SPORTING PASSIONS BROTHER DENIS MINEHANE Seán Kennytalks to the Presentation Brother who perhaps did more than most to foster hurling in Birr through his work as a schoolteacher and principal
HURLING ABOUNDS in the quotidian details of life in Birr. In parallel checkout queues in the Lidl at the edge of town while barcode scanners beep, two women discuss a recent club match. Shops and pubs and houses around the town hang flags, red and green, in the club's colours. On any given day one might bump into All-Ireland winners on its streets.
No individual made the town as synonymous with hurling as it has become, but one Presentation Brother perhaps did more than most to foster the game through his work as a schoolteacher and principal.
To twist a phrase popular in his home county, he is Bantry by birth, Birr by the grace of God. Clerical circumstance had it that in 1961, Brother Denis Minehane was posted to the Presentation Brothers' school in the Offaly town. The switch of counties entailed a change of codes. He had coached football with some success in Coláiste Chriost Rí in Cork. Birr was different. Birr was hurling, in a nationally modest but intensely local way.
"Football was foreign here, as foreign nearly as some other truly foreign games you might mention. So it was a hurling area, with a great tradition going way back. In the school, you're just a field away from Tipperary. Not that we think we're influenced by Tipperary; we've our own tradition," he adds with a grin.
"It was a natural thing for me to get involved in hurling. It would have been terribly wrong for me to start bringing in football. Hurling was in the school already."
Ripples of success slowly started emanating outwards. The first obstacle was the simple mathematics of even fielding a team in a small provincial school.
"We were a school of about 75-80 students, that's all we had. We would have had difficulty in putting out a team at senior level. My first Leaving Cert class was six pupils. It grew a bit then but only half of them might be hurlers so you'd have to pick from fifth year, Inter Cert and sometimes you'd even have a good second year on the team."
The school's first stop on its journey in from the barren fringes came in 1969, as it won an All-Ireland B Colleges' title. Another B championship was earned in 1973. Birr, with upstart devilment, was knocking hard at the doors of the grand old houses of Leinster schools' hurling.
"I remember our first real match at senior A level was in 1974. I persuaded Fr Tommy Maher, who was in St Kieran's in Kilkenny at the time, to bring a team to come up and play us in Birr. They were lucky to go away with a draw. It was a great achievement for the school."
The coaching work done by Brother Denis and colleagues like Brother Cronan, Brother Vincent and Brother Ultan had helped yield a rich crop of talented young hurlers. Players from Birr, once a merely local hotbed of the sport, peppered Offaly's All-Ireland-winning teams of 1981 and 1985. Thus it continued as Offaly added further Liam MacCarthy successes in 1994 and 1998.
"If anyone had said in the '60s that Offaly would have four hurling All-Irelands by the turn of the century people would have said it was daft. Especially when you realise the size of the place and on top of that the size of the hurling community."
Sitting in Croke Park at the 1998 final, he took a quick audit. He arrived at a figure of 15 past-pupils, precisely half the squad, on the Offaly panel. A more recent calculation, at this year's All-Ireland club final, in which Birr were defeated by Portumna, found that 29 of the club's players had attended the school. Birr is a de facto past-pupils' club.
Traditionally, Offaly's club hurling scene was as fiercely fragmented as it was geographically tight. County teams often sundered along the fault lines. Brother Denis's school, which amalgamated with the local vocational school and the Mercy convent to become St Brendan's Community School in 1980, came to bind some of the disparate strands of Offaly club hurling.
"There was intense club rivalry. There was the fact that you had lads from these outlying parishes like Coolderry and Kinnitty all coming to school here. They were all friends from school. When they went back playing against each other at club level, they were still friends. Now, that wouldn't mean they weren't rivals, but they were still school pals when the game was over."
As principal of the new school, Brother Denis presided over the provision of hurling facilities. Pitches were hewn from the earth around the grounds, including one chalked out a mere poc fada from the Tipperary border. St Brendan's was feeding talent to the Offaly team and was nourished in turn by its success.
"When Offaly won the All-Ireland in 1981, that put hurling on a wave of enthusiasm. If you harness that and get parental support and GAA support for developing pitches, then you're on to a winner straight away. We used that influence; if you like, we milked it."
In 1986, the school etched its name onto the Dr Croke Cup, upstart no more. That team included a 15-year-old Johnny Pilkington. The Whelahans and the Dooleys passed through too on their way to club and county honours at national level. Others who showed nascent brilliance as schoolboys did not make it.
Sometimes life intervened; sometimes death. One of those Brother Denis rates as among the most talented players to wear the school shirt did not continue to hurl into his 20s on account of the hours his hotel job forced him to work. Another player collapsed and died at 19 whilst training with the county seniors.
Although he retired from the school in 1998, Brother Denis still sits on its board of management. He is bound tightly to his adoptive county, rarely missing a game in Birr and has been given the honorary title of club vice-president. No small tribute to the revolution he helped instigate in Offaly hurling.
