Down Club Hurling & Football

[whitegoodman]

The Burren lads are only 6th year.

If they don't make the later changes next year then questions should definitely be asked.  Questions should be asked anyway given the ultra defensive football they play under Gormley.  Sickening to see 16 and 17 year olds playing to this sort of system.

[CornUladh]

Ah lads. Bit of an over reaction in here about  the abbey. St Pats Armagh aren't exactly minnows of the ulster colleges so it's surely not a huge surprise? Down and Armagh teams havent a good record at underage in recent years so the abbey have no divine right to win that tie today.

[snoopdog]

I see Abbey knocked out at the first knockout phase today. What an underachieving school.

I see Abbey knocked out at the first knockout phase today. What an underachieving school.

If the players aren't there,what can you expect?

As a guy who was an Abbey Boy I just can't understand it but I think it is at the stage now that we enter B Competitions , we are a McLarnon School not a McRory School anymore.

Down the school Abbey are entered into B competitions.

Time we just entered the McLarnon and we would hardly win it but it is the standard Abbey is at.The feeder clubs have delusions of gradeur as does the School.But reality is we are a B School .

Abbey are a McLarnon School not a McRory School.

Feeder clubs?

[Truth hurts]

Has anyone got a copy of the Abbey team because I believe they draw players from the biggest clubs in South Down and South Armagh?
Am I right to say they have not reached a final since 2006?

[Too many steps]

The Burren lads are only 6th year.

If they don't make the later changes next year then questions should definitely be asked.  Questions should be asked anyway given the ultra defensive football they play under Gormley.  Sickening to see 16 and 17 year olds playing to this sort of system.

Correct Burren lads are 6th year as is McGovern, but that shouldn't be an excuse at this age. Enniskillen won it last year with quite a few 6th years (which makes it surprising that they got knocked out too).

In fairness to the coaches the Abbey haven't been overly defensive this year - maybe the criticism from last year has had an effect. If anything Armagh were more defensive yesterday.

The biggest reason they lost yesterday was that McGovern went off injured after 15 mins or so. Their forwards are pretty ordinary without him.

To be fair this age group have been average enough the whole way up - next year will be telling. That group won D'alton, Brock and got to Cor Na Nog final. Could be their standard once in 20 year opportunity to get somewhere in the McRory.

[Too many steps]

Has anyone got a copy of the Abbey team because I believe they draw players from the biggest clubs in South Down and South Armagh?
Am I right to say they have not reached a final since 2006?

5 Burren
3 Ballyholland
2 Killeavey
1 Silverbridge
1 Mayobridge
1 Warrenpoint
1 Belleek ans 1 I don't know

Not sure about 2006 but sounds about right. Think the Abbey have only ever won it 6 or 7 times in total

[The_Slug]

Has anyone got a copy of the Abbey team because I believe they draw players from the biggest clubs in South Down and South Armagh?
Am I right to say they have not reached a final since 2006?

5 Burren
3 Ballyholland
2 Killeavey
1 Silverbridge
1 Mayobridge
1 Warrenpoint
1 Belleek ans 1 I don't know

Not sure about 2006 but sounds about right. Think the Abbey have only ever won it 6 or 7 times in total

Coming from Tyrone, we would always associate St.Colemans as the big footballing school in Newry and the Abbey were always a team that struggled (almost like a second choice school in football terms), they always has 2 or 3 really good players but then the rest of the teams were mediocre players.

[Truth hurts]

the 6th year argument does not cut it either, these are top players in the Abbey, underachieving yet again

[seafoid]

A blast from the past and the sadly missed Sunday Tribune

Grandaddy of them all
Despite a storied life that's seen controversy and conflict, Maurice Hayes is proudest of masterminding Down's revolution
Ewan MacKenna

Hands on: despite admitting that it may seem 'childish' compared to so many conflicts, Maurice Hayes cites his work with Down as one of his proudest achievements

