Sixty years since Pearses ruled the roost in Westmeath hurling

Gerry Buckley Column

St Oliver Plunkett’s garnered a somewhat unexpected lifeline last Sunday week by defeating Crookedwood in their fifth and final round robin game of the Westmeath senior ‘B’ hurling championship. Accordingly, a play-off against St Brigid’s beckons to avoid the drop to intermediate ranks.

It has been a trying campaign for the Mullingar outfit, narrow losing finalists in the race for the Westmeath Examiner Cup as recently as 2013, when managed – as is again the case – by Ciaran McKenna.

Remarkably, it is a whopping 60 years since the blue riband trophy in Lake County hurling rested in the county’s capital town for the winter. An unexpected, but pleasant, chat in recent days with one of the stalwarts of the 1962 side prompted this trip down Memory Lane.

Yours truly became a pensioner last Friday (any reader who meets me and says “you don’t look 66, Gerry” will be instantly and warmly embraced!), so my memory of Westmeath GAA matters had not kicked in back in 1962. Ironically, it very clearly did from just a year later – the 1963 minor footballers will always be my heroes.

Therefore, I am depending on the archives of this newspaper to flesh out Pearses’ successful campaign, in addition to referring back to quotes from a ‘Where Are They Now?’ series I undertook for the Westmeath Topic back in 2000 which included interviews with two of the key men in the famous white and pale blue jerseys.

There was no talk of a club v county split season back in 1962, and eight teams contested the SHC in a straight knockout and quickfire format (see below for all the details). Pearses won three very tight matches to bridge a 17-year gap since Columb Rovers (an army side from the town) had last kept the title in Mullingar.

Match reports allude to Pearses’ first round/quarter-final ending with Clonkill’s Pete Loughlin being thwarted from a 21-yards free (no metric talk then) with his side trailing by two points. “The best game of the year” is how the reporter on duty summed up an epic one-point win in the penultimate round against Castletown-Geoghegan.

All roads led to Cusack Park for the final on August 26, but that moodiest of moody people, Mother Nature, did her best to spoil the occasion. There was “a treacherous sod and the handicap of wind and rain”, according to one of this scribe’s predecessors, who added: “The closeness of the struggle in the dying stages of the game more than made up for whatever was lacking in the quality of the hurling generally”.

The Mullingar men led at half-time by 1-5 to 1-3, and duly held on for a one-point win (2-9 to 3-5). A special mention was made of the sportsmanship exuded after the game by Raharney’s Matt Gartland – no wonder that Jim Carey has always spoken so highly of the Deelsider.

Jim, now a nonagenarian, was top scorer in the final with 0-8. Frankly, he was a fabulous interviewee in his home in Raheny 22 years ago. Along with his three brothers and two sisters, he was brought up in the Gate Lodge at St Mary’s Hospital in Mullingar.

His oldest brother Paddy’s hurling progress was hindered by the wearing of spectacles in a pre-contact lens era. Mick was also a noted hurler (“the best club man we had”) and Jim amusingly suggested that “he was dropped by Westmeath for scoring too much” after the Lake County hammered Roscommon in a National League match in Athleague! Sadly, another brother and Pearses team mate, Noel, died aged only 26 from leukaemia in the week that Jim was marrying his beloved wife Kitty in 1961.

After Jim had a successful spell with Rickardstown, it was Commandant Dinny O’Callaghan (grandfather of Dublin’s ‘King’ Con) who told him “it was time to come home”. The move was one of the keys to the memorable success in 1962 having such a talented forward in tow, Jim having already won a Westmeath SHC medal alongside the legendary ‘Jobber’ McGrath and co in 1954. Indeed, Jim has always felt that the 1962 Pearses outfit “should have won three or four more titles, but didn’t”, perhaps because of a lack of application from some individuals.

He modestly admitted to the concession of a soft goal when donning the goalkeeper’s jersey when defeated by Castlepollard in the 1966 final. He recalled: “I had got seventeen stitches and saw two balls coming at me. I went for the wrong one and the right one ended up in the back of the net!”

When Pearses “kind of broke up” in the late 1960’s, Jim and his brother Mick were approached by the Raheny junior hurling team “at a very advanced stage in years” and after junior and intermediate triumphs in 1970 and 1971, Jim discovered in 1972 that he was now going back to play senior hurling in Dublin. “So I quit, and from that day to this the hurley is in the garage,” he concluded.

A native of St Bridget’s Terrace in Mullingar, Westmeath dual star Davy Nolan – who also won a Dublin SFC medal with UCD in 1965 – has been domiciled in Blanchardstown for over five decades. After some lean times for the town, Davy’s time as an adult player in Mullingar coincided with a purple patch for both Shamrocks and Pearses, and he conceded that he “was very lucky to be living in those times”. In the 1962 hurling final, Davy togged out at right half back (his favourite position in both hurling and football). Ironically, however, he felt he made a more telling contribution when switched to the half forward line.

Jim Carey got a very honourable mention from Davy, who stated: “About five players came back from the country and they were the backbone of our team.” He rhymed off Jim (ex-Rickardstown, as stated), Sean ‘Mousy’ Mullen (Delvin), Mattie Mullen (Turin), Tommy Carrigy (Brownstown), and Tommy ‘Tosser’ Houlihan (Cullion).

In 1964 and 1966, Davy was part of a very formidable Shamrocks side which defeated St Mary’s and Maryland in their respective Flanagan Cup deciders. He felt that the team in 1966, a mixture of youth and experience, played “fantastic football” in the county final. And he is right – I was there, and only too glad to get orange and crisps (rare treats then – kids please note) later in the week in St Mary’s CBS primary school.

None of the 1962 Pearses team will be around in 2062, but the many survivors to whom I have spoken are very keen to see a Mullingar captain hold aloft the Westmeath Examiner Cup (ironically, first presented in 1963) before they bring their hurls to the great stadium in the sky.

Quarter-finals: Pearses 2-12, Clonkill 4-4 (Collinstown, July 29); Castletown Geoghegan 5-9, Rickardstown 5-3 (Cusack Park, July 15); Castlepollard 14-9, Brownstown 1-1 (Collinstown, August 5); Raharney 3-5, Cullion 2-5 (Cusack Park, July 22)

Semi-finals: Pearses 2-13, Castletown Geoghegan 4-6 (Cusack Park, August 12); Raharney 7-6, Castlepollard 3-5 (Cusack Park, August 12)

Final: Pearses 2-9, Raharney 3-5 (Cusack Park, August 26)