Nenagh Éire Óg hope to bridge 30 year gap to last Tipp SHC success

By John Harrington

30 years have passed since Nenagh Éire Óg won their one and only Tipperary senior hurling championship, but Conor O’Donovan’s recall of what was a twisting, turning season remains crystal clear.

By then he was 33 years old and in his 15^th season of senior club championship and the fact that the ultimate success came late made it all the sweeter for the team captain.

“It was a bit like a dream coming true, to be perfectly honest with you,” O’Donovan told GAA.ie.

“For a few years prior to that it was probably going to look like it might be a step too far for us, for me anyway. Time seemed to be starting to run out for me. So, for it to actually happen when it did was fantastic.

“I remember thinking I can't believe this is happening, that we're actually after winning it.”

Nenagh had been a coming team for a few years before 1995, winning north titles in 1992 and 1993 and losing the county final to Toomevara by just a single point in 1993.

That was a game they could have won and the loss looked like an even bigger missed opportunity when their fortunes slumped the following year.

The team needed a shot of adrenalin, and team captain O’Donovan and club chairperson, Ger Gavin, decided that Pad Joe Whelahan was the man who could provide it.

The Offaly native was already training three other teams at the time, including his native Birr, but O’Donovan and Gavin wouldn’t take no for an answer and eventually Whelehan agreed to come on board.

“When we fell completely flat in 1994 things were looking bleak, but Pad Joe came in and injected a bit of fresh energy into us,” says O’Donovan.

“When Pad Joe came on board he put a very strong emphasis on our fitness earlier in the year which would not have been the case previous to that. That enabled us to win the North Tipp league and the prize for that was a back door into the county championship where you’d play the beaten north finalist in a preliminary quarter-final.

“We didn't qualify for the North championship final, but we came in through the backdoor. To me, that was a key difference Pad Joe made, he had us doing a lot more speed training earlier in the year.”

Whelehan also brought with him a determination to challenge the belief at large that Nenagh were ‘soft’ townies.

It was a charge that was levelled regularly at them, and one that unsurprisingly grated with the players.

“That perception is still there,” says O’Donovan. “This idea that town teams are traditionally soft mentally, whatever about physically.

“But, at the same time, I would have met a couple of players from other clubs over the years socially and from their experience of playing against us it was a myth that we were soft.

“We were tough. I think it's more a case of not being able to produce performances at a high level consistently, that's where it was.

“What you would put that down to, I don't know. Maybe you could say we didn't manage to produce it on the day or at a crucial moments in the game.

“Sometimes the Gods went against us or whatever, but until 1995 we weren't quite able to make it happen.”

The Nenagh team that emerged through the backdoor into the knock-out rounds of the Tipperary senior hurling championship were determined to change the narrative.

They showed no shortage of both physical and mental grit to beat Borrisoleigh after a replay in the county preliminary quarter-final, and that would prove to be a recurring theme.

“That win over Borrisoleigh got us into the county quarter final where we played Mullinahone and we beat them by four points in what was a real dog-fight," says O'Donovan.

“We got a very fortuitous goal. John Heffernan was playing corner forward and a high delivery was sent in to him from Michael Cleary and it was a landing between John and the cornerback for Mullinahone and it bounced off of somebody's helmet and ended up in the net.

“The big debate was, was it off John Heffernan's helmet or was it off the cornerback's helmet? John claimed the credit for it anyway, but I’m not so sure!

“It was a crucial moment and I think we actually won by four points in the finish.

“The semi-final then against Cashel is the match from 1995 that stands out most in my memory.

“Ten minutes into the second half they got a goal to go seven points up. And to be perfectly honest with you, I thought to myself, that's that, we're gone. But we got a couple of points and we just chipped away.

“With about a minute to go we were two points down and one of our wing-forwards, Chris Bonar, delivered the ball into the full forward line. Robbie Tomlinson got it in his hand and I didn't even see a point even coming but somehow Robbie stuck the ball in the net and that put us a point up going into the last 30 seconds.

“From the subsequent puck-out Cashel had a chance. Their full forward Willie Fitzelle got the ball just a small bit to the side of the small square. And I thought, ‘oh feck, he's going to stick in the net’, but he stuck it actually into the side netting.

“It went wide and the ball was pucked out and the final whistle was blown, much to our relief. I couldn't believe it.”

Considering how deep they had to dig and how hard they hard to scrap to get to the county final against Boherlahan, their subsequent 2-25 to 2-8 victory in the decider was almost surreal, though O’Donovan swears he couldn’t relax until they banged in two late goals.

30 years later he’s still able to tap into the surge of emotion he felt when the final whistle blew and climbed the steps to lift the Dan Breen Cup for Nenagh Éire Óg.

“I have a lovely photograph afterwards with my late father on the pitch with the two of us holding the cup,” he says.

