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Irish Times
3 days ago
- Sport
- Irish Times
Ian O'Riordan: Con Houlihan would have been 100 this week – what would he make of this year's All-Ireland final?
They say one kind way to remember your heroes is not just the year they left this mortal world, but the year they entered it, which for Con Houlihan is now a century ago in the winter of 1925. Con once said he was born on the night of a blizzard in Castle Island (not Castleisland, and God help the person who misspelt his part of the Kingdom), where he would always call home, even after he moved to Dublin to join the Press Group when already into his 40s. By that stage he'd established himself as a sportswriter of promise, learning his trade in the Kerryman among other places. It was 'where the first three days of the week are spent studying the racing sheets and in other nefarious activities, until about 10 o'clock on Wednesday – in the morning that is – all purgatory breaks loose'. Con enjoyed a great affinity with all sports, though he once admitted 'which sport I would pick if forced by a cruel master to confine myself to one – the answer is racing. That game abounds in stories, not all of which – I need hardly mention – can be published.' READ MORE He described the 1985 meeting of England and the Republic of Ireland at Wembley Stadium as his first foreign mission for the Evening Press, apart from a National League game between Roscommon and Dublin in Dr Hyde Park on a wet Sunday in the previous November. That 1985 game at Wembley was where Ray Wilkins seemed to be clean through to score the winner, if it wasn't for for a young man named David O'Leary, who 'saved the day with a clawing tackle', according to Peter Byrne, formerly of this newspaper. 'In fact, he saved the night,' said Con, 'but I wouldn't quibble with the man from The Irish Times, that last bastion of the semicolon.' Con would later travel the globe, covering the World Cup and the Olympics, including Barcelona 1992 when, in the sweltering heat, and dressed in trademark jumper and anorak, he began walking up Montjuïc to get a closer view of the men's marathon. 'Then the Wall hit me,' he wrote, 'and it never recovered.' There is also his immortal line about missing Italia '90 because he was away at the World Cup. Jerry Kiernan crosses the line to win the Dublin City Marathon in October 1982. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho He loved athletics too, often writing about Jerry Kiernan – the 'celebrated long-distance runner who grew up in Brosna, on the eastern verge of that great expanse of bog and little fields' – and John Lenihan, the farmer from Bearnageeha, who became World Mountain Running champion in 1991 and, according to Con'of all our unsung heroes, just about the most unsung'. There were few subjects closer to his heart than Kerry football, and I know that because of the honour in sharing some special evenings at what he called his 'harbour' in Portobello. Events invariably began with Con pulling out an old £20 note from under the telephone next to his chair and politely insisting I go round the corner to Spar and purchase two bottles of Yellow Tail wine, describing it as 'easily drinkable'. In select moments he would reminisce about Kerry and the All-Ireland final, never losing his draw to the third Sunday in September, knowing that back in Castle Island the turf was already saved. This July final would be truly befuddling. For him it all began 'in the same year as an unsuccessful artist called Adolf Hitler had started a commotion' and Con was at an age 'deemed fit to be unloosed on the good people of Dublin'. [ Prose and Con — Frank McNally on the rise and fall of a famous local newspaper Opens in new window ] 'On that September long ago, I hadn't been beyond Tralee; Dublin seemed to me a city of magic – as enchanting as Paris or Petrograd or Samarkand itself. Fuel was scarce and thus an institution known as the Ghost Train began voyaging to Dublin and into folklore. 'It departed from Tralee on the stroke of midnight (and if you believe that ...) and only God knew when it would reach Dublin – and I suspect that there were times when even He wasn't too sure. Women wept as their menfolk set out from home, fearful (perhaps in some cases hopeful) that they would never see them again.' It was also during one of his early visits to Dublin for an All-Ireland football final that Con recalled spotting a well-known delicatessen advertising a variety of 'sandwhiches' and later feeling properly confused at a small restaurant that was offering the choice of three 'deserts'. Nothing dismayed Con more than the gradual decline of the English language. From his early days with the Kerryman the signs were there, when he once heard a certain sports reporter say to the editor, Séamus McConville: 'You are capable of thinking that a colon is part of your backside.' Con Houlihan embraces Irish Press chairman Eamon de Valera, after a settlement averted the closure of the group in 1990 This remains right up there with some of Con's own immortal words, 'a man who will misuse an apostrophe is capable of anything'. He considered himself akin to those who emigrated from Kerry to settle in places like New York and London, and the need to recognise some loyalty to the place you are living while never losing sight of the place you are from. That was never better expressed more than after the 1978 All-Ireland football final when his 'friend girl' Harriet Duffin, who certainly considered herself a true Dub, was in Croke Park to see a young Kerry team take apart Dublin. When asked how she was coping with such a defeat, Con's simple response became folklore: 'House private. No flowers.' This was the 1978 final where Kerry put five goals past Dublin, one of which came after Dublin goalkeeper Paddy Cullen argued with the referee over the awarding of a free. 'And while all this was going on, Mike Sheehy was running up to take the kick – and suddenly Paddy dashed back towards the goal like a woman who smells a cake burning.' Con always said the idea of a natural-born footballer or hurler was a myth, but sometimes myths are more powerful than the truth, especially when it comes to Kerry football.
