In another excerpt from the forthcoming biography of the sporting and normal life of Ned Power, former pupil Tallow hurler and teacher himself Billy Sheehan talks about the effect my father’s arrival had on the fortunes of Tallow GAA.
“It (the Avonmore League) was the seed for Tallow of what came on afterwards,” says Billy Sheehan. Billy’s family is steeped in Tallow GAA tradition and he is a former pupil of my father’s, as well as having taught in Naomh Mhuire himself, where he became principal and played for Tallow at senior level. “At the time in Tallow, there was no permanent hurling field there. As a child, we used to go out to Curley’s Field for training – that’s where all those schools league matches were played. The Avonmore League was also important because you had adult teams and minor teams but you didn’t have anything below that until those leagues started in the early 1960’s.”
In the mid-1960’s, the under-16 competitions came into being and the official GAA under-14 competitions started at the end of the decade.
“The 1960’s and 1970’s were like a rollercoaster ride,” continues Billy, before clarifying that “although there were some disappointments, it was generally a case of the grass growing up and up. From a GAA point of view, what was a big thing was buying a field. They bought the field in 1963 and then they had a permanent home. As far as I know, although the deal was done then, it wasn’t paid off until the mid-1970’s. I remember Ned being in great form one day at school and saying that ‘we finally paid off the field’.
“You had other people involved (in Tallow GAA), but Ned was coming from the school, so all the lads who had trained and played with them had come through the school with him. And, once they started up these Avonmore Leagues and they continued year after year, he was in charge of those teams – 3rd class, 4th class, training them three times a week. Even when he’d be in school and he’d be looking out the window having a cup of tea, he’d run out and tell a fella that he was holding the hurley the wrong way and get him to change his grip.”
It must also be noted that the footballing origins of Tallow GAA were confined to folklore at this point and the club didn’t even have an actual football when they were playing their first games in the Avonmore Leagues. So, although a hurling man first and foremost, my father played a major part in reviving Tallow’s lost footballing tradition too.
Tallow’s next important landmark was again in football, when the under-16 team beat Mount Sion to win a county title in 1966, of which Billy was the captain: “The unusual thing about that match is that it was played in Carrick-on-Suir. So you had a Waterford county final played in County Tipperary, which is most unusual. But the reason was that Ned was playing in goals for Waterford and they were playing Tipperary in a league match. Seamus Power was also playing with the Waterford hurling team and he was involved in the Mount Sion U-16’s, so to accommodate the two of them, the County Final was played in another county… That was a massive win. After that, county finals started coming.”
“My Father: A Hurling Revolutionary, the life and times of Ned Power” is out on paperback at the end of November 2009. Click here for further information, pre-order and excerpt.