Down Relay Road
By David Kissane, St Brendan’s AC
I am plodding up Station Road. It’s another Saturday morning virtual run. We have been commanded by Coach Ursula to do a 3K run on Strava this week. I woke up last night thinking about it. It was the cramps in my left hamstring that woke me…a reminder that we did fourteen speed runs last Thursday and now it’s the notorious 48 hour lactic low. I am doing the run early so that it will be over before I fully wake up. My mind drifts back thirty years…
Ole, olé, olé! The whole of the Irish world was enthralled with Italia 90 and another big game was coming up in an hour. What were some members of a St Brendan’s AC 4 x 100m relay team doing? Searching for a Munster medal won some hours earlier and lost in the long grass at the entrance to Kerry General Hospital.
On the way back from the Munsters in Waterford the team and the manager had to pay a quick visit to a mother in the hospital. The athletes decided to play hunts as a cool-down in the hospital lawn and the medal was lost. There were temporary tears, as most tears are. Serious searching took place. Time was of the essence but the team manager was the hero as he found the medal quite a distance away and represented it to the owner. Celebrations for the second time that day and into the car and home to watch another Ireland game. Orla Fitzgerald, do you still have that relay medal?
The week after, the same girls were to watch Ireland beat Romania on penalties – the nation held its breath – before going to play Community Games rounders in Oakpark in a friendly with Sandy Erb’s excellent team. Another week later, this weekend thirty years ago, that St Brendan’s team were to come 4th in the All Irelands in The Morton Stadium in Santry where snowballs as big as marbles fell on the tartan during the action. Of course I had transported all the team in my Cortina to Dublin. Then we watched the Ireland v Italy world cup quarter final in a pub in Monasterevin on the way home. We had Taytos and Cidona. Ireland beaten but heroic, the relay team with no medals…what time was training on Tuesday!
Two years previously, that same relay team were the first St Brendan’s AC team to win Munster gold relay medals in Templemore shortly after the club was formed. They were to medal in the Munsters every year till they completed their juvenile odyssey at U18 level. The stories that surround that string of victories are many, as are the stories that surround all the other club relay successes over the years…other athletes, other stories. It’s not just the race, it’s the befores and afters. It’s the thing around the thing that is the thing.
The 4 x 100m relays have been central to athletics since the Olympic Games introduced the event in 1912 in Stockholm for men, where no bronze medals were awarded and in 1928 for women in Amsterdam, where full sets of medals were presented. The US dominated the Olympic 4 x 100 until recent times while the women’s honours were more disparate. The Penn Relays and the Drake Relays in the US were huge occasions. Relays are still rare enough events internationally, which is to the detriment of athletics. In a relay race you can run but you can’t hide.
I was lucky as an athletics coach to have been fully exposed to the relay bug in Tarbert Comprehensive School from 1984 when I joined the staff there and became athletics coach with John O’Connor. For four consecutive incredible years our relay teams medalled in the All Ireland schools, harvesting two gold and two bronze.
When we founded St Brendan’s AC in 1987, relays were fundamental to building a strong club. In fact, the club foundation may have been partially inspired by the holding of an intra-parish fun relay for a field evening in the summer of 1987. Relay teams from a few areas in the parish were organised and such was the response that training was done and seeds were sown. When the club was born, Tom Kelly and others would say “ If we had another runner we could have a relay team there!” or even “If we had another three runners we could build a relay team around that sprinter!” And it was true. A club can be built around relays. A shot-putter would run if needed in a relay team; a speedy footballer would be summoned if a team lacked one; a runner who has no other event may be taught how to walk or throw the javelin to pass away the time before the relay comes around at the end of the day; one relay team of juveniles will generate another one as friends want to be involved; a team of boys may attract along a team of girls or vice versa and so suddenly the club has a buzz going. And the techniques were easily taught: the fastest runner goes last, the second fastest goes first, discover a bend runner for third and put in someone else, and go right hand to left hand and see what happens!