The exact year has been lost from a mind overflowing with brilliant memories, but it was roughly around the millennium when Maurice Hayes' sister-in-law called over with a box of old negatives. They belonged to his father who had fought "very little" in Mesopotamia during the first world war. But when he had them printed, they turned out to be shots of Baghdad and Basra in 1919. By coincidence, having been the man who'd done much of the groundwork for the Patten Report into policing in Northern Ireland, he was later asked to talk to a group of important Iraqi figures and brought the photographs along.
"They were so excited, they were shouting 'There's the mosque' and 'Saddam blew that up'. I was telling them my father would never talk about the war but loved the Arabs and thought they were like the Irish as they had a verbal culture and liked story-telling. He thought they were very badly treated and if George Bush had ever talked to him, he'd never have gone near the place. These Iraqis were delighted with hearing all of this." It was just another day in the amazing life of Maurice Hayes.
But, since this is the sports section and only one page, we'll move on. Last Monday, when the 83-year-old went to Newry and saw a queue for the All Ireland finalists' open night, he got thinking about 50 years ago and how the gates were opened. Success came pouring through and has trickled right on into the present. "It made me proud and I realised that, while it may seem childish compared to other things, helping Down to that 1960 All Ireland was right up with the best things I've done."
Yet in the beginning there was darkness. When Hayes took over as county secretary in the 1950s, Down had never even won an Ulster title. Put it this way, in 1956 Kerry's Paudie Sheehy had been marking Kevin Mussen in the Railway Cup and told him that it must be terrible to play for a county that will never win anything. Mussen later said that championship preparation back then involved 20 lads on gameday showing up and having jerseys thrown at them. "It was worse than that," Hayes laughs. "They spent more time trying to get jerseys back off them because it would cost money."
Having hurled for Down, Hayes initially tried to push that code as an administrator. Himself and Paddy O'Donoghue, who would later become an SDLP politician, decided the best way forward was to start over and focus on kids. But the existing clubs stood in the way because of fear of competition. Hayes saw it as a fear of ambition. "It's one of the regrets I have generally, that hurling is getting smaller. I much prefer it to football and it's the game that's the glory."
On the football side of Down, there was similar thinking at the time. After winning the junior All Ireland in 1946, Down were happy to be a medium-sized fish in that puddle. "The idea was to prevent people playing senior so they'd qualify for junior. It was a disaster." There were other disasters too. The team was picked by a county board that was relieved when the seniors got dumped out of the championship so they could get back to club scene. In short, while the players were there, the support system wasn't. But after the county barely managed to field a team for a 1957 defeat to Donegal, Hayes was hell-bent on change.
"There was a rule where you could be suspended for six months for refusing to play with the county team. I saw it that if a team was so lousy you had to sanction people for not playing then you were going no place. The thing to do was build a team people would give their right arm to get on but that took time. We went around and talked to each guy separately. There were other things going on too. Paddy Doherty had been playing soccer with Lincoln and we wanted to get him home and at that time there was a wonderful thing called a clemency committee which was supposed to correct miscarriages of justice. It was all wheeling and dealing and we got Doherty reinstated. PJ McIlroy had been off in forestry and I remember writing to him, telling him to keep fit because we were putting a team together. James McCartan had been suspended. It wasn't easy."
But other problems remained, such as the standard of club football. If Hayes' diplomacy had come from his father, his sporting nous had come from his mother. A Kerry woman from Shannon Rovers, it was from her county he got the idea of regional teams. "Up to that we had a lot of small clubs and nearly everyone was a midfielder. There were guys getting beaten to death carrying their teams and we wanted to give them the satisfaction of playing with better players. But, while we were doing all of this, a lot of the county board thought we were lunatics and it'd all come crashing down."

