{"id":343,"date":"2009-09-26T12:25:47","date_gmt":"2009-09-26T11:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/?p=343"},"modified":"2009-09-26T12:25:47","modified_gmt":"2009-09-26T11:25:47","slug":"gaa-hurling-biography-of-ned-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/?p=343","title":{"rendered":"GAA Hurling Biography of Ned Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

In another excerpt from the hurling book “My Father: a Hurling Revolutionary”, we get an insight into some of what it was like growing up in Dungarvan in the 1940s.<\/p>\n

The hanging-out place and the meeting place for children in Dungarvan at that time was \u2018Quann\u2019s\u2019. This was a large field that belonged to a family named Quann and which was situated on the coast on a vacant site which is now rather fittingly occupied by a sports centre. This was where youngsters spent their time and this was where the budding GAA star would hit his first sliotar.<\/p>\n

\u2018We spent a lot of time there,\u2019 says Se\u00e1n. \u2018We made our own sliotar. I\u2019ve forgotten how it was made but we had to make one \u2013 this was during the war, you see. We used to play \u2018score and three\u2019, where one person went into goal and then when you scored three goals, you got a chance to go in.\u2019<\/p>\n

If a child wasn\u2019t at home, then he was to be found at Quann\u2019s. Where is so-and-so? He\u2019s down at Quann\u2019s. Let\u2019s all go down to Quann\u2019s. Are you coming to Quann\u2019s?<\/p>\n

My father\u2019s best friend growing up in Dungarvan was a boy called Patsy Burke. He was also good friends with Patsy\u2019s brother Michael, but my father and Patsy were bosom buddies, spending much of their youth playing ball of one sort or another at Quann\u2019s, Dad being the most keen on sports. My mother often quotes Patsy Burke as an adult saying to my Dad: \u2018Jesus, Power, it\u2019s no good going for a walk with you because as soon as you see any kind of a ball, you\u2019re off after it!\u2019 The Burkes had a grocery shop and through this connection, my father was fortunate enough to have a rare supply line of occasional goodies, which, according to Eileen, he was always prepared to share with his siblings when he got home.<\/p>\n

Just where my father\u2019s love of sport came from, I\u2019m not so sure. There is simply no history of any of my father\u2019s ancestors or relatives being interested in sport. Although Se\u00e1n was keen on hurling for a time in his youth, he never pursued it and in any case, he did not have the 24-hour passion that my father seemed to have for sport from early childhood. Whether it was kicking a ball against the door of the family home with both feet, keeping it going for hours or walloping a makeshift emergency-ration sliotar with Patsy Burke or Matty Fitzgerald down at Quann\u2019s (which, apparently, was also an excellent venue for developing your skills at keeping the ball low, because if you hit it too high, you lost your ball to the Atlantic Ocean), his interest in sport was as single-minded as it was unique amongst the members of his extended family.<\/p>\n

Se\u00e1n remembers his obsession with sport extending to listening to the results of the soccer matches on the radio: \u2018To me, it didn\u2019t make any sense at all because the name of the guy who had the ball was all that was mentioned in the commentary\u2026 Nobody said anything else at all! It was boring \u2013 the complete opposite to Miche\u00e1l \u00d3 Hehir. And he\u2019d listen intently to this because he loved all sport.\u2019<\/p>\n

A lot of his love of hurling was nurtured and developed while at secondary school. At the CBS, Brother Murray had a very positive effect on him, both from the educational point of view as well as the hurling one. In any case, my father seems to have always been a conscientious pupil \u2013 his academic discipline and prowess seemingly a reflection of his white-shirted neatness and organisation at home \u2013 from primary through secondary school. One schoolmate from primary school and secondary school was Davy Hourigan: \u2018There were about 36 or 37 of them in that class,\u2019 he says, \u2018and about half of them went onto secondary school and it ended up being nine going on to complete the Leaving Cert.<\/p>\n

\u2018Ned was a great fella in school. He had great life in him \u2013 he was a pleasant, bubbly type of guy. He was a very good student, very diligent and he was one who meant to get on. We had a good hurling team in the Christian Brothers and he was a good hurler. Of course, we only knew him as an outfield hurler then when he used to play in the half-forward line.\u2019<\/p>\n

Davy also pointed out to me that although our new Republic was aspiring to offer free education for all its citizens, a proper education was still the preserve of the better off except where the Christian Brothers stepped in to provide education that was as close as possible to free. One pound per term, according to Davy, was all that was asked by way of a fee (a very modest amount even in those times) and \u2018they didn\u2019t ask for it again if they didn\u2019t get it.\u2019<\/p>\n

My Dad never forgot the education that he received from the Christian Brothers and the powerful spiritual and sporting training that he also received from them. I believe that these years had a profound and positive influence on the paths he chose in later life. He acknowledged a lot of this in a piece that he wrote in the Dungarvan Leader<\/em> in April 1996 in which he lamented the disappearance of the Christian Brothers from Irish life:<\/p>\n

This saddens me because I\u2019m a Christian Brothers\u2019 product and retain many happy memories of the Brothers of my native Dungarvan, a school which was among the first to be established and from which the order was forced to withdraw a few short years ago. They dominated the educational scene down through those intervening years, such a significant period of our history and their influence on our careers was incalculable\u2026 I never forget the Brothers. Whatever I am or whatever I have achieved is due mainly, after my parents, to the wholesome Catholic Irish influence of the Brothers.\"0803quinn02\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Another pal in secondary school who completed the Leaving Certificate the same year as my father was Rory Wyley. When I caught up with Rory, he had already cycled 55 kilometres that day and had recently returned from a trip to South America with his cycling club companions, where he had suffered a fractured pelvis as a result of a fall from a bike. He told me that he used to sit beside Davy Hourigan for the inspiration that he offered in the field of maths. He also told me a lot about cycling. Oh, and that my father was a great sportsman in school and a conscientious student.<\/p>\n

The Powers appear to have had a happy upbringing in Dungarvan, but if there was one place they liked being even better it was at their Auntie Bridie\u2019s in Affane \u2013 a quiet townland between Cappoquin and Dungarvan. Their aunt was married but did not have any children of her own, so she lavished attention on her nephews and nieces from the town. Brendan described it as \u2018an oasis\u2019, where there would sometimes be as many as six of the Dungarvan gang accommodated under their aunt\u2019s roof. My dad\u2019s sister Mary loved going to Bridie\u2019s and described the place as \u2018wonderful\u2019. On the evening they had to go back home from Affane, there would be a family rosary. Mary remembers trying to get through her prayers with a big lump in her throat from the heartbreak of leaving behind the haven of Auntie Bridie\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy Father: A Hurling Revolutionary, the life and times of Ned Power\u201d is out on paperback at the end of November 2009.\u00a0 Click here<\/a> for further information, pre-order and excerpt.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In another excerpt from the hurling book “My Father: a Hurling Revolutionary”, we get an insight into some of what it was like growing up in Dungarvan in the 1940s. The hanging-out place and the meeting place for children in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9kxa7-5x","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=343"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":351,"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions\/351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}