Athy Rugby Club Players of the Past including Jack Doyle

Sports clubs in Athy did well in 2022. To the successes of the soccer players of Clonmullin AFC and the underage players of Athy GFC can now be added the recent achievement of the senior rugby players of Athy Rugby Club. Weeks ago the rugby team won the Hosie Cup, last won by the club 36 years ago. Competition wise the Rugby Club has gone through a relatively lean period in recent years. Founded, it is believed in 1880, the club won the Provincial Towns Cup in 1938, 1940, 1978, 1981, 1983 and 1984 and were winners of many other trophies over the years. Winning the Hosie Cup for 2022 was important for the club which had made great strides in recent years by extending the club’s playing facilities and opening rugby playing opportunities for youngsters and females. In the earlier years of the club’s history Athy Rugby Club had several players who won junior provincial caps. So far as I am aware the first Athy players to be honoured in this way were Jerry O’Neill and Robert Anderson in the 1920s and Dan Carbery in the early 1930s. The club’s successes in the 1938 and 1940 Towns Cup saw several club players gain junior provincial caps for the province. These included Norman Plewman, Des McHugh, Laurence Curran and they were followed in later years by many other players, including Cyril Osborne and Jack Ryan. John Minch of Athy, who played for a time with the local club, won five international caps playing for Ireland in 1912, while his brother Sydney was a reserve. Paddy Lawler who won many international caps playing for Ireland, came to Athy after his international playing career ended and played rugby with the Athy club. Another player who won four international caps for Ireland in 1921 was J.J. Bermingham, who following his short international career played for the Athy club. And of course, the present international Joey Carbery lived in Athy for many years and played for the Athy club, as did his Munster teammate Jeremy Loughman. Perhaps one of the more interesting players who played for Athy Rugby Club was Jack Doyle, known to generations of Athy folk as ‘Skurt’ Doyle. Jack as a young man joined the British Army and served in Alexandria, Malta and India. He played Gaelic football with Athy before enlisting and during his army career participated in many sports. He won the British army novice cruiser weight championship and came second in a marathon run over the Egyptian desert. He was also quite a useful cricket player and joined officers in regimental cricket matches. The first World War saw Jack Doyle, his brother Patrick and stepbrother Andrew Reilly serving overseas. The Doyle brothers were captured following the Battle of Mons and spent the rest of the conflict as prisoners of war. Jack on his release returned to his army base in England and during that time he played soccer on an English army team with first division team players Dickie Bond of Bradford City and Steve Bloomer of Derby County. After his discharge from the army in 1919 Jack returned to Athy and resumed his Gaelic football career with Athy GFC. His ability as a Gaelic footballer was recognised and he served as goalkeeper for Kildare senior county team from 1920 to 1922 and last played for Kildare in Croke Park in April 1922. He later took up rugby playing and was a member of the Athy Towns cup finalist losing teams of 1928, 1929 and 1930. Of the 1928 final a local newspaper noted ‘of the forwards the veteran Doyle who could be a father to any of the players, was without doubt the best.’ Jack continued to play rugby with Athy until 1934 when he retired, aged approximately 50 years. After that he continued his involvement with the local rugby club and with the Gaelic football club as a team trainer. The legendary Jack Doyle, better known and remembered as ‘Skurt’ Doyle died on 18th July 1953 aged 69 years. He made a remarkable contribution to Athy’s Rugby Club and the Athy Gaelic Football Club both as a player and as a team trainer. The sporting complex off the Dublin Road which houses Athy Rugby Club, the Gaelic Football Club, Athy’s Soccer Club, the Tennis Club and Badminton Club all on grounds formerly owned by the County Showground Committee is impressive for the extent and range of its facilities. Athy can surely claim to be the sporting capital of County Kildare in terms of its playing grounds and indoor sporting facilities. The town’s successes in the soccer, rugby and Gaelic football during 2022 are a source of great pride for the townspeople of Athy. The lecture series in Athy’s Arts Centre restarts after the Christmas break with an illustrated talk on ‘Athy and the Norman Invasion’ to be delivered by Clem Roche on Tuesday, 31st January at 8pm. Admission free.