Getting relay batons were not easy in the 1980s. John Kelly and Bill Kelly were always proficient in improvising in an emergency. Timmy McCarthy would always have an idea or two as he and Delia brought their three children to training from Ballinprior. The whitethorn branches of the trees in Walnut Grove field were accessible as long as the thorns were removed before the relay. Wood from McCowen’s in Tralee was sweet. One evening a mother was heard complaining that her yard brush handle had got much shorter! One ambitious athlete arrived on an April evening with the handle of a wheelbarrow. Wavin piping was very handy (Séamus McCarthy of Clounalour AC made lovely ones), although they were a bit light. A length of nettle was even introduced by one of our boys on a memorable occasion. But the Thursday evening we brought a packet of shining new aluminium batons, red, yellow, blue and gold, to a training session, the relays took on a new aura. After all these were the same type of baton used in the Olympics. I can still see the light in the eyes of the athletes. It was the one evening Miriam O’Hara didn’t say “David, do I have to run!”
Training for the relays took many forms, but from the earliest indoor sessions in Ardfert Community Centre and outdoor in Banna car park (where there were always over 100 athletes twice a week), the out-and-back relay was the highlight. This was usually all the boys in a line behind each other versus all the girls, arranged in the various age-groups by Mary Sinnott, Mary Kelly, Peggy O’Sullivan, Ann Marie McCarthy, Terry Higgins and more. The whistle went and there was atomic-volume support until everyone had run. Sometimes there was a second and third round. Luckily we still have videos of a few of these sessions. When training moved to Walnut Grove, we introduced a rugby ball on some occasions instead of a baton and the athletes loved it. Balloons were used on other occasions, as were wellies and a host of other simple equipment. The joy of those sessions was boundless, and the cheering could be heard a mile away. Neighbours were saying “you have those children driven mad!” Parents often confirmed to us that their children always slept soundly after the bi-weekly sessions. Even when the technicalities were perfected in other sessions coming up to championships, we would still bring each session to a finale with the old out-and-back relay. The relay is a team effort and the end-of-session relays brought the whole club together. Relays were the full stops in our athletic sentences.
When one generation of coaches and officials passed on the metaphorical baton to the next group in the club and Community Games in the late 1990s, Ger O’Mahony, Ann Crowley and others kept the tradition going and passed on to yet another team later. And so the relay went on. Each generation will have their own tales to tell of relay fun and success.
Of course there are other relays beside the 4 x 100m. The 4 x 400m was important on championship days for points and was central to St Brendan’s AC coming in as runner-up for the men’s Quill Cup at the county senior championships in the 1990s and ultimately winning it some years later. The relays were key to the club’s ladies winning the senior cup for the first time in the 1990s. There were medley relays in Tralee in the 1990s and cross country relays are now a big day out in the winter. Community Games had a massive part in promoting cross country relays in the 1990s with the inter counties relays in Mosney in May. John Bunyan and Eamon Whelan were excellent managers of some of the Kerry teams that shone there and many Ardfert Kilmoyley athletes were part of that excitement. Indeed one can say that football and hurling and all ball games are relays in their own way. The running of organisations is indeed a relay process also, with some participants expertly passing the baton on time and others holding on too long! The late Dermot Morgan as Fr Trendy would no doubt have said all of life is a relay, with all of us dropping the baton at some stage.
There are multitudes of relay memories to traverse. Some are history and some will be forever legend. The winning of the first ever club Munster title, the first ever (and still only) gold medal win in the national Community Games in Mosney by the Ardfert Kilmoyley mixed relay team and many other events will be recorded in history but the anecdotes are the ones that bring a smile. Tina O’Sullivan walked into a lamp-post in Mosney the evening before a national finals (but recovered to run to a podium finish); Caroline Wallace remembers a dropped baton which grows in the re-telling; a 3rd runner on a St Brendan’s relay team was advised to “keep going” during a relay at Knockanure sports when the fourth runner was not visible, thereby running two legs unknown to the judges; Cathal O’Riordan broke his hand the week before a national finals but the sub played his part in the final; Shaz Malik running in a tight jeans in the masters’ county championships a few years ago; family relays at the St Brendan’s AC open sports where someone looked around while twenty yards in the lead and waved to the crowd only to be overtaken ten metres from the line; the presence of no fewer than three St Brendan’s AC masters’ men’s relay teams in the 2019 county championships with John Clifford making a return to the big time; the Born to Run relays in Tralee where a team celebrated on the podium only to be told that they had lost; and a similar celebration in the Munster championships when a team celebrated an assumed win only to discover that they had run in a heat and not a final!
