26 January 2021
22 January 2021
Patrick O’Riordan – True Grit by David Kissane
On Friday night Patrick O’Riordan travelled to the St Brendan’s AC AGM. It was his 33rd AGM of the club. Unbroken chain. It was also the shortest distance he ever had to travel to an AGM. About three metres. From his kitchen to his living room. His first zoom AGM. Virtually real.
It is indeed a virtual weekend for the club as the first St Brendan’s AC Virtual 5K is being hosted all weekend. Did mine yesterday morning. Out of bed early, locked and loaded for a decent run. The 1K standard warm-up jog followed by a routine series of Ursulated rotations and twists and turns. Then over to Mr Garmen and off like any sixty seven year-old pretending to be forty. Then as the adrenaline hits home I can hear the theme tune from Chariots of Fire playing in my brain and then Sissel sings Shenandoah. Then a Chopin waltz on the road. Strains of Johnny Cash singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic. The bare melancholy of the January trees blend with the beautiful presence of imagination and the hope of spring around the corner. There is poetry in my plod, savouring the delicious wonder of the running wander. I have a claw in my paw. Runuary bliss. I am Michelangelo and the Cistine ceiling is taking shape. Sixty seven and in heaven. Mr Garmen bleeps to tell me I am well ahead of schedule with the first two Ks. It’s an out and back course so I turn at 2.5K and bang! There is a counter-play to the perceived second half. A westerly strengthening wind hits me full on from expanding forehead to tapping toe. It’s a brake, a wall, a hindrance, a go-back shout from nature. Now the early wind-assisted pace makes sense. We don’t always notice the wind at our backs. Now I try to swim against Storm Virtual but there goes my hope of a decent performance as breathing and muscles and bones conspire with the wind to teach a humility lesson. The rest is a weak mono-movement. I fall across the finish point a broken runner. Virtually destroyed. When I hear that over 200 runners around the county and beyond supported the Virtual Run, then positivity returns and sure running is only a recreational thing anyway. Now who says that?
It’s a virtual state now. A virtual open sports? A virtual relay run? A virtual decathlon? A virtual track and field championships? There must be an app. A zoom world. People attend meetings in pyjamas. Electronic platforms. Hybrid AGMs. Group cams. Zoom buddies. People bursting in to the background looking for their runners during a live zoom. A cat leaps onto the laptop. Toilets flush in ear-range. Running gear visible on the bookshelf. Strange profile pics. Expleting when you think you’re muted. Gas world since our borders were rebranded by Covid. But it works.
As Patrick O’Riordan zooms out, elected once again as St Brendan’s AC president for another year, he probably passes his medal-holder in the hallway. Medals there stretching back to the days in the mid-1960s when he visited Murphy’s house on the Tralee road. Boxing was the game then. Dan, Hugh and John Murphy along with Patie Maguire were all good at boxing and to get fit, they ran. The fourteen year old Patrick joined them on the runs and was hooked. For a lifetime. The next step was to join St John’s AC in Tralee, the nearest athletic club. Road running and cross country excited Patrick and the other boys and they discovered that other fellas couldn’t keep up with them. The more they trained the luckier they got! In 1968 Patrick collected his first serious medal when he finished second to future Olympian Jerry Kiernan in the county U16 road championships in Listowel. He beat future Kerry football star Jimmy Deenihan that day in a hotly contested race. Patrick went to see the top athletes in the country in the national senior inter-counties and inter-clubs in Mallow that same year and cheered on his neighbour Tom O’Riordan (competing for Donore Harriers and Dublin) to a great victory over Mat Murphy (Rising Sun AC) and Joe O’Keeffe (Civil service AC). Patrick’s attention was equally focused on the junior race where Eddie Leddy (Leitrim) - his brother PJ was 7th in the senior race - had a fine win in a field that was graced with many future stars including Neil Cusack and John Hartnett. He wonders what happened to the pioneering women who were in the intermediate medals that day (there were no senior women): N Bowe (Tipperary), E Mountain (Waterford) and K Curley (Galway)?
Then the first Munster medal came. It was in 1969, the year of the first man on the moon. Patrick’s career went into orbit with a provincial medal achieved as a member of the Kerry U18 bronze medal-winning team in the cross country championships in Dromoland, Co Clare. The race was won by team mate Dan Murphy, ahead of Tony Durack of Clare with Kerry’s Sonny Fennell (Tarbert) in third. Tadgh O’Donoghue (Kenmare) was the next scorer in sixth position followed by Jerry Kiernan and John Galvin (both Listowel) and Patrick in close pursuit. The same year Mallow was the venue for the national championships and Patrick was on the U18 Kerry team that came 4th. By the end of that year, Patrick had recorded his first serious victory at county level when striding home first in a senior five mile handicap race in the Cows’ Lawn in Listowel ahead of team mate Pat Griffin with Donal Crowley in third.
Patrick’s first All Ireland medal came the next year (1970) in Grange, Co Cork when he was a member of the Kerry U20 team that got bronze in the national cross country championships. There were 190 runners in the race including his younger brother Willie. Then to Killarney in March for the Kerry senior cross country championships where he took bronze, and he completed the year with his first county championship cross country win. With a gritty run, now on a success-plateau, he won the Kerry intermediate cross title in Tralee. He enjoyed the celebrations that night in Ardfert and in the course of the post-race chat, the idea of starting a club in Ardfert was floated. Their identity needed to be reprofiled. When the Ardfert athletes woke up the next day, the idea hadn’t gone away.
And so by 1971, Ardfert AC was set up and had a dramatic early achievement when the team came third in the team race at the Munster junior cross country championships in Knockraha, Co Cork. Patrick was second team scorer for Ardfert AC (behind Dan Murphy who won the title for the third time) and Willie O’Riordan was close behind. Then later in the year, the new club hosted the county senior championships in the Cúl Trá in Banna and Patrick O’Riordan collected the silver medal behind Jerry Kiernan and led his club to bronze medals. More celebrations that night for the new club, now airborne although the earlier loss of Dan Murphy to Washington State University was a huge one.
The favourite training course for the Ardfert AC boys was the Banna-Barrow-Carrahane-Banna five mile circuit. Not for the faint-hearted with soft sand, road, dunes and mud in a sickening mixture of torture. Counter reformation stuff. They ran to find out like a painter paints to discover. On cold winter nights when the boys were getting ready to go to Banna, Patrick liked to “warm up” by placing his feet in Mikey O’Riordan’s oven in the Stanley range. Off down then to Banna and dash out of the car and hell for leather down the beach. Pebbles and stones flying off the running shoes if the tide was in. When God created Banna He was showing off. They could feel its feelingness. On one occasion, a man walking the beach in the dark of a November night was frightened out of his wits when he heard heavy breathing and footsteps in the darkness and ran for the dunes to escape from what he thought were the fairies from one of the local forts. Another night the group waited in the car for a bitter north-west shower of hailstones to clear before heading into the razor night. They waited and waited but the shower persisted and in the end came home runless because the Fugitive was on TV and couldn’t be missed. And the heat from the Stanley had worn off the toes. That was the exception that proved the rule because Patrick and his club-mates were ruthless.
Patrick made a dramatic start to 1972 with an inner freedom articulated by running. He won the county U20 (junior) cross country title in the Cúl Trá, leading the Ardfert AC team to gold in the process. Billy White Farranfore AC was in second and Kevin Tangney (Scartaglin) in third. While cross country and road running were the first loves of the Ardfert man, he soon made his mark on the track when racing to bronze in the 1500m later in the 1972 Kerry track and field championships on a misty June day in Ardfert sportsfield.
The next year brought silver in the county senior cross country championships in Farranfore behind the impressive Derry McCarthy (Farranfore AC). Patrick always liked the wrath and naked severity that Scahies offered to the cross country runners. He gloried in its primal muddy otherness. True grit. The following years saw the Ardfert man on the Kerry team for the national cross country championships in Mallow and Roscrea. Patrick’s visit to Mallow in 1974 on the Kerry team was a memorable one. There were atrocious conditions after a week of wind and rain but Tom O’Riordan (third) led the Kerry team to an overall fourth place and they received a special award for the most improved team. Donie Walsh (Leevale AC) and Dessie McGann (Civil Service) took gold and silver in front of Tom O’Riordan. The forever runners. These guys were jiving when the rest of us were learning how to walk. The day was memorable before the race when a Kerry team member was accidentally locked into one of the dressing sheds and was released only minutes before the start. The Ardfert team members and supporters, all six of them, were travelling home in a Morris Minor when a tree fell in front of them. The driver boldly drove on under the falling tree like Evel Knievel and came out safe at the other end.
Then hurling with St Brendan’s took over for Patrick for a number of years. Indeed he had been able to partake of both athletics and hurling up to then. He had already won a county minor hurling championship medal in 1969 when his running career was blossoming. As a competitive defender, he won two county senior hurling championship medals in 1975 and 1986 with a number of other grade medals in between and after.
An expert driver and a lover of cars, one of his favourite machines was a white Ford Capri with which he and others traversed the roads of North Kerry in the summer of life. Spring Shows, ploughing matches, football and hurling matches (not in that order), international cross countries, coursing. Stories to be told.
While Ardfert AC discontinued in the 1980s, Patrick was involved in the formation of the new club, St Brendan’s AC in October 1987 and was elected senior secretary. He went on to serve his time in the county board as treasurer and to lend assistance whenever needed. One of his proudest days in sport was when St Brendan’s AC won the Quill Cup for the first time, closely followed by the club’s top club in Munster award. Still keeping a super(natural) level of fitness, he went on to compete at veteran (master) level and broke new ground with successful appearances as a relay runner, long jumper and high jumper from O35 up to O65 . His consistency in the masters’ long and high jumps at national level is nothing short of phenomenal with gold and silvers by the chestful, the most recent coming in 2018 in Tullamore.
There is always a hint of joie de vivre when Patrick recalls his days in athletics. The famous Kerryman photograph of the athletes washing in a hole of water in Scahies after the county senior cross country championships in 1973 is remembered with humour. His plan to up his raining to two days a week a few years ago was received with amazement by those who train every day. Patrick maintained that a six-day rest period is vital for freshness. His favourite circuit for a run in recent years is his beloved Cúl Tra circuit: from Banna Prom north towards the Black Rock, then right by the lock-gate and onto the Cúl Trá and back by the road. I have ran that course with him (usually behind him) many times. I noticed a few years ago that he got into the habit of bringing his dog, June with him. When I got cheeky and tried to run past him, I swear to God that he had the dog trained to run across me, breaking my stride and ensuring that no passing out was allowed. When June passed on to her doggy heaven, he trained the amiable Abbey to do the same.
Patrick admits that he had very few poor races in his long career as he searches through the layers of the past. He does cite a Cork to Cobh race back in the 1980s as one of the worst. The body didn’t like the questions it was being asked. Any run over five miles was a no-no after that.
Well known far and wide as an athlete, a hurler and as an Atlantic Oils man (he was recruited by its founder Denis Horgan), he also knows every corner of North Kerry and its people and beyond. Conversations with him in his favourite Abbey Tavern, McElligott’s, Kirby’s or Kate Browne’s was always an education in itself (and will be again when normality returns).
And he’s not finished yet! True grit.
18 January 2021
St.Brendan's AC Virtual 5K - 2021
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)