Yet another obstacle, according to Hayes, was that the county was stuck in the shadow of Cavan. As was the majority of Ulster. "We wanted to get out of here because it was so incestuous. The teams here played each other in a thing called the Lagan Cup, named after a Dr Lagan in Omagh whose son is now producing a very decent wine in Western Australia called Chateau Xanadu. But it induced a notion that somehow people from Kerry and these places were giants." So off they went opening pitches from Listowel to Knockbridge and Hayes reckons the best game of football he ever saw was a match between Dublin and Down one Friday to raise money for St Vincent's. So wide did Down spread their wings they even found themselves playing Galway in the final of the 1959 Wembley tournament.
"We were over there staying in this God awful hotel and there was a wee Dublin porter and he says 'I wouldn't eat here if I was you, bugs were in the kitchen last week'. We didn't. But we learned a lot about ourselves beating Galway. I was talking to Kevin O'Neill before the match and he was marking Joe Young. I said to Kevin, he's not great, you can handle him. Kevin came in at half-time and said 'I've marked better in Maghera'. And they were bottom of Division 4 of the Down league."
That was the essence of what the revolution was about. Although in the process Down revolutionised the GAA. Barney Carr became team manager, Danny Flynn was trainer, there was collective training, physios, meals, the lot. And all of it was done on a budget that barely existed. "Sure the physios were just people in hospitals giving us a hand and there were no huge meals, we were operating on the free milk up in a school, it was there for the children from the British government. But the difference we made was we started building team spirit. A lot of things the GPA were looking for, we had been doing."
You bring up the idea of his five-year plan to win an All Ireland and he scoffs at an idea that has become legend. "People talked about certain things I did and they are blown out of proportion. Like they say us being the first team with tracksuits was some psychological thing. What happened was in those days the subs would tog out, put on their boots and pull their trousers back on. That was great until we played a minor match one time and there was a guy from the Longstone and he was gone very trendy and had gotten drainpipe trousers. He couldn't get his trousers off without taking off his boots and it took us about 10 minutes getting this sub onto the field. After that we said we'd get tracksuits. It was the same with the five-year plan. It was blown out of proportion years later."
Instead all he ever wanted was progression as Down went from an Ulster final defeat in 1958 to a title in 1959 after a 15-point win over Cavan. By then he knew they would win it all. But 1960 was sooner than he expected. "It was hard getting rid of the mentality, the northern one, of coming down to give a good show and being happy with that. People talk about Down confidence or arrogance, but coming from the north, we deliberately cultivated it. We wanted to instil the idea we were as good as anyone. In fact in that final against Kerry the team sprinted onto the pitch. That was trendsetting. So was our style. Kerry had a zonal game and we exploited that with movement. It was interesting because we got a lot of support from hurling counties because our game had a hurling fluidity. We knew if we got the ball to the forwards they'd do damage and a huge part of it was Liam Murphy's kickouts over midfield."
Later that same day, as he left Croke Park as the man that masterminded history and walked down O'Connell Street, Hayes was passed by a Morris Minor with Sam Maguire strapped to the roof and northern accents shouting out the windows at Dublin people. He decided that wasn't for him and, instead of heading home with the team, got a lift to the Listowel Races. The rest of them headed for the border and, when they became the first team to cross into Northern Ireland as champions and reached Newry, 30,000 were waiting. "That's all back projection though. We had no concept of bringing it across the border, we just went there to win a match."
The following year Down were back and won the All Ireland in front of the biggest ever crowd to witness an Irish sporting event. After that they brought in black shorts instead of white for "peripheral vision and so we didn't have to change our colours so often". And by 1964 Hayes was even favoured to become GAA General-Secretary. "I was walking down Jones's Road after that with two other people that hadn't been appointed. We were congratulating ourselves that we were the only three people in Ireland that were thought less able to do a job than Seán Ó Síocháin. The other two were Con Murphy and Kevin Heffernan. Ach, life goes on."
But after their 1968 All Ireland victory it began to go in the wrong direction. Down wasn't at the forefront of the Troubles because "it got the land-owning problems out of the way when the Normans came in the 12th century and sure in 1968 there was a reception here in Downpatrick for us and the local cricket team." But in other places the dark clouds were gathering. As three-time All Ireland winners in a single decade they were invited by the Lord Mayor of Belfast to a banquet. Outside Ian Paisley's wife was among the protesters.
Back in 1960, Down had beaten Cavan to win the first part of their double. Kevin Mussen was in Hilltown at the time and put the trophy on a sideboard when the postman came in. "He was a B Special, and he turned to Mussen and said 'Jaysus, you took it off the f***ers'." But while that unity would disappear, the impact of Hayes' achievements wouldn't.
"I spent most of my career in human relations and I learned more from those 1960 guys than anyone. They were from every sort of background. Teachers, solicitors, mechanics. Pat Rice's club had a do for his 70th, the poor fella died not long after it, and I asked Pat where he'd been because I hadn't seen him in a long time. Turns out he was out in Iraq building palaces for Saddam Hussein. I told him he was the guy half the intelligence agencies were looking for, he knew where all the strong rooms were. But they were all guys of quality in their own right."
And their impact was everywhere. One of the team's biggest supporters was Noel Duggan from Cork who Hayes keeps meeting at players' funerals as one by one, the past seems ever more distant. Even in today's team he can see that risky style that they introduced. And while it helped GAA grow in the north, it helped the south to admire.
"I was doing to that old forum in Europe thing a while back and I was at this very rowdy meeting in Wexford one night in which Garret Fitzgerald attempted to prove to his own statistical satisfaction that the Irish fishing industry never had it so good. And this to a crowd in Kilmore Quay who couldn't pay for fuel to get their boats out of the harbour. It was very raucous and this big guy stopped me on the way out and I wondered what was going to happen. He says in this deep voice, 'I have just one question for you'. What's that? 'I'm going to mention three names I want to know what they mean to you... O'Neill, McCartan and Doherty?' The half-forward line on the 1960 Down teams.
The guy stared down and started to laugh. "You're the man." And all because of just another day in the amazing life of Maurice Hayes.
emackenna@tribune.ie

