2013 Press Releases

From students to county masters

5 Nov 2013
UCC playing St Nicholas football club in the Senior County Final in 1963

1963 saw UCC take home not only their first Senior County title, but both hurling and football accolades at once (Article reproduced courtesy of Denis Hurley and the Irish Examiner).

It’s once-in-a-blue-moon stuff; the senior county double.

Generation games.

On Sunday, Loughmore-Castleiney attempt to become the first Tipperary club to scale twin peaks.

It is a feat only slightly rarer in Cork, where dual jewels have been necklaced just six times.

The Glen Rovers-St Nicholas link — 1938, 1941 and 1954 — accounts for half the climbs, while cross-town rivals St Finbarr’s are the most recent club to plant flags in both summits, in 1980 and ’82.

And then there was the College class of ‘63.

This year ticks up the 50th anniversary of UCC’s golden autumn, when the Seán Óg Murphy and Andy Scannell Cups were both paraded on campus over a remarkable fortnight.

While the College had established a GAA club over a half-century earlier and won 19 Fitzgibbon titles, they had never managed to go all the way in the county championship, although they came close in the 1962 SHC final. Having been six points up against Glen Rovers, they were pegged back to draw and lost the replay by a point.

The first-round draw for 1963 offered a swift chance for revenge.

“We came out against the Glen,” recalls one of the stars of that team, Michael Mortell, “but it almost didn’t happen.

“I was at the county convention as a delegate for UCC and there was a motion before it to seed the championships and I spoke against it. I basically said that I’d be in favour of seeding if I could do the seeding myself!

“There was a feeling that the Glen always got better as the year went on, so the best time to get them was early in the championship.

“There’s always a little bit of luck involved, and when it’s the first one, it’s always made a bit tougher psychologically.

“It helped us that, after losing the ’62 final to the Glen in October, we won the Fitzgibbon in November, there hadn’t been any time to feel sorry for ourselves. At that time, there was a fierce loyalty to UCC.”

Mortell would later display that loyalty by becoming the college’s registrar and president, but it manifested itself in other ways too.

For instance, Blackrock club men John O’Halloran and Micheál Murphy played in the ’63 final for the College against the Rockies.

“It was very strange,” O’Halloran remembered. “I made sure to send back word that I would be doing my best for the College, that there was no way I would take the field if I wasn’t.

“Micheál and I had been given jobs in the library dusting books, to make sure that we stayed at home for the summer.

“It was probably the first time that we didn’t lose anybody over the summer, and that was a factor. I would be left sneezing all night from so much dust though!”

War of Independence veteran Jim Hurley, a dual Cork player and later selector, was then College secretary and bursar. And O’Halloran attributes a lot of the driving force to him.

“The club was founded 1912 but we had never won a senior county championship,” he said. “For Big Jim Hurley, it was his life’s ambition, and before the final, he and Des Kiely, the captain, sent us all a letter reminding us of how important it was. The letter included a few mortal sins that we weren’t to commit, such as giving away scoreable frees or putting the ball wide at the near side.”

Having beaten the Glen, Imokilly and St Finbarr’s on the way to the final, UCC pushed Blackrock aside on a 4-17 to 5-6 score to claim the title.

For Mortell, there wasn’t much time to celebrate as two days later he was headed for California Institute of Technology, where he would spend the next decade.

His team-mates took a bus to Shannon to see him off, though the celebrations almost resulted in his non-departure.

“I almost missed my plane,” he said. “We were having so much fun and there was so much noise that I didn’t hear my name being called!”

Two weeks later, UCC contested the football final. Having formed part of the only previous doubles, Nick’s would have been determined to stop UCC matching them but the College prevailed by 1-6 to 1-5. Mick Fleming, an All-Ireland winner with Kerry in 1969 and ’70, remembers a time when football provided one of the few outlets for students.

“There were only about 1,300 students in the college and there probably wasn’t all that much else to do,” he said. “The hallmark of those teams was that there was a fantastic camaraderie, and there was a real professionalism brought into training.

“We had an Army guy by the name of Denis Leahy, who subsequently trained the Cork team, and he brought the standard of fitness of the players to a new level.

“We did a lot of very serious circuit training during the winter months and that really stood to us.”

UCC would go on to win the 1964 and ’67 titles too, while Sigersons were won in ’65, ’66, ’69, 70 and ’72, so there was a feeling that they were on the cusp of something special.

“There was a fair bit of confidence in the team, alright,” he said.

“Nick’s would have been a very proud club and they had a lot of very good players, it was always going to be a tough game and it really was only a kick of a ball in it.

“Dave Geaney had been the captain but he was after being suspended for playing soccer, without much proof. Maybe it was the county board being vindictive because he was a Kerryman, but at the end then our captain for the game, Liam Scully I think, stood back and let Dave lift the cup.”

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Article reproduced with permission of Denis Hurley and the Irish Examiner - see http://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/gaa/from-students-to-county-masters-248050.html

University College Cork

Coláiste na hOllscoile Corcaigh

College Road, Cork T12 K8AF

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