As I roved out: Brother v Effin brother?
Jerry and Ned Rea
“I’M sick and tired waiting for the Effin bus!” declared Frank Hall on his popular RTÉ TV comedy show Hall’s Pictorial Weekly in the winter of ’72 before stepping away from a partially covered signpost which informed the viewer that a village by that name was two and a half miles distant. It was the first time I had heard of the Limerick village of Effin but it was to be in the news again in the Summer of ’73 when sons of the parish were in opposition in the All-Ireland Senior Hurling semi-final.
Last weekend your scribe attended his 77th and 78th All-Ireland SHC semi-finals since attending his first semi-final on the August Bank Holiday Sunday of 1973 when Limerick - who the previous Sunday had won the Munster title for the first time in 18 years, a Richie Bennis point from a ’70’ with the last puck of the game beating Tipperary in Thurles - played London - who the previous Sunday had shocked Galway in Ballinasloe.
On annual holidays in Clare, I had been at that Munster final with my cousins and we were delighted when we heard the semi-final was fixed for Cusack Park, Ennis, just 10 miles from our Inagh base. The events surrounding our attendance at that ’73 semi-final is a story in itself. You see my late cousin Patsy, who was a good few years older, was deeply involved with Inagh Hurling Club, the saffron and blue hooped jerseys and the spare hurleys were stored in McGough’s and Patsy was an ever-present at every match the club played.
The morning of the Limerick v London game Inagh were playing Tubber’s second team in Ruan in the Junior Hurling Championship and that evening the same team, carrying the wounds of earlier battle, were playing the semi-final of the Clooney Junior tournament in Quin. As a hurling mad 12 year-old this was Heaven! My abiding memory of the morning game in Ruan is of the Tubber centre half back, their best player by far, a former senior, attempting to clear a ball maybe 70 yards from his own goal. He was blocked. Winning back possession, he was blocked again, then hooked. With no cavalry arriving and back in possession once more the No 6 avoided any further blocks or hoops by turning around and out of utter frustration driving the ball back towards his own goal! It sailed wide as our hero cursed his colleagues and virtually downed tools after that.
Of the evening game the abiding memory also concerns effin and blinding! Can’t remember who Inagh were playing but if they won they were playing parish neighbours and arch rivals Kilnamona in the final, motivation of the highest order. {Note: the clubs are fully amalgamated now, playing senior, contenders for the title, and one of their selectors is Inagh resident Hugh Paddy O’Byrne, the former Mount Leinster Rangers and Carlow hurler} Anyway one of the Inagh mentors that Sunday evening decided his troops needed a further gee-up and delivered a speech full of passion and ‘advise’. It was my first time in an adult ‘dressing room’, which was really only a prefab with a light partition separating the two teams. The Inagh man had barely finished when the opposition ‘speech’ began, again full of passion and ‘advice’. The Inagh lads had left the ‘building’ and the man who was to lock the door says to the referee, who was also togging out in the prefab, “if you took the effs and bejaysuses out of them two speeches there wasn’t a a lot in them” BROTHER V BROTHER And so to the memories of our third game of the day, that Limerick v London All-Ireland semi-final. {Strictly speaking we saw four games that day, we got into Cusack Park for the closing stages of the curtain raising minor semi-final between Tipperary and Galway} There was an attendance of 12,000 and in the old Cusack Park that was virtually a full-house so we took up a vantage point at the wall behind the goal London were attacking in the first half . The Exiles, playing in white jerseys because of a clash with Limerick’s green, hurled really well early on, a sun-tanned forward catching the eye by dent of his classy hurling and ‘brown’ legs. “That’s from working on the building sites all day” one spectator reckoned. Think the man in question was Tom Connolly, a native of Abbeyknockmoy in Galway whose son David played soccer with Ireland, scored a hat-trick in one international.
I was sorry we weren’t behind the other goal as one of the Sunday papers had signposted the fact that brother would be playing upon brother, Limerick’s full forward being Ned Rea from Effin, London’s full-back his emigrant younger brother Jerry. I have read on a good few occasions since then that they played on each other for the full match but my memory of the day was that one or other switched at the throw in but by the time they came down our end they were indeed on each other.
Happily, my memory was proved correct as the ‘Cork Examiner’ report of the match states “Limerick took steps before the start to avoid the direct confrontation of the Rea brothers. They switched Eamon Rea to the left corner, moved Eamon Cregan out to centre forward and had Mossy Dowling at full forward. The changes had an adverse effect as the front line found scoring a very difficult proposition against a hard tackling London defence. Indeed Limerick were faring so poorly the side was back to that which was chosen. This meant that Rea was marking his brother Gerry who fared much better than did the Tipperary full-back of a week previously”.
That week previously Ned Rea, who had played corner back in the League final in May, was a surprise selection at full-forward and though failing to score himself had a hand, body or stick in all six Limerick goals or, in modern parlance, six green flag assists! My memory of the day too has it that Jerry Rea, who played his club hurling with Brothers Pearse in London and became the driving force behind that club, was wearing a dark tartan togs. Action shots in the ’Irish Press’ the day after the match of the brothers contesting possession confirms a dark togs whatever about the tartan.
In an interview with Robert Mulhern in the ‘Irish Examiner’ in 2017 Jerry Rea revealed “I was home for a brother’s funeral in Limerick and the priest, Father Houlihan from Kilmallock, said to me: I remember the day you and your brother played against each other and there was a bit of a scuffle. Michael O’Hehir was broadcasting and he said: ‘The two Reas are having a bit of a word with each other, but I don’t think they are talking about saving hay!’” Limerick won that semi-final 1-15 to 0-7, Richie Bennis netting a 21 yard free, a pile-driver with about 15 minutes to go in an 80 minute match and I can still see the net dancing, my first close up of an important goal. And I can still feel the wonder of two brothers, right in front of my very eyes. marking each other in a major match. Remember back then there was no live television of those semi-finals and suspect there might be no footage whatsoever of that unique Ennis confrontation.
For the record Ned Rea didn’t score that day either. You could say Jerry did Effin well!
My own brother Michael and myself watched last Saturday’s All-Ireland semi-final from the Upper Cusack as our parents' Clare finally beat Kilkenny with a strong second half performance while on Sunday I was in early to take up a strategic location on Hill 16 where there was no one in front to block the view of a real humdinger. The full house and the passion of the supporters created a wonderful atmosphere, the Rebels worthy winners on the day. Limerick, though, have been great champions and their followers should savour the four-in-a-row rather than lament the ‘lost five’. And here’s and unofficial ‘here’s one for you … is Sunday week’s final the first All-Ireland senior final in which BOTH teams have lost TWICE earlier in the campaign?
Sticking with the theme above - brother v brother not effin or losing - this week’s ‘Here’s one for You’ asks can you name the Carlow brothers who played against each other in the National Hurling League in March 1991?
