Brian Talty joins the set-up as club trippers survive Atlantic crossing

Brian Talty has taken over as Manager of the Intermediate footballers and the Club is delighted to have such an eminent GAA figure around the place. Brian, who graced the centre of the field with Galway footballers for many a year and was a selector on the recent Dublin side that captured four in a row Leinster Championships, joined the set-up here last month.

Speaking with Brian, he told me that after the Tyrone game his appetite for football had waned somewhat. However, after the initial mourning period of one week, Brian decided to roll up his sleeves and get on with it.

He added that he was delighted to help out Clanna Gael Fontenoy as, having trained the Dubs in the Club for a year, he was aware of the fantastic work that was going around the place. “This Club has the best facilities that I have seen in my travels and in a sense it is a Trainer’s Paradise with all-year-round playing pitches, floodlights and an all-weather training arena. I like a challenge and the challenge here in this Club is a very worthy one.

“I am conscious of the efforts that the Club are making in keeping the game alive in the Inner City and I see all around me the investment for the future I am hoping that the players will respond. It may take a month or two to get the message across but from what I have seen so far the players are certainly there.” The Club wishes Brian and the players every success for the rest of the season.

Reports from Juvenile affairs are very healthy indeed, with success being reported on all fronts. The Academy is flying it and all under age teams are reporting steady progress. The U9s recently won the East Coastal Tournament in Ringsend Park, where such lofty names as Kilmacud Crokes, Cuala and Bray Emmets were vanquished.

Mentors Dave ‘The Bull’ Walsh and Bernard ‘Wall St’ Bannon were very happy with how the lads performed and no mountain is steep enough for this squad to climb.

Camogie girls faced their season-long rivals Craobh Chiaran in the quarter-final of the Championship and, having lost the previous two league encounters to this opposition, were in no humour to fall to them three times on the trot.

Producing a performance rolled in steel, they overturned recent results and had a bit to spare in the end. They now play Faughs in the Semi-Final and no matter what happens here their season has been a wonderful success to date.

Senior hurlers are still awaiting their final and crucial league match against St Oliver Plunketts. It’s a long wait but lads, please remained focussed.

The trip to Canada for the Ladies footballers (above) was a fantastic success, with the girls winning the Powerscreen World Seven A Side Competition. In the round robin stages they beat Cayman Island Gaels, St Michaels Toronto, and in a very close contest overcame Ottawa Gaels by a solitary point.

In the Quarter Final, they dispatched Cleveland Gaels before defeating Bramton Roger Casements in the Semi Final. In the Final they faced their closest rivals in the competition, Ottawa Gaels.

The first 20 minutes was a see-saw battle until, in the last 10 minutes, the class and guile of the Irish girls saw them through by an 8 point margin. So the areas of Ringsend, Sandymount, Irishtown and Pearse Street are now truly etched in the Canadian corridors of Gaelic Games.

The trophy is as big as you are likely to see and nestles proudly in the Clubhouse at present. Some of the lads who travelled made guest appearances for the local side in the men’s competition. Below is a detailed account of the journey home.

The trip to Canada

It was the trip of a lifetime for all, that was until they stepped on to the plane for the journey home. I can only report to this paper the reports I received myself of this frightening return journey. An hour and a half out from Dublin, in the midst of the broad and vast Atlantic Ocean, the pilot informed all the passengers that one of the engines had failed and that they would be travelling the rest of the journey on one engine only.

Shock and awe and awe and shock set in with many as they fastened their seatbelts. This was the time for leadership and the hero of the hour and a half was none other than the Sniffer Hilliard. Hilliard, oozing with amazing calmness and showing all the steely grit of a Senior Hurler, marched up and down the aisle offering reassurance to the shaken passengers.

His services included the reciting of the Act of Contrition into the ears of many and hearing last confessions from some along the aisle. Hilliard tells me that one of the confessions was so horrid that he did not absolve the teller.
When he came to Tom Ryan senior, he asked Tom what he could do for him to which Tom sluggishly replied “make the brandy stronger.”

Tom A Ryan was asking for forgiveness for having received so much from his Eircom shares as Jacinta patted his beautiful head of hair.

Paul Kennedy was on his knees seeking redemption for having robbed his own club in an important league match during his refereeing career five years previously.

Sinead Vivash was doing likewise for having missed so many club notes throughout the last two years.
Grace Dunne was pledging to her astonished parents, John and Margaret that she would do some housework once every six months for the rest of her life.

Many girls were wailing sorrow for having given the Legend such a hard time over the past number of years.
Bernard Lawless was apologising to all for claiming that he was a senior hurler and for getting sent off in Canada for slagging the ref about his job as a merchant banker.

Others were doing novenas about affairs they never should have had with Canadian Mounties.

Meanwhile, up front in the cockpit Alan Foley had now joined the pilot. Alan, using all his experience from his days with Fingallians in Swords where he spent many an hour plane spotting while playing corner forward with his local side, instantly told the pilot that the plane would have to lose some weight on one side.

The pilot duly released some fuel (and the price of it!) over the blue waves of the Atlantic Ocean. When this was not sufficient Pat Kane, Tom Ryan and a host of other heavyweights had to move from one side to another to balance it out.

Believing now that they were in grave danger, Martin Neville and Lynn Dunne asked Johhny ‘Snuck’ Sadlier to wed them before it was too late. Johnny, once an altar boy in Star of the Sea, presided over the Ceremony in the ladies loo for a small fee with the Flood sisters as bridesmaids. Martin did not use Groomsmen as he just didn’t like anyone enough to do so.

Albert and Jenny were coolness personified and for most of the hazardous journey debated the worsening economic crisis. At one stage Jenny offered to cut Albert’s hair for nothing but Albert loves his own hair so much that he wanted to leave this earth with as much of it as possible. Alice Foley, alias Mrs Doyle, was offering tea to everyone when stiffer drinks were in order. Niamh Foley and Serena Hannon might as well have been on the dart to Bray as she continuously combed her hair in the mirror.

Having got through the hour, worse was yet to come and the reports of the last half hour are legendary. Reports of the Sniffer Hilliard putting out fires on the last remaining engine hanging from trouser belts tied together are indeed tall, but are sworn to by the survivors.

Other reports need a little more verification, such as overpowering a terrorist with hurley sticks in the men’s loo and dispatching him out the window.

All this was too much for the Afghan pilot and he reservedly handed over the wheel to Alan Foley and Paul Kennedy just as the lights of Dublin and Sean Moore Park came into view.

Kennedy and Foley, after wrestling for stardom with each other, safely landed the Boeing 747 in the Phoenix Park just next to Mary Robinson’s house. Come to think of it, Mary Robinson doesn’t live there anymore so who is telling the lies??