“It was just incredible. The Dan Breen Cup and you think of the history of Dan Breen and who he was and all of that in terms of Irish history...it was just magic. Absolute magic.

“When I got the Cup I was very pleased to be able to mention a lot of Nenagh supporters who I got to know over the years who had unfortunately passed away but never got to see it happen. But I got to mention them by name during my speech. To me, that was important.

“It was just a fantastic day and it was great to relive it in 2022 when we met up as the jubilee team and had a reception afterwards in the Abbey Court Hotel where they showed some video highlights of the 1995 county final.

“I saw myself there with our then club chairman, the late Ger Gavin, embracing one another on the pitch after the game A big hug. I thought, 'wow!' That really struck a chord with me, to be honest. I'm getting a small bit emotional here now even thinking about it.

“I couldn't remember embracing him to that extent. He was the most fantastic Chairman. He would lived, breathed, and died for the club, that kind of thing. It was great to be able to relive the day again.”

O’Donovan has a keen appreciation for his life in hurling because growing up in Effin in Limerick he never dreamed of some day winning two All-Ireland titles with Tipperary and captaining Nenagh to a county championship.

It was work with Allied Irish Bank that brought him to the north Tipperary town as a young man, though there was a previous family connection too because his uncle Terry Moloney won a north Tipp title with Nenagh in 1964.

“I sometimes might have to pinch myself a small bit when think of what has happened for me hurling-wise, since I started hurling for Nenagh all those years ago,” says O’Donovan. "It's just been incredible. I couldn't have imagined it. It’s been a most marvellous honour, I have to say.

“There's a lot of heartache as well but I probably achieved more than I could have ever dreamed of, playing hurling with Nenagh. Between what we won at the club and getting to play with Tipperary subsequently, and having a bit of success with Tipperary.

“I could never imagine anything like that ever happening to me to be honest with you. I'm just blessed and honoured and chuffed and all that kind of stuff.I don't ever take it for granted that it happened.”

O’Donovan still gives back to his adopted club every wednedsay evening by organising a social ground-hurling session with a twist.

They play using a size three football rather than a sliotar, and the genesis of the game can actually be traced all the way back to 1995.

After winning the Tipperary championship Nenagh were then well-beaten in the Munster Final by Sixmilebridge, and O’Donovan was convinced what did for them was the fact their training was curtailed when the winter evenings came in because they had no floodlights.

So when the Nenagh junior team he played for reached the county final in 2000 he was determined the same thing wouldn’t happen again.

“I'm 38 at this stage, I'm the elder statesman of the bunch of lads,” says O’Donovan. “What we had was a small bit of light from the pavilion onto the outside field.

“The light wouldn't be strong enough to play a game with a sliotar, but I thought maybe we could play some sort of game with this small size three plastic football I had at home.

“And, you know yourself, when you pick two nine-a-side teams it quickly becomes a bit competitive. We ended up having six or eight of those 'matches’. You'd have a few pucks initially with a sliotar, then you'd play a 30 minute game of belting this small football up and down the field.

“We'd finish then in the last 15 minutes pucking a sliotar to one another again so you'd have the feel of the hurley and sliotar in your hand after leaving.

“I believe those games really contributed to us going on and winning the junior county final afterwards against Thurles Fennellys. We had a men sent off 20 minutes into that final. We were playing against the wind in the second-half and four times we fell behind by a point.

“The first three times we got a point to draw level, and the fourth time which was late on in the game we got a goal to go two points up and then a point from a free and won the game by three points. I do believe that pucking that football competitively in our training sessions is what kept our competitiveness and fitness up.

“We had social hurling going in the summer of 2023 and 2024 but then we ran out of light and it just came to me, if fellas wanted to do a bit of hurling over the winter then maybe we could do again what we did in 2000 for the junior final

“It’s all ground hurling, there's no points, there's no handling the ball whatsoever and no kicking the ball. We've made up our own rules and everyone sticks to them. It's a great workout and it's keeping us all young.

“I'm 63 now and it's after bringing my body back to life and it's amazing the people it's bringing us all into contact with.”

The only man to ever captain Nenagh Éire Óg to a Tipperary senior hurling championship hasn’t hung up his hurley yet but he’s hoping he’ll be able to retire that title on Sunday when Nenagh play Loughmore-Castliney in this year’s Tipp SHC final hoping to bridge a 30 year gap since their solitary success.

“It would be fantastic and would be well-deserved at this stage,” he says. “There's a great pool of talent there throughout the team. You talk about the blend of ages we had in 1995, it's something similar with this team.

“However, what you have in this team is more inter-county players than we would have had in our time. Guys who have had success.

“It would be a very fitting reward to all that talent that's been coming up through the club for the last few years if they can now deliver success for the club at senior level.

“Since 1995 we've lost five county finals. All those times I did feel confident. What I'll say now is that I'm optimistic. I felt confident before and we lost. This time I'm optimistic.”