Dympna O'Flaherty / May O'Neill / Josephine Kenny / Jack Doyle / Reggie Hannon / Eddie Browne

In the past two weeks our local community has witnessed the deaths of several of its members, including two men who had spent their early years in Athy but lived away from their home town for many decades.

Dympna O’Flaherty and May O’Neill were in their eighties when they passed away.  Dympna, who possessed a beautiful singing voice, was a member of the various musical societies which graced the stages of the Town Hall and St. John’s Hall from the late 1930s onwards.  The many photographs which have come down to us of the musicals and shows of the society which flourished in Athy over 70 years ago invariably included amongst the casts a young Dympna and her sister May.  Those halcyon days of community music making coincided with the Second World War and was marked by enthusiastic groups of young and not so young men and women who came together to give Athy a musical heritage of which it is justifiably proud.

That same generation will recall the music of Joe O’Neill, a musical genius whose Stardust Band criss crossed the Irish countryside in friendly competition with Mick Delahunty and his orchestra from Clonmel so many years ago.  May O’Neill, the only daughter of parents from Convent Lane, married Joe O’Neill, an only son from St. Joseph’s Terrace.  Several members of their large family inherited the musical talents of their late father and indeed the O’Neill family organised a music fest in Athy for charity over this October Bank Holiday weekend.  May was a well loved lady whose memories stretched back to recall neighbours and friends whose men folk died during World War 1 and who were largely unremembered and unhonoured in the town of their birth for many decades.  She was justifiably gratified when in more recent years it was possible to remember, without rancour, the young men from Athy and district who died in that war. 

Jack Doyle who also passed away recently was remembered by me as a past pupil of the local Christian Brothers School in St. John’s Lane.  Jack was one of the few from the St. John’s Lane school who was fortunate enough to find employment in his home town.  Like his father Tom he worked in the Asbestos factory before retiring some years ago on health grounds.

Josephine Kenny, formerly a Prendergast of Milltown, died last week after a long illness.  She was predeceased by her husband Jimmy who died some years ago and is survived by her four daughters Eileen, Mary, Geraldine and Siobhan.  Her funeral mass was, I believe, a musically warm hearted farewell for a well loved mother. 

The day of Josephine’s funeral I was in Dublin attending the funeral of an Athy man whom I first met nearly 20 years ago.  Reggie Hannon was the sixth of eight children of Rex Hannon and Grace Telford of Ardreigh.  His grandfather, John Alexander Hannon, who lived in Ardreigh House where I am penning these lines, was the proprietor of the mills which operated up to the mid 1920s at Ardreigh and Duke Street, Athy.  Reggie married Elizabeth Colclough from Carlow and they lived in Dublin in a house which they called ‘Ardreigh’.  Reggie was a fund of knowledge on Athy and its people of the 1930s and later.  He was a wonderful man of courteous and charming manner, whose passing is a sad blow for his wife Elizabeth and daughters Gina and Ingrid.

By a strange coincidence Eddie Browne, who like Reggie Hannon once lived in Ardreigh, died last week.  A retired Post Office official who lived in the south east for many years, Eddie was the brother of Billy and Kieran Browne.

Attending so many funerals over the past few weeks brought home to me the importance of the rituals which are part and parcel of the funeral rites of Christian burials.  They are very much an essential part of the community’s desire to unite in sympathy for the loss of one of its own, while at the same time affording comfort to the family of the deceased.  The marking of the last resting place with a gravestone is generally the final act in the grieving process and helps to retain within the local community that final reminder of the person who was once one of us.  As the generations pass the community’s memory lessens and so our cemeteries become not so much places of family pilgrimage as repositories of a past local history. 