There was a particular county masters championships held in Ardfert sportsfield in the 1990s and the relay would decide the destination of the best club award. A member of the strongest opposing team was seen to remove a plaster-cast so that he could compete in the relay. I always admired his bravery but the St Brendan’s AC team won that evening after a titanic battle. The sub for the home team that evening was Fr Johnny Healy and he proudly took his county relay medal back to the US where he still serves his parish.
There is one particular relay that is remembered by my left hamstring. A form of muscle memory that still pulls me back! Christy Murray is on his marks in the Munster masters’ intercounty 4 x 100m in Cork IT track. I await in zone one to take the baton. I have pulled my upper hamstring in the 100m an hour earlier but there only four runners and I can’t let down the county! Bang goes the gun and bang goes Christy and I watch him power up the track towards me like a bullet. I hear “hand” and I feel the baton drop in my palm. Off I go and bang goes the upper hamstring. Pain barrier here we come as I roar in anguish till I hand over to Patrick O’Riordan who rounds the bend and passes on to Donal Crowley who powers home to win the Munster title. I couldn’t run again for a month but I was reminded by a colleague that sure I couldn’t run very well anyway! I thought of that relay as Christy was laid to rest some time ago.
Relays ensure that an athletics meet is brought to a proper conclusion. The crowd will stay on till the last relay is over. A meet without relays is a day without an evening.
I would like to think that just before days’ end I would number among the treasured memories of life a hot summer’s day of open sports or championships. The end of the meet would be graced by the relays. The runners would be standing with hungry hands poised and eager for action at their starting points around the track. The commentator would ask for hush. Parents, grandparents, relations, supporters, coaches, athletes would focus on the shiny batons flashing at the start line. A charged silence would follow: zone one, white flag; zone two, white flag; zone three, white flag. Over to you Mr Starter. On your marks… set…
There are a thousand stories down relay road.
Think deeply. You have a relay story too.
Ole, olé, olé! The whole of the Irish world was enthralled with Italia 90 and another big game was coming up in an hour. What were some members of a St Brendan’s AC 4 x 100m relay team doing? Searching for a Munster medal won some hours earlier and lost in the long grass at the entrance to Kerry General Hospital.
On the way back from the Munsters in Waterford the team and the manager had to pay a quick visit to a mother in the hospital. The athletes decided to play hunts as a cool-down in the hospital lawn and the medal was lost. There were temporary tears, as most tears are. Serious searching took place. Time was of the essence but the team manager was the hero as he found the medal quite a distance away and represented it to the owner. Celebrations for the second time that day and into the car and home to watch another Ireland game. Orla Fitzgerald, do you still have that relay medal?
The week after, the same girls were to watch Ireland beat Romania on penalties – the nation held its breath – before going to play Community Games rounders in Oakpark in a friendly with Sandy Erb’s excellent team. Another week later, this weekend thirty years ago, that St Brendan’s team were to come 4th in the All Irelands in The Morton Stadium in Santry where snowballs as big as marbles fell on the tartan during the action. Of course I had transported all the team in my Cortina to Dublin. Then we watched the Ireland v Italy world cup quarter final in a pub in Monasterevin on the way home. We had Taytos and Cidona. Ireland beaten but heroic, the relay team with no medals…what time was training on Tuesday!
Two years previously, that same relay team were the first St Brendan’s AC team to win Munster gold relay medals in Templemore shortly after the club was formed. They were to medal in the Munsters every year till they completed their juvenile odyssey at U18 level. The stories that surround that string of victories are many, as are the stories that surround all the other club relay successes over the years…other athletes, other stories. It’s not just the race, it’s the befores and afters. It’s the thing around the thing that is the thing.
