Pat Clancy: a stalwart of St Paul’s, Brownstown, Westmeath
While Brownstown may no longer be the force they once were in Lake County hurling – they contested 13 Westmeath Examiner Cup finals between 1977 and 1993, winning nine of them – their legacy is enormous, and very few players contributed more in their glory days than Pat Clancy, who also starred in the county’s maroon and white colours for well over a decade.
Pat, who will turn 56 on St Patrick’s Day, spent the first seven years of his life in Athboy where his late father Larry worked. Originally from Tipperary, Larry played football in Athboy alongside future Westmeath GAA administrator and referee par excellence, Paddy Collins, and was a first cousin of former Premier County great and international show jumper, Larry Kiely. Pat’s mother Nora (“in great form to this day, thank God”) came from the Monaghan/Meath border. Nora is an aunt of Ollie Shanley, an All-Ireland winner with the Royal County in 1967, and is distantly related to Farney County legend, ‘Nudie’ Hughes. Pat is the eldest in the family, and has three brothers and one sister.
Understandably, he switched national schools from Athboy to Clonmellon when the family moved. To this day, his friends in Meath “never let my county switch pass without making a comment depending on the result when the two counties meet!”
His earliest memory of organised hurling was “aged 11 or 12 and that would have been with the great Paddy Monaghan. He would have had a jeep and he would call to people’s houses and could put 15 of us in the back of the jeep to go and play matches. We never had an exceptional underage team, but we always enjoyed it because Paddy made it enjoyable. His sudden death years later was a huge blow to the locality, as lads like him are more important now than ever in clubs,” he adds, while also lauding the contributions of people such as Paddy Bartley and Sonny Evans.
He is fulsome in his praise of the shrewd hurling brain of another Clonmellon man, the late Enda Carolan, a highly respected teacher in Oatlands College in Dublin and a major contributor to the progression of hurling in Kilmacud Crokes. Pat continues: “Enda also had a pub and grocery in the village. When I was a young fellow, he put my hurley on the scales used for weighing ham and told me, ‘that hurley is too heavy for you’. He shaved down the hurley and, from then on, he’d always supply me with the correct hurley. He often brought me to Croke Park for big games. I was a big fan of Pat Carroll from Offaly and, in typical teacher style, Enda would ask me questions about him and other lads on the way home as what they had done right and wrong. When I went on to play senior for Brownstown, Enda brought in hand-passing and a running game. Previously, you just hit the ball as hard you could and tried to pick out a colleague.”
In relation to his secondary schooldays in St Joseph’s, Athboy, Pat recalls: “I mainly played soccer, as Gaelic games weren’t really organised like they are today in the school”. With Brownstown not competing in premier championships at underage, he had very little tangible success in hurling until adulthood, but was pleased nonetheless to have played U16 for Westmeath under Jimmy Weldon and the aforementioned Paddy Monaghan. He modestly adds: “I never really thought I was good enough till I was about 17, as I wasn’t strong enough. As a young lad, I loved music and played the drums. I won a Leinster Fleadh medal at U14 level and then had to make the choice of GAA training or music on a Saturday. I would love to be able to play the drums still!”
Pat was brought into senior training aged 17 at a stage when the men in the famous blue and white colours dominated at senior level in the county. Aged just 18, he won his first Westmeath SHC medal in 1983. “I was brought on as a sub and caused consternation in the club by coming on for our star man Eugene Dolan”, he jovially states in relation to his future brother-in-law whose enormous workload to this day with both St Paul’s and Brownstown Pat acknowledges. “Eugene is still a kind of Pied Piper in St Paul’s organising all the young lads,” he opines.
Pat went on to add five more Westmeath SHC medals to his haul – 1985 (when he also won an intermediate medal), 1988 (as captain), 1989 (a year he was named as Westmeath Hurler of the Year), 1991 (again as skipper) and 1993 (the last of the club’s 15 senior titles), scoring 0-1, 0-3, 1-1, 2-3 and 0-6 respectively in the five deciders. However, his competitive streak is obvious in the regret he still expresses about losing consecutive finals in 1986 and 1987.
Reflecting back on that glorious period for Brownstown, Pat states: “We had a lot of players then. We had more than enough for two adult teams, intermediate and senior. In fact, we were losing lads because we couldn’t give them all games.” Sadly, this is far from the case nowadays with Brownstown well down the pecking order in Westmeath hurling.