One such cemetery whose location in the very centre of Athy is indicative of its antiquity is St. Johns.  St. John’s was once part of the Monastery of St. Thomas the Martyr and Hospital of St. John which was founded in the early years of the 13^th century.  The earliest recorded burial in St. John’s was that of Lord John Boneville who was killed at the Battle of Ardscull in 1309.  The last burial in this ancient cemetery was some decades ago when the Weldon family tomb was reopened for perhaps the last time.  Thanks to the sterling work of Honor McCulloch, whose father was from Sawyerswood, the cemetery has been cleaned up and a forgotten part of our local history brought to the community’s attention.  On Wednesday 2^nd November at 4.30 p.m. an ecumenical rededication ceremony will take place in St. John’s Cemetery.  The rededication ceremony is open to the public. 

'Skurt' Doyle

Jack Doyle, “the gorgeous Gael” was a well known Irish boxing hero, albeit a somewhat flawed one, during the 1940’s and 1950’s.  Here in Athy the name Jack Doyle is a common enough one and was the name of a local sporting legend who was known far and wide as “Skurt” Doyle.  What was the origin of the nickname “Skurt” I cannot say, but it was a name proudly borne by Athy man Jack Doyle, whose prowess on many sporting fields ranked him in the forefront of sporting heroes of his time.

I have been accumulating bits and pieces of information on “Skurt” Doyle for many years, always conscious of his importance in the pantheon of local sporting legends of the past.  There are very few people today who remember “Skurt” Doyle and those who do recall him will have memories and recollections of this great man in his later years. 

“Skurt” Doyle as a young man enlisted in the Dublin Fusiliers a few years after the dawning of the 20^th century.  The year was 1904 and just months previously Athy had been en fête for the Gordon Bennett Race which thrilled and excited the locals and visitors alike who thronged the streets of Athy and the roads leading out of the town on that famous day in July 1903.  “Skurt” was sent to England for training with the Dublin Fusiliers following which he was based for a few years in Egypt and Malta.  It was while in Egypt that “Skurt’s” sporting prowess first came to prominence.  He participated in a boxing tournament while stationed in Khartoum and became the British Army Novice Cruiserweight Champion when he defeated Jim Lillis, a Dublin born one time professional boxer.

I have often heard accounts of “Skurt’s” prowess as a runner and the story of how he ran in a marathon race across the Egyptian Desert, only to lose out to a fleet footed Arab.  The story goes that “Skurt” only managed second place, simply because he had consumed a quantity of porter before the race and was not in peak condition for the desert run.  But for that, we were told, the Arab would have found himself floundering in the wake of the Athy man!

Before he enlisted in the British Army, “Skurt” played Gaelic football for the Athy club and was enormously proud of the day he and another local man, Paddy “Thatcher” Nolan togged out to play alongside the legendary Joe Rafferty after the Clane team arrived in Athy to play a football match with only 13 players.  Clane were county champions between 1901 and 1903 and their star player was Joe Rafferty, regarded as the greatest mid-fielder of his time.  Rafferty who was born on Lambay Island was the lynchpin of the Clane team which won three successive county championships and when he transferred to Roseberry he helped that club win seven championship titles in a row from 1904.  One of Kildare’s most famous footballers, Joe Rafferty, played for the county in the famous All Ireland Football Finals of 1905 and 1907. 

That match involving Clane and Athy was played a short time before “Skurt” Doyle left Athy to join the British Army but while a regular soldier in the Dublin Fusiliers “Skurt” continued to play Gaelic football.  He was a member of the regimental team which in 1910 played in Aldershot, England against an Irish Guard’s team before approximately 7,000 spectators.  Was this I wonder the first Gaelic football match between British Army Regiments based in England.