Irish Independent
02-07-2025
- General
- Irish Independent
Phone Box Babies TV review: Revelations galore in shocking story of abandoned siblings
It was the common sense and gentleness of the three babies concerned – now in their 50s and 60s – that managed to pull the audience through. Also, Phone Box Babies is an RTÉ programme built on other programmes. First of all, the British programme Long Lost Family, hosted by Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell. We have all sobbed our way through Long Lost Family at one time or another, but never, probably, was the long-lost family so large. Here were three siblings who ended up looking for each other as well as looking for their parents. Long Lost Family has an off-shoot, Born Without Trace – surely the saddest title of all time – which concerns itself with babies who were physically abandoned by their parents. In a previous episode of Born Without Trace, it seemed that a significant proportion of the babies abandoned in the UK in the 1960s had been born to Irish parents. But David, John and Helen were not abandoned in Britain, they were abandoned in Belfast, Drogheda and Dundalk. In tartan shopping bags. On cold nights. They were carefully dressed and in good health and only a couple of days old. And all three were found by decent people. In January 1962, David had been found by a doctor's wife on the outskirts of Belfast after he had been left in her car outside her house. She discovered him when she went out to the car to bring in her shopping. In March 1968, Helen was found by a lorry driver, Donal Boyle, in a phone box in Dundalk. Donal was coming down from Belfast and he stopped in Dundalk on a very cold night for something to eat, and then remembered that he had to phone his landlady to ask her to leave a key out for him. As he went into the phone box, someone was leaving it, and that person got into a waiting car. It was John's daughter Donna who saw David and Helen on Long Lost Family and saw that 'David's hands were identical to my father's. I thought John's the middle child here. And he was' It was fascinating to see how emotional the finders of these babies – random strangers, after all – were about the children they had stumbled upon. Helen was reunited with Donal Boyle through Joe Duffy's Liveline, and in 2013 they met. Donal described it as one of the highlights, if not the highlight, of his life. In May 1965, Paul Murphy, a young reporter with the Evening Press, had found John in a phone box in Drogheda. Paul went to visit the baby in hospital – and also to write a piece about it for the Evening Press, which was accompanied by a great photograph. After that, Paul said sadly, the baby disappeared. He never knew what had happened to him. 'Then, in 2013, the baby turned up,' he said. Paul had been thinking about John over the years: 'Like a father, like a brother.' When they met they embraced. All three babies were adopted into loving families and each one was told that they had been adopted. 'I actually think that she made the right decision,' says David of his mother. ADVERTISEMENT Learn more 'They would have called me a bastard,' says John in a separate interview; and who can say that he's mistaken in that? It was quite chilling to see the siblings' adult relief at having escaped the Magdalene homes. It was David and Helen who were united by the Long Lost Family team – John was a later addition, only joining them when his daughter Donna, who had emigrated to Australia, saw David and Helen on Long Lost Family and saw that 'David's hands were identical to my father's…. I thought, 'John is the middle child here. And he was'.' Meanwhile, Davina McCall was telling David and Helen who their biological parents were. Billy Watson, a Protestant living in Dublin. And Marcella Somers, a Catholic from Kerry, who worked then in Dublin. But that wasn't the problem. The problem was that Billy was married – and had 14 children. Talk about a bombshell. One of Billy's nine surviving children from his marriage, William Watson, was happy to meet them. What a lovely man William turned out to be. His wife Breege looked supportive without saying a word – I sometimes think that wives and husbands aren't given enough credit as these explosive family stories detonate into their lives. Anyway, William explained that their father, Billy, had a band that played in Clerys, as well as around the country. He left the domestic duties to his wife. Marcella emerged as a dynamic woman, who was a great friend of the much more conservative Rosie Doherty, the mother of the snooker champion Ken Doherty. Ken remembered Marcella well, from the time she had lived in retirement accommodation in his home place of Ranelagh, Dublin. Marcella was musical, and played the accordion. In old age, Marcella had a doll, which she kept in her room and which she dressed carefully. Marcella died in Kerry in 2017, before her newly discovered children could reach her. David, John and Helen laid flowers on her grave. They don't think that they are the only children of Billy and Marcella to have been abandoned. There is talk of a fourth child, found in a phone box in Newry in 1963.
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
York in the 1980s: long-lost pub inside iconic York building - do you miss it?
TODAY'S archive photo takes us back more than 40 years to a long-lost bar in an iconic York building. The photo dates from 1981 and shows a couple relaxing in style inside the bar at The Bonding Warehouse, on the York riverside by Skeldergate Bridge. In the 1980s, the venue was a bar and restaurant - a totally different purpose from when it was first built in the 1800s to hold goods that were being traded through the bustling port of York. Fast forward 100 years and by the 1980s, The Bonding Warehouse was a popular watering hole and decent steak restaurant, winning praise from residents and tourists alike for its 'middle-of-the-road' meals at reasonable prices. In May 1985, Evening Press writer John Potts popped along to the old, restored warehouse to find the rather bleak-looking old building now a lively and welcoming eating place. By the 1990s it was a comedy venue; some of the biggest stars of today gigged there. The idea of a bonding warehouse for York had been discussed since 1833 when merchant traders held a meeting in Merchants Hall, York. Read more: Memories of York's Bonding Warehouse: from pub and steak house and comedy club to luxury living and offices - 150 years of change By August 1873, the warehouse was so 'busy' and 'packed full of goods' that by June 1874, plans had been drawn up to build an adjoining block of three storeys. After its reincarnations as a pub, restaurant and entertainment venue through the 1980s and 1990s by 2000 it closed, following the devastating floods of November that year. It is now an upmarket apartment block with office space. Share your photos and memories of York on our Facebook page Why We Love York - Memories. Find us at:
