90 years young: Dunshaughlin GAA's Patsy McLoughlin

Dunshaughlin GAA legend Patsy McLoughlin celebrated his 90th birthday today. Here, we rerun a 2015 interview with him, published on the relaunch of 'the Black and Amber' book.

If Patsy McLoughlin is not to be found at home, then the next obvious place to look for him is at the grounds of Dunshaughlin GFC.

It’s his home away from home. A veteran clubman, he has reached the status of ‘legend’ in Dunshaughlin and surrounds, and is one of Meath GAA’s golden oldies.

He loves to see the next generations of young footballers from the village come through the ranks. These include his grandsons, Gary and Matthew O'Connor.

Matthew is just starting, on the under-10 team, while 14 year-old Matthew is on the under-15 team, as well as the Meath development squad.

Gary is a very good goalkeeper, his grandfather proudly declares. And plays soccer too.

Soccer! It wouldn’t have happened in Patsy’s day. Back when Patsy was a gasun, it was a mortal sin for a Gaelic footballer to be involved in any type of ‘foreign sport’. You’d be struck down by the GAA powers that be. It was the era of ‘the ban’.

“And do you know who helped get rid of the ban?” Patsy smiles. “I was called a renegade by a delegate at the county board meeting by somebody from Donaghmore Ashbourne,” he chuckles. “Another representative of that club stood up and disassociated the club from the remarks, saying that they were fully behind me.”

Rule 27 forbade GAA players from playing or watching so called ‘foreign games’ including soccer, rugby, cricket or hockey. Not alone that, but any person who attended social functions, such as dances, organised by any organisations from these sports were also banned.

When the 1960s arrived with soccer and rugby on television, and England winning the World Cup in Wembley in 1966, the temperature went sky high in the ranks of the GAA and outside it. Nearly every time it was legal to do so within GAA rules, there were motions at Congress asking that the rule be scrapped and the debates before, during and after such meetings were ferocious. Plus, younger GAA members had no time for such bigotry.

Out of the blue at the 1970 Congress in Galway, Meath put forward a motion, passed unanimously, asking that every club in the country call a special meeting to decide its attitude on Rule 27 in time for the 1971 congress. Because the leaders of the pro-Ban campaign had been so powerful in the recent past, little or no attention was paid to the Meath motion as it was assumed that a large majority of the counties would oppose the motion anyway, as had always been the case.

The motion that went before the Meath County Convention came from the Dunshaughlin club.

“The original motion to have every club in the country hold a meeting to discuss the ban came from a Dunshaughlin club meeting,” McLoughlin recalled. “A lot of us at that time were fed up with Rule 27 as several young lads from our club were going off playing soccer illegally and it was obvious that something had to be done. The motion was passed at the Meath county convention, but not before the chairman, Fr Tully, made a very strong attack on it. It got through anyway, and within the year, the Ban was dead and buried,” McLoughlin said.

Gaelic football wasn’ t terribly popular around Dunshaughlin when Patsy was growing up. The principal of the local national school had no great interest in it at the time. Patsy recalled an incident when local lad Aidan Morrin did get his hands on a football.

“We watched as it went bounce, bounce, bounce, towards a window of the school. Straight through it and smashed it. There was war!”

When he started playing football with Dunshaughlin in 1946 as an 18 year-old, the club was in the doldrums. But there was plenty else going on around the village at the time, and young lads were occupied by other sports. The Foleys, whom he recalls were good footballers, were all prominent members of the Dunshaughlin Boxing Club. Running was strong do, with many local athletes.

Like everyone in Dunshaughlin at the time, he had a go at the boxing. “They put me in against a guy called Hoey in a tournament at the workhouse. I beat him and they put me against Bren Murray at a tournament in Navan. No way was I going to take a hiding from Bren Murray – he was good. I went down on the canvas in the first round!” he says.

There were big sports days in places like Drumree and Kilmessan, and Ballymadun, and cross country was popular. He lists names like Billy and Larry Byrne, Charlie, Alo and Mick Bruton, as good runners. Kit Gannon from Drumree was their trainer.

“We used to even go training on a Christmas Day – I remember running 12 miles one Christmas Day.”

Doran’s Field in Kilmessan was the scene of a very competitive sports, where the local boys Paddy, Finian and Kevin Maguire would provide stiff opposition, and usually win.

A junior football team was formed, and reached the county semi-final in 1947. Patsy was on the team, but the club still didn’t have a grounds or regular source of income. Peter Tugwell, Paudge Morgan, Ernest Kenny and Sean O’Brien of The Bush were players he remembers as standing out.

“I suppose the founding of the St Martin’s Juvenile Club in the 1950s really was the turning point,” he says. Jim Cooney, a local guard who was also involved in the boxing club, Bren Murray’s brother, Ciaran, who was a school teacher in Drumree, and Paddy Blake from the village were among those involved in setting up the underage club.

Dunshaughlin had a big success in 1967, winning the junior football championship in the same year that it opened its present grounds, and clubman Noel Curran was on the All-Ireland winning SFC team. Patsy remembers the popular carnivals which were run to raise funds, and the ’Dunshaughlin Social Club’, which organised big dances in Trim and bussed people from far and wide to it.

In 1984, when the GAA was celebrating its centenary, Paddy and local school teacher, Jim Gilligan, produced a highly regarded club history ‘Black and Amber The GAA in Dunshaughlin 1886-1984’, which details the ups and downs of the Gaelic Athletic Association in the village and parish which played in the racing colours of Stephen Kelly, owner of the Fingal Arms in the village at the time of the club’s foundation.

However, since the publication of that book three decades ago, much has changed.

“For the better,” says Patsy, reflecting on the glory days of three county senior championships in a row, great battles in the Leinster club championships against Rathnew in Wicklow, and a trip to an all-Ireland semi-final. “The glory days,” he smiles.

And at the club grounds, much has changed, with new training grounds installed in recent years, and work ongoing on a major new clubhouse development.