The 4 x 100m relays have been central to athletics since the Olympic Games introduced the event in 1912 in Stockholm for men, where no bronze medals were awarded and in 1928 for women in Amsterdam, where full sets of medals were presented. The US dominated the Olympic 4 x 100 until recent times while the women’s honours were more disparate. The Penn Relays and the Drake Relays in the US were huge occasions. Relays are still rare enough events internationally, which is to the detriment of athletics. In a relay race you can run but you can’t hide.
I was lucky as an athletics coach to have been fully exposed to the relay bug in Tarbert Comprehensive School from 1984 when I joined the staff there and became athletics coach with John O’Connor. For four consecutive incredible years our relay teams medalled in the All Ireland schools, harvesting two gold and two bronze.
When we founded St Brendan’s AC in 1987, relays were fundamental to building a strong club. In fact, the club foundation may have been partially inspired by the holding of an intra-parish fun relay for a field evening in the summer of 1987. Relay teams from a few areas in the parish were organised and such was the response that training was done and seeds were sown. When the club was born, Tom Kelly and others would say “ If we had another runner we could have a relay team there!” or even “If we had another three runners we could build a relay team around that sprinter!” And it was true. A club can be built around relays. A shot-putter would run if needed in a relay team; a speedy footballer would be summoned if a team lacked one; a runner who has no other event may be taught how to walk or throw the javelin to pass away the time before the relay comes around at the end of the day; one relay team of juveniles will generate another one as friends want to be involved; a team of boys may attract along a team of girls or vice versa and so suddenly the club has a buzz going. And the techniques were easily taught: the fastest runner goes last, the second fastest goes first, discover a bend runner for third and put in someone else, and go right hand to left hand and see what happens!
Getting relay batons were not easy in the 1980s. John Kelly and Bill Kelly were always proficient in improvising in an emergency. Timmy McCarthy would always have an idea or two as he and Delia brought their three children to training from Ballinprior. The whitethorn branches of the trees in Walnut Grove field were accessible as long as the thorns were removed before the relay. Wood from McCowen’s in Tralee was sweet. One evening a mother was heard complaining that her yard brush handle had got much shorter! One ambitious athlete arrived on an April evening with the handle of a wheelbarrow. Wavin piping was very handy (Séamus McCarthy of Clounalour AC made lovely ones), although they were a bit light. A length of nettle was even introduced by one of our boys on a memorable occasion. But the Thursday evening we brought a packet of shining new aluminium batons, red, yellow, blue and gold, to a training session, the relays took on a new aura. After all these were the same type of baton used in the Olympics. I can still see the light in the eyes of the athletes. It was the one evening Miriam O’Hara didn’t say “David, do I have to run!”
Training for the relays took many forms, but from the earliest indoor sessions in Ardfert Community Centre and outdoor in Banna car park (where there were always over 100 athletes twice a week), the out-and-back relay was the highlight. This was usually all the boys in a line behind each other versus all the girls, arranged in the various age-groups by Mary Sinnott, Mary Kelly, Peggy O’Sullivan, Ann Marie McCarthy, Terry Higgins and more. The whistle went and there was atomic-volume support until everyone had run. Sometimes there was a second and third round. Luckily we still have videos of a few of these sessions. When training moved to Walnut Grove, we introduced a rugby ball on some occasions instead of a baton and the athletes loved it. Balloons were used on other occasions, as were wellies and a host of other simple equipment. The joy of those sessions was boundless, and the cheering could be heard a mile away. Neighbours were saying “you have those children driven mad!” Parents often confirmed to us that their children always slept soundly after the bi-weekly sessions. Even when the technicalities were perfected in other sessions coming up to championships, we would still bring each session to a finale with the old out-and-back relay. The relay is a team effort and the end-of-session relays brought the whole club together. Relays were the full stops in our athletic sentences.
When one generation of coaches and officials passed on the metaphorical baton to the next group in the club and Community Games in the late 1990s, Ger O’Mahony, Ann Crowley and others kept the tradition going and passed on to yet another team later. And so the relay went on. Each generation will have their own tales to tell of relay fun and success.
