from England , Noel Quinn, Tim McCarthy, John McEvoy, Ena Bowden and Anna May Murphy. The driver’s assistant is unidentified. Who is the young lad between Teddy Kelly and Paddy Wright? Those photographed were standing at the wall of the Abbey in Emily Square.

About four or five year later, the Castlemitchell football team had a photograph taken in Geraldine Park. It’s a historic picture for a reason I can’t as yet disclose, but interestingly two of the players were illegal in so far as they were based in a County Laois Parish and not had their transfer papers approved by the County Boards of Laois and Kildare. Such details seldom escaped the eagle eyes of the GAA enforcers of the day but in this case the two men passed unnoticed and continued to play for Castlemitchell for some time. The team and officials at back from left to right was: Martin Brennan, Robbie Reid, Seamus Quinn, Paddy Wright, Mick Doogue, Sean Byrne, Jimmy Curtis, Jackie Owens, Ballyadams Mick Bambrick, Eddie Conway, Tommy Donnelly, trainer, Noel Quinn, Joe Comerford, Danny Owens, Christy Delaney, Tom Kelly, Joe Kelly, Cyril Myles and Pascal Myles.

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