A trip down memory lane on the Railway

by Martin Carney

IN all likelihood the past week has been more of the same for you. Little to excite; an uncertain pathway to the future; hemmed in by the necessary yet restrictive Covid regulations.

Groundhog Day in truth.

And with the present world of Gaelic sport redundant to find topics that resonate, we are forced to look backwards or imagine the future in order to find something to connect with.

Today is St. Patrick's Day. So what, you might say, yet in every Gaelic sportsman’s calendar that date was in the past traditionally associated with the finals of the now defunct Railway Cup.

Dublin on that date, aside from hosting an impressive annual parade, drew provincial teams to town where they competed on the hallowed turf of Croke Park for the right to win a Railway Cup medal.

The top hurlers and footballers clashed in what was a very attractive double-header.

As a competition I am led to believe the Railway Cup climaxed in popularity as a spectator event in the 1950s.

In an era before television coverage, followers of Gaelic sport depended on radio commentaries from Michael O’Hehir to relay the names of the great players to the listening multitudes.

To the vast majority, competitors from beyond one’s local county boundary were simply anonymous figures without faces, discernible playing styles or personality.

Seeing them in the flesh was a rarity and for lovers of the game. One sure fire opportunity to arrest this want arose by getting to Croke Park on St. Patrick's Day and seeing them perform for their province in the Railway Cup final.

The legendary Cork hurler Christy Ring had a pulling power second to none. In terms of magnetism, nobody came close to the Cloyne maestro and his record of winning 18 Railway Cup medals with Munster was never eclipsed in the history of the competition.

I know of people from my native part of south Donegal whose annual March 17 pilgrimage to Croke Park was primarily motivated by the opportunity it offered to see Ring hurl.

Television sports coverage was limited with the fledgling RTÉ station.

Aside from the All-Ireland semi-finals and final in both codes, the only other Gaelic sport afforded live air time in the '60s and '70s were the St. Patrick’s Day Railway Cup finals.

However, with the growth in television viewership attendances at finals waned. By the early 1970s a final attendance of 10,000 was viewed as healthy.

In the football competition, Munster and Leinster teams regularly took the spoils. Both were liberally laced with players from Kerry, Cork, Dublin and Meath respectively, counties who between them monopolised the inter-county award list.

Connacht rarely featured prominently. For whatever reason, despite healthy interest from the players, winning the football competition remained elusive.

To a backdrop of the Troubles the game in Ulster continued apace. While little happened by way of national honours at county level, great interest prevailed in representing one's province.

By that decade, the '70s, aside from Cavan, the only other All-Ireland award winner in the province was Down. Many of their best known players spared nothing when it came to representing their province.

One person in particular I remember with great affection was Sean O’Neill. Already a three-time All-Ireland medal winner, he applied himself with total enthusiasm in the pursuit of adding another Railway Cup medal to his already impressive haul of eight.

In many ways, the example and standards he set for others set the foundation that inspired 19 of the successes enjoyed by the province over the last 35 years of the competition.

A litany of changes were proposed and enacted with the hope of resuscitating interest in the competition over the years.

The idea of adding a Combined University team to breath life and interest, though well intentioned, was short lived.

The hoped-for lift they’d give the competition never materialised and after three years the experiment was scrapped.

The All-Ireland club championships began in the 1970/71 season.

The problem of finding a suitable date on the calendar to stage the finals was solved by piggy-backing them with the inter-pro finals over the St. Patrick's Day holiday period.

Both competitions remained exclusive of one another from a spectator point of view and any hoped-for knock on increase in attendances for the inter-pro game never materialised.

I don’t mind sharing with you quite an amusing personal memory that linked both occasions. It was 1975. I was part of an Ulster team that reached the Railway Cup final, where we were due to play Munster.

On the day prior to the game the club finals saw UCD win the All-Ireland club football final and St. Finbarr's convincingly win the hurling decider against Fenians of Kilkenny. Jimmy Barry Murphy, the star turn on the victorious ‘Barrs team, was due to line out the following day for Munster in the football decider.

For some reason I was in the Skylon Hotel that evening and met JBM. In the company of his team-mates he was in full flow after winning the club final and to say he was in good form would be an understatement.

I left the hotel after a brief exchange and felt certain he’d be of little consequence in the following day's football game.

Talk about a misjudgement! To the backdrop of a Munster goalfest, the southerners won on a 6-7 to 0-15 scoreline. And Jimmy’s contribution? Four goals and a point from, I’d say, six touches of the ball – without breaking sweat!

Over the years, even more creative various efforts were made to resurrect interest in the competition.

Semi-finals and finals were staged at venues outside the capital. On other occasions over the course of the same weekend the issue was decided on the same format as the colleges Sigerson Cup.

The competition was played under lights and even on a few occasions the finals were taken abroad to Abu Dhabi!

It was clear by early in the last decade that a once-great competition had run out of road. Yet from a Connaught perspective there was a nice sting in the tail.

Without an interprovincial football title since 1969, the province managed to bridge a 45-year gap by winning the penultimate staging of the competition in 2014.

It was a sweet win in many ways. Gained at the expense of the competition specialists, Ulster the team also boasted the presence of six Mayo players on the starting 15.

So that distinct sextet of Robbie Hennelly, Keith Higgins, Kevin McLoughlin, Jason Gibbons, Mickey Conroy and captain Aidan O’Shea won an honour that was a rarity for players over the generations in the province.

Not a bad subscript to what was by then a competition that had sunk into obscurity.