As is the case throughout rural Ireland, large families are now a rarity in the Clonmellon area, with Pat recalling that “in my time, five or six families would make up a team. The Davis, Fitzsimons, Daly, Shaw, Reilly and Carr families brought groups of hurlers to the team. Then throw in the likes of Jimmy Henry, who was very underrated and would have been a nightmare to play on, and Eugene Dolan. Perhaps another reason that we fell back over the years was the amalgamation of three local primary schools into one, when Killalon and Archerstown closed and merged with Clonmellon. Young hurlers probably got less individual attention in bigger classes”.
There was an inevitability about Pat’s progression as a teenager to the Westmeath senior team after stints at underage. However, he laughs when recalling the circumstances of his surprise debut. Pat takes over: “I wasn’t even a regular on the Brownstown team when Westmeath were going to play Meath in the summer of 1984 for the Kearney Cup in Kilskyre. Kevin Lynch stopped me on the road and said, ‘go home and get your stuff’. I thought I was just making up numbers, but I ended up playing. There was no other Brownstown lad on the side, so I ended up as captain and lifted the trophy. I arrived home with a big cup dangling out of my boots and hurley as I walked up the village, much to the amusement of local butcher Bill McCarthy who asked me where it had come from!”
Pat was a Westmeath regular from late 1984 to early 1997. He just missed out on the county’s second All-Ireland ‘B’ win in 1984, but made amends seven years later before bowing out to a very good Antrim team in the quarter-final stage of the Liam MacCarthy Cup. After school, Pat went to Dundalk RTC to pursue a degree in electronic engineering. From there, he attended Westmeath training in Cullion with Ringtown’s James Kilcoyne who was a garda in Dundalk at the time.
“There were very few post-training treats those times, but we had some very good hurlers then,” Pat adds, honing in on players such as Sean Greville (“as good a goalie as there was in the country, and we were instructed by Enda Carolan to take points against him when we faced Raharney”), full back ‘Jogger’ Doyle Snr (“we tried to get him out of full back when we played Lough Lene Gaels”), midfielder Michael Kilcoyne (“he was a top-class hurler and once you mentioned Westmeath to a player from a big county his name would always be brought up, and it was remarkable to see four Kilcoyne brothers on the same Westmeath team”), and forward Michael Cosgrove (“he was great to play with, but we were bitter rivals of the Gaels in club hurling”). Among his friends in hurling to this day, Pat lists Ger Jackson and Eamonn Clarke (both from Castletown-Geoghegan) and the much-travelled, Eamonn Gallagher, originally from St Brigid’s.
The early years of Pat’s inter-county career coincided with Westmeath competing very favourably in the National League with all of the traditional counties. A second win over Tipperary in 25 months in November 1985 and an unlucky two-point loss to Kilkenny in the quarter-final some five months later were the highlights of the promotion-winning season to Division 1. Despite “a flop” in the championship against Laois in Croke Park, outstanding victories ensued in top flight games against Galway in Loughrea and Offaly in Birr later in the year.
Thinking back specifically to that sensational defeat of the Tribesmen, Pat states: “We had only 18 or 19 players that day. Noel Fitzsimons drove me to it and we parked on the hill in Loughrea half an hour before the game. Unlike now, we didn’t need to arrive 90 minutes early. There was a gale blowing and Noel looked at me and said, ‘I wonder what we’re in for today.’ We ending up losing the relegation play-off to Wexford when Dr Harris was busy stitching lots of our lads all through the game!”
Mention of the great win against Offaly, then one of the major powers in the small ball game, led to a question about how our southern neighbours could achieve two decades of outstanding success. Pat has an interesting theory: “Maybe it was because Offaly borders Galway and Tipperary and that there is an inter-club rivalry with those counties? Offaly lads going to school in places like Roscrea and Nenagh sees them mixing with lads who have underage All-Ireland medals. Our rivalries tend to be with Meath clubs. It’s too late to instil a winning mentality at 23/24. It’s ten years before that when it should happen. Then again, you could ask why haven’t Carlow and Laois made breakthroughs at inter-county level based on where they are located.”
When asked about difficult inter-county opponents, Pat names Brendan Keeshan from Offaly (“small but very sticky”) and Kilkenny’s Joe Hennessy (“a nightmare to play on, but a lovely man as well”). He also hurled “with and against Pete Finnerty”, the legendary Galway wing back.
