For those of us who once toiled in the lower decks of the good ship Evening Press on the dockside at Burgh Quay, there was one voice missing from those two days that rocked Irish football in mid-November. Or how he imagined Hill 16 “as lively as the Main Street of Knocknagoshel on Good Friday” when Dublin fell to Kerry in the 1978 All-Ireland final. Fortunately, it was a promise he could not keep, Castle Island being as sacred to him as Ayers Rock to the Aborigines of Australia. Though he soldiered on elsewhere in print, he never fully got over his “feelings of loneliness and desolation when I pass by that great stranded ship between Burgh Quay and Poolbeg Street”. On his centenary at the weekend, he was fondly remembered in the many hostelries he graced with his anoraked presence, from his adopted home in Portobello to Castle Island, his final resting place beside his parents, Michael and Ellen.

Source: The Irish Times December 08, 2025 04:00 UTC