Of course there are other relays beside the 4 x 100m. The 4 x 400m was important on championship days for points and was central to St Brendan’s AC coming in as runner-up for the men’s Quill Cup at the county senior championships in the 1990s and ultimately winning it some years later. The relays were key to the club’s ladies winning the senior cup for the first time in the 1990s. There were medley relays in Tralee in the 1990s and cross country relays are now a big day out in the winter. Community Games had a massive part in promoting cross country relays in the 1990s with the inter counties relays in Mosney in May. John Bunyan and Eamon Whelan were excellent managers of some of the Kerry teams that shone there and many Ardfert Kilmoyley athletes were part of that excitement. Indeed one can say that football and hurling and all ball games are relays in their own way. The running of organisations is indeed a relay process also, with some participants expertly passing the baton on time and others holding on too long! The late Dermot Morgan as Fr Trendy would no doubt have said all of life is a relay, with all of us dropping the baton at some stage.
There are multitudes of relay memories to traverse. Some are history and some will be forever legend. The winning of the first ever club Munster title, the first ever (and still only) gold medal win in the national Community Games in Mosney by the Ardfert Kilmoyley mixed relay team and many other events will be recorded in history but the anecdotes are the ones that bring a smile. Tina O’Sullivan walked into a lamp-post in Mosney the evening before a national finals (but recovered to run to a podium finish); Caroline Wallace remembers a dropped baton which grows in the re-telling; a 3rd runner on a St Brendan’s relay team was advised to “keep going” during a relay at Knockanure sports when the fourth runner was not visible, thereby running two legs unknown to the judges; Cathal O’Riordan broke his hand the week before a national finals but the sub played his part in the final; Shaz Malik running in a tight jeans in the masters’ county championships a few years ago; family relays at the St Brendan’s AC open sports where someone looked around while twenty yards in the lead and waved to the crowd only to be overtaken ten metres from the line; the presence of no fewer than three St Brendan’s AC masters’ men’s relay teams in the 2019 county championships with John Clifford making a return to the big time; the Born to Run relays in Tralee where a team celebrated on the podium only to be told that they had lost; and a similar celebration in the Munster championships when a team celebrated an assumed win only to discover that they had run in a heat and not a final!
There was a particular county masters championships held in Ardfert sportsfield in the 1990s and the relay would decide the destination of the best club award. A member of the strongest opposing team was seen to remove a plaster-cast so that he could compete in the relay. I always admired his bravery but the St Brendan’s AC team won that evening after a titanic battle. The sub for the home team that evening was Fr Johnny Healy and he proudly took his county relay medal back to the US where he still serves his parish.
There is one particular relay that is remembered by my left hamstring. A form of muscle memory that still pulls me back! Christy Murray is on his marks in the Munster masters’ intercounty 4 x 100m in Cork IT track. I await in zone one to take the baton. I have pulled my upper hamstring in the 100m an hour earlier but there only four runners and I can’t let down the county! Bang goes the gun and bang goes Christy and I watch him power up the track towards me like a bullet. I hear “hand” and I feel the baton drop in my palm. Off I go and bang goes the upper hamstring. Pain barrier here we come as I roar in anguish till I hand over to Patrick O’Riordan who rounds the bend and passes on to Donal Crowley who powers home to win the Munster title. I couldn’t run again for a month but I was reminded by a colleague that sure I couldn’t run very well anyway! I thought of that relay as Christy was laid to rest some time ago.
Relays ensure that an athletics meet is brought to a proper conclusion. The crowd will stay on till the last relay is over. A meet without relays is a day without an evening.
I would like to think that just before days’ end I would number among the treasured memories of life a hot summer’s day of open sports or championships. The end of the meet would be graced by the relays. The runners would be standing with hungry hands poised and eager for action at their starting points around the track. The commentator would ask for hush. Parents, grandparents, relations, supporters, coaches, athletes would focus on the shiny batons flashing at the start line. A charged silence would follow: zone one, white flag; zone two, white flag; zone three, white flag. Over to you Mr Starter. On your marks… set…
There are a thousand stories down relay road.
Think deeply. You have a relay story too.
The St Brendan's AC relay team who won honours in the Munster relay championships every year from the late 1980s th the mid 1990s
Ceara Devane, Sinéad Kissane, Paula McCarthy and Natalie O'Connor.
Ceara Devane, Sinéad Kissane, Paula McCarthy and Natalie O'Connor.
