EIGHT times All-Ireland hurling winning legend John Doyle of Tipperary spoke emotionally last week of his “sentimental journey’’ back to Dungarvan where he spent so much of his boyhood holiday days.
The big, bold, and brilliant man from Holycross, who won All-Ireland senior hurling glory in three different decades in an illustrious inter county career that spanned nineteen years, returned to Dungarvan last Wednesday to renew a few old acquaintances and to visit Thomas’s Terrace where he holidayed for many of his early years with his family relatives, the Stacks.
That same afternoon John, along with his lifetime friend and confidante Gerry Chawke of Clonmel and other close friends, visited O’Connor’s pub in Abbey-side where the warmest of warm welcomes - -along with a few very pleasant surprises - - awaited the great man.
Johnny O’Connor, whose sister Alice Marie is the licensee of the O’Connor hostelry, travelled from North Cork to meet his old hurling friend and foe. Johnny was of course a member of the Waterford All-Ireland winning senior hurling team of 1948 and also featured on the ‘57 side that so narrowly and unluckily lost in the final to the Cats of Kilkenny.
From Waterford city came the man who skippered Waterford to glory in that year of ‘59, the peerless Frankie Walsh, and other members of that great team of half a century ago who dropped in to meet the mighty “Doyler’’ were Dungarvan’s Tom Cunningham, Abbeyside’s Austin Flynn, and Cappoquin’s Mickey O’Connor.
Also present was the former John Mitchels and county football star Tom Gough together with Fr. Brendan Crowley P.P. who was a former Dungarvan and Eire Og hurler and footballer of no mean ability in his own playing days.
Believe me when I tell you that the sliothars were flying in all directions as the memories of some great championship and league battles between Tipp and Waterford over the years and decades were recalled and relived. There was time also for a song or two, or three, while Johnny O’Connor and Frankie Walsh revived some wonderful memories when they spoke of times past and of the heroic defender that John Doyle was in an era when he won his eight Celtic Crosses between the years of 1949 and 1965.
For a man who was so defiant, so resilient, and so unflinching in that Tipperary defence over all those great years, he was visibly moved as he returned thanks to everyone who had helped to make this day what it was for him personally. “My returning to Dungarvan today’’, said the mighty man, “has been a very sentimental journey and one that I will never forget’’. The clock eventually caught up with everything and everyone and it was time for John Doyle to take his departure. He did so however to a standing ovation from everyone in the packed pub.
What an entirely fitting way for the whole wonderful and unforgettable afternoon to end.