[Aristo 60]

Great stuff Seafoid.

Are many of yiz heading Cork?

[Ambrose]

Great stuff Seafoid.

Are many of yiz heading Cork?

Excellent article from Seafoid, thanks for sharing.

I'll be in Cork, weather permitting. I'm not 100% sure the game will go ahead if the weather forecast is correct. Just hope that if they call it off, they do so quite early.

[Ambrose]

Coiste Chontae an Dun and the family that is Down GAA are saddened to learn of the death of Sean Smith, a former County Senior Football team manager. A native of Maghery in Co Armagh, Sean won an All Ireland Minor medal in 1949 with his home County. It was though with his adopted County of Down that Sean came to prominence as the manager of the great Bryansford team of the late 1960s early 70s. Sean had two spells as Down Senior team manager guiding the team to Ulster Senior Finals in 1974 and 1975 and then again in 1986. An Anglo Celt victory was to elude him but he helped provide many memorable days for Down supporters during his terms as manager. A man who was passionate about the game and who was a great exponent of coaching, it was often said that Sean Smith was ahead of his time.

We in Down GAA extend our deepest sympathy to his wife Mary, his daughter and sons and the entire Smith family circle. To the Gaels of Bryansford we also extend our sympathy at this time.

Ar dheis de go raibh a anam.

[snoopdog]

Coiste Chontae an Dun and the family that is Down GAA are saddened to learn of the death of Sean Smith, a former County Senior Football team manager. A native of Maghery in Co Armagh, Sean won an All Ireland Minor medal in 1949 with his home County. It was though with his adopted County of Down that Sean came to prominence as the manager of the great Bryansford team of the late 1960s early 70s. Sean had two spells as Down Senior team manager guiding the team to Ulster Senior Finals in 1974 and 1975 and then again in 1986. An Anglo Celt victory was to elude him but he helped provide many memorable days for Down supporters during his terms as manager. A man who was passionate about the game and who was a great exponent of coaching, it was often said that Sean Smith was ahead of his time.

We in Down GAA extend our deepest sympathy to his wife Mary, his daughter and sons and the entire Smith family circle. To the Gaels of Bryansford we also extend our sympathy at this time.

Ar dheis de go raibh a anam.

May he rest in peace . Was the manager in 80s when I started going to games as a kid.

[bannside]

I had the honour of playing for UUJ (or the Poly as it was known then) in the early eighties when Sean Smyth was the manager. He was held in the highest esteem, indeed a man well before his time. I assume his funeral will be in Antrim Town where he has lived for many years since taking up a teaching principal job there many years ago. May he rest in peace.

[Ambrose]

I had the honour of playing for UUJ (or the Poly as it was known then) in the early eighties when Sean Smyth was the manager. He was held in the highest esteem, indeed a man well before his time. I assume his funeral will be in Antrim Town where he has lived for many years since taking up a teaching principal job there many years ago. May he rest in peace.

Smith (Ardglass, formerly Antrim), Sean RIP, Died 5th February 2020. Dearly beloved husband of Mary (nee Henvey) and loving Dad to Mary, Aidan, John and Malachy. Dear father-in-law of Tom, Mairead, Joan-Edel and Nicola. Devoted grandfather to John, Sean, Conor, Ciara, Declan, James, Meabh and Kate. Dear brother of Jimmy and Barbara and the late Anne, Hughie and Kathleen.

Funeral from his home, 1 Green Road, Ardglass on Saturday 8th February 2020 at 11.15am for 12 noon Requiem Mass in St Nicholas' Church, Ardglass. Burial afterwards in the adjoining Calvary Cemetery.

Deeply regretted by his entire family circle and friends.

Sacred Heart of Jesus have mercy on his soul.