Mullingar Shamrocks GAA Club: Seachtó Bliain ag Fás

By Tom Hunt

Monday 16 January, was a significant day in the history of the Mullingar Shamrocks GAA Club and the importance of the date was recognised by the staging a special executive meeting in St Mary’s Hall, where the club was founded on 16 January 1953.

At the weekend, a special commemorative plaque was attached to the front wall to mark the historic occasion.

At the time, there was no adult football club in Mullingar and footballers from the town played with the surrounding rural clubs or drifted away to play the dreaded ‘foreign games’ of soccer or rugby.

The Padraig Pearse’s Hurling Club was founded in November 1951 and enjoyed great success in its first year, winning the 1952 Westmeath junior hurling title as well as the county minor and juvenile titles.

Pearse’s also fielded a juvenile football team in 1952.

At the club’s Presentation Banquet, held on 1 January 1953, championship medals for junior hurling, minor hurling and football (both 1951); juvenile hurling 1951 and 1952 (a team captained by Maurice Wallace); a set of medals won by St Mary’s College, and the 1952 Leinster minor football medals won by Westmeath were presented.

Some 130 medals were presented and 114 of those were collected by members of the Pearse’s Club. Six members, including the captain Declan O’Sullivan, were part of the Westmeath team who won the Leinster minor title.

This distinguished group also included Oliver Mahedy, who collected all seven medals on the night; Paddy McCoy, Seán Stokes, Seán ‘Sonny’ Mullen and Frank Evers, who was later a member of the Galway senior football team who won the All-Ireland title in 1956.

The success of the Pearse’s Hurling Club and the Westmeath minor football team drew attention to the fact that there was no football club in Mullingar to cater for promising footballers.

Another factor that influenced the decision to form a football club was the Bórd Fáilte plan to organise a national festival of Irish culture called An Tóstal.

That was a marketing device to encourage visitors to come to Ireland during the off-peak season for tourism. It was particularly aimed at the Irish community in the United States.

The fact that the An Tóstal opening was scheduled for Easter Sunday, 5 April 1953, provided an added incentive for the formation of a Gaelic football club in Mullingar.

The possibility of the Padraig Pearse’s Hurling Club adding Gaelic football to its activities was considered at the club’s first AGM in November 1952.

A definite decision was postponed until the January club meeting, which was held in St Mary’s Hall on 13 January 1953, when the decision was made to form a separate club.

The members of Pearse’s Hurling Club were determined that the footballers of Mullingar “would no longer be left orphaned and abandoned to be eventually lured away to the winter sodden fields of alien associations or to become the adopted children of a country club”.

After a lively debate it was decided, with a logic that would gladden the heart of any hurling man, that “as the hurling club was still in its infancy it would be unwise to burden it with a football team” and it was unanimously decided that separate football and hurling clubs was in the best interest of promoting the sports.

The first committee

The new club was named Mullingar Shamrocks and the first officers of the club were appointed at the meeting. President: Fr PJ Regan; vice-president: Frank Garvey, NT; chairman: Brother Baldwin; vice-chairman: Frank Tuohy; secretary: Vincent Gillick; committee: J Brew, Tom Mullaney, Seán Tone, Paddy Lucey and Paddy Mooney.

Br Baldwin was a teacher of maths and Latin in St Mary’s secondary school and was also president of the Pearse’s Hurling Club.

Vice-chairman, Frank Tuohy lived in Ballyglass, where the family farm was located. Frank served his time in the drapery trade in Keelan’s Drapery and emigrated to Canada in 1956.

On his return to Mullingar, Frank farmed for a number of years and then returned to the drapery trade, and was employed in Shaw’s Drapery for some time before setting up his own business in Dominick Street.

Throughout his life, Frank was deeply involved in community organisations, particularly the St Vincent de Paul Society, and he was one of the chief organisers of the Diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes for many years.

Frank, at 95 years of age, died on 10 April 2022.

Vincent Gillick had been involved in the GAA for many years as a player, referee and administrator when he became the club’s first secretary.

Vincent was a native of Castletown Geoghegan, where his father worked in the Railway Station and when he was transferred to Mullingar, the family resided in Mount Street Gardens.

Vincent first played senior football as a 16-year-old for Streamostown and as, a Mullingar player, represented Westmeath in all grades in the 1930s and early 1940s.

He was a member of the Westmeath junior football team beaten by Roscommon in the 1940 all-Ireland final.

During the years when Mullingar was without a football club, Vincent played with Coralstown, Rathcolman, and was a key member of The Mental Hospital team who won the senior football title in 1948.

Vincent was an employee of Shaw’s and moved to Tullamore in 1959, where he was employed by D E Williams as a production manager in the company’s bottling department.

He died in Tullamore on 10 April 1994 at the age of 76.

J Brew was a member of the Pearse’s team who won the 1952 junior hurling title, but after that, he is the unknown member of the committee.

So too is Tom Mullaney, who was a useful footballer and lined out in the early years for the club.

Paddy Lucey was a native of Mullingar and was a prominent footballer in the early 1930s.

Paddy Mooney was employed in the retail trade and was a more than useful footballer who represented Westmeath and had the distinction of scoring the first goal for Shamrocks in competitive football.

Seán Tone from Barrack Street, where he was born on 12 September 1921, was active in Gaelic circles as the newspapers of the day liked to say.

Seán loved Irish music and culture and his name regularly appeared in adverts for céili dances and concerts in his role as Fear an Tí.

He was also secretary of the Mullingar branch of the Clann na Poblachta Party at the time of the foundation of Mullingar Shamrocks.

Seán later emigrated to London, where he died on 14 June 2016 at 95 years of age.

‘Shamrocks will not be a flash in the pan’

The first county committee meeting held after the club was established featured a number of transfer applications.

They included Martin Mulligan from Loughnavalley, Joseph Reynolds and Arthur Duncan from Multyfarnham, Paddy McCoy, F Garvey and J Creamer from Boher; Seán Mullen and J Kincaid from Milltown and Dave Errity from Sonna.

Some were granted and some left open.

Delegates from Milltown and Multyfarnham were critical of Mullingar Shamrocks for seeking the transfer of players: “It is the breaking up of country clubs,” the Westmeath Examiner reported, “and if there are no country clubs, the County Board will not have the revenue, and the town team was always only a flash in the pan.”

Shamrocks delegates, Vincent Gillick and Hugh O’Sullivan, assured the meeting that they were only looking for players who lived in Mullingar who were playing for rural clubs when there was no club in town.

Gillick assured the meeting that “Shamrocks will not be a flash in the pan.”

How right he was!

70th birthday party

Mullingar Shamrocks will host the club’s 70th birthday party in the Mullingar Park Hotel on Saturday January 28.

Conor Moore will be MC and Larry McCarthy, Uachtarán Cumann Lúthchleas Gael, will be among the guests on the night.

Tickets for the night are available at €50 a head.