“Skurt” as a regular soldier was part of the British Expeditionary Force which landed in France at the start of World War I.  He was captured during the Battle of Mons and like so many other Irish men spent the remaining years of the war as a prisoner in the Limburg P.O.W. camp.  It was in Limburg that “Skurt” met Fr. J.T. Crotty, the Dominican priest who had previously served in the Athy Priory, who was then one of the chaplains to the 3,000 or so Irishmen imprisoned in Limburg.  Three Athy men, Michael Bowden, Martin Maher and John Byrne who like “Skurt” Doyle were soldiers of the 2^nd Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers were to die in Limburg before the end of the war. 

On his release from the German P.O.W. camp “Skurt” returned to his regiment and before his discharge from the Army he played both soccer and rugby for the British Army in what is generally regarded as international games.  As an Army soccer player he played with well known English soccer players such as Steve Bloomer of Derby County and Dickie Bond of Bradford City.  In rugby he lined out for the National Army team against the English Navy team and also against the Belgium Army team.  His skill at games was quite extraordinary and on one occasion in a cricket match against the Gravesend town team he made a century for which feat he was presented with a gold medal.

“Skurt” Doyle, on being demobbed in 1919, returned to Athy and rejoined the local G.A.A. Club.  He played football for Athy G.F.C. for the next four years.  Before long his talents came to the notice of the County Selectors and from 1920 to 1922 he was the regular goal keeper on the County Kildare senior team.  His last game for the county was in Croke Park in April 1922.  Athy Hockey Club was another beneficiary of “Skurt’s” talents and he fielded for the Showgrounds based club on several occasions.  It was however his prowess as a rugby player and a Gaelic footballer that “Skurt” Doyle was best remembered.  He joined the Irish Army for a short time in the 1920’s and while stationed in Carlow he was a key member of the local Rugby Club.  On one occasion he incurred the displeasure of his superiors and was confined to barracks.  The restriction coincided with an important match involving the Carlow team and since “Skurt” was such an important part of that team, high powered representations to the Military Authorities were required to allow him out to play.

 “Skurt” played with Athy Rugby Club from 1924 onwards and featured in three memorable, if ultimately disappointing, Towns Cup finals.  Athy, ably assisted by their powerful prop forward “Skurt” Doyle, were involved in the Towns Cup finals of 1927, 1928 and 1929 but on each occasion victory was denied.  Following one memorable final played in Landsdowne Road, a teammate Jerry O’Neill noticed that “Skurt” had difficulty taking off his shirt.  It was later discovered the not so old warrior had broken his collarbone just before half time, yet had played out the entire match without complaint.  Apart from the British Army, Carlow and Athy Rugby Clubs, “Skurt” also played for the Dublin Club, Monkstown, and I believe he may have ended his rugby playing days there. 

On retiring as a player “Skurt” continued his involvement in Gaelic football and rugby.  He was trainer to both the Rugby Club and the G.A.A. Club in Athy and he is to be seen photographed with teams from both codes during the 1930’s and 1940’s.  James “Skurt” Doyle married Mary Lawler of Ardreigh and they lived at No. 18 Convent View.  He worked in later years as a helper on the local C.I.E. delivery lorry.  “Skurt” Doyle, one of the greatest local sporting legends of his time, died 50 years ago and is buried in St. Michael’s cemetery.

Someone, somewhere, has the gold medal presented to “Skurt” Doyle following the cricket match in Gravesend and maybe also his war medals and the watch and chain with which he was presented on leaving the British Army in recognition of his sporting achievements.  He was truly one of the great sporting legends of this town.  His story is one to which I will return again.

The local Heritage Centre in the Town Hall is about to set up a “Friends of the Heritage Centre” with a view to enlisting the support of retired persons who might be willing to devote a few hours every month or so to curating the centre during Sunday afternoon openings.  The Heritage Centre is scheduled to open seven days a week during the summer season but with the limited staff employed it is not always possible to do this.  If you would like to be involved in helping out at the local Heritage Centre please contact the Centre on Ph. (0507) 33075.