Pat enjoyed a fair share of success also in Gaelic football “with virtually the same team as Brownstown when we togged out for St Paul’s. We wanted to play game after game, be it soccer including when Billy Foley was our manager, and then hurling or football on the same day. In 1989, St Paul’s won the intermediate football, Brownstown won the senior hurling, and our ladies won the junior camogie. Three of us played hurling for Westmeath in the league against Clare that October in Cusack Park and then changed gear, and we went on to beat Mullingar Shamrocks in the semi-final of Feis Cup afterwards.”
When queried as to when he finished hurling with Brownstown, Pat laughs as he promptly responds: “I never finished up! I hurled alongside my son Jack nine years ago in a junior ‘B’ game against Southern Gaels. If they asked me in the morning I’d probably still play!”
The aforementioned Jack (26) has played semi-professional soccer in a number of countries and is now based in Amsterdam. Pat and his wife Joan, a beautician with a business based in Mullingar, lived in Clonsilla for 15 years before relocating in 2001 in Clonmellon (“the 9/11 attacks happened when we were moving house and we had no electricity to watch the ongoing drama”). Ironically, in mini-games of soccer on the road close to the Clancy home in Clonsilla, some of young Jacks’ shots were saved by a neighbour and future Irish international goalkeeper, Niamh Reid Burke. Pat and Joan also have a 23-year-old Dublin-based daughter, Caoilainn, known to all as Keely.
Pat has been both a manager and selector teams at various levels of hurling. He has fond memories of managing the Westmeath minors in 2003, including a great league win against Wexford with a team featuring quality stickmen such as Paul Greville, Joe Clarke and Derek McNicholas. As a selector, he enjoyed working with Waterford’s Michael Ryan (“a gentleman”) and Johnny Greville (“probably the most intense manager I ever came across”).
After managing Brownstown to a Westmeath IHC win in 2008, the job as senior bainisteoir beckoned with Louth. Pat takes over: “Castletown-Geoghegan native Aidan Costelloe, a brother of Dessie’s, was instrumental in getting me involved up there, and he still continues to promote hurling with his club Knockbridge. I managed Louth for five years in two separate spells and I loved every minute of it. There are only three or four hurling clubs in the county and that creates massive rivalry. I would go up sometimes and there might be just ten at training, but by the time I was finished we would have 24 every night. It took me two years to get lads to think differently, to think like a team and to change their focus as they knew each other intimately.”
Pat also managed clubs in Cavan and Monaghan, and his take on the status of hurling in untraditional counties is interesting. He continues: “With Louth, we lost a couple of Nicky Rackard Cup finals and we had lads from Tipperary and Limerick involved over the years. Both Shane Fennell from Kilbeggan and Johnny Greville played when I was manager. Some local players admired the skill of ‘outsiders’ while others felt that it wasn’t fair that their places were being taken.
“In general, there aren’t enough lads that want to push it on. You need men on the ground to try and up the standard, but I did enjoy my time and would still be in touch with some of the lads. Unlike Westmeath where county managers have to beg for pitches, Louth have a great set-up in Darver. It is a facility second to none, but hurling is seen as a dangerous sport. Parents don’t want their kids hurling, as there is a perception that lads get broken up because they wear a helmet. They think it is easier to play football. A ‘hurling man’ is different from a ‘football man’. There are very few airs and graces to hurling people. Once you’re 23/24, you won’t ‘get’ hurling. Hurling comes to you between the ages of eight and 16.”
Pat’s lifetime fascination with computers originated in his love of CB radios as a child. His entire working career has been in software development. He has worked for major companies such as Cara (Aer Lingus), Bank of Ireland and AIB Bank. His banking assignments involved the installation of modems for ATM machines both north and south of the border. “I encountered some dangerous times when banks were being blown up and I had to travel up to Northern Ireland in a Republic-registered car,” he reflects.
Pat will always be grateful to Noel Fitzsimons, “who, in addition to his hurling brain, gave me work in 1985 when I had finished college and was destined for New York. Who knows how the story would have turned out otherwise?,” he asks rhetorically about a period when many of his fellow-countymen headed to – and, in some cases, stayed in – the ‘Big Apple’.
Those of us privileged to have watched Pat Clancy hurl for club and county will forever be glad that he chose to remain in Westmeath.
– Gerry Buckley