Just another school day in Castlecomer - memories from Sean Mansfield

Noted Clogh writer Sean Mansfield recalls his school days, where his mates were former Olympic boxer Mick Dowling aka 'The Mella' and former Kilkenny hurling star Martin Brennan aka 'The Goggy':                                                                         

“Mammy had to call us several times for school. Ben, my older brother, and I went to the Boys School in Castlecomer. The school was in the Spike, just up the hill from the church.

I gulped down my porridge, with my catechism open in front of me. “It’s to rain today, wear your wellingtons” mammy ordered. I disturbed a few cockroaches getting mine out of the corner. I whinged about a cut in one of them. Mammy reminded me about the chestnuts I had baked in the oven to harden them for playing “conkers” at breaktime. The most important thing to bring was my hurl. My ambition was to get on the town club team.

Ben and I went on bikes to school. He had a man’s bike with a crossbar. I had a ladies bike but it was ideal for carrying my hurl. I wedged the bas of the hurl between the chain guard and the frame. Then my pal Neill came, and we set off for school. The only traffic on the Comer Road was a few farmers going to the creamery and an odd motor car. At the turn of the Boys School lane, I shouted at Ben and Neill to wait, “I have a stone in my wellington” Neill responded, “it can wait or we’ll be late”.

In school, it was straight into the Ten Commandments. It was all catechism at the time because the Diocesan priest was coming to examine us in Christian Doctrine.

Cripes! The stone in my welly was moving. I reddened up to the gills. It’s not a stone but a mouse or a creepy-crawley, I thought. I had to get this thing out without Neill noticing or he would scandalise me. I dropped my pencil on the floor and with a delaying action squeezed the sides of my welly, I managed to force the intruder out through the cut, a cockroach, which I hooshed out into the aisle between the desks.

I sat bolt upright, and when it had crawled a safe distance, I pointed it out to Neill and a few others. Delaney, three desks behind us, stuck out his foot and put a hobnailed boot down on the cockroach. Nobody was listening to McNulty anymore, and to get our attention, he called on us to name the Fifth Commandment. “Thou shalt not kill” we chorused, and we all sniggered. We were saved by the break-time bell.

I lost half my chestnuts, during the break, to Redser from Mr Lynchs class. They said he had a steel nut embedded in his chestnut. Then it was back into class. The time between the break and lunch-time always passed quickly. Lunch-time was all hurling.

We honed our skills on that pitch behind the school. Nicknames abounded, like ‘the Lark’, ‘the Goggy’, ‘the Mella’, ‘the Borneo’, and ‘the Bottler’. A clubman, John ‘the Tara’ Ryan became our team mentor. Success followed when we won silverware in 1961 and 1962 in Nowlan Park, Kilkenny.

Then our team scattered to the four winds, as underage teams did, back in the day. George Orwell may have had sport in mind when he said “all of us are equal but some are more equal than others”. We learned that lesson when in a few short years two of our team-mates ‘the Goggy’ and ‘the Mella’ became sporting sons of ’Comer, albeit in different disciplines. It was a co-incidence that they grew up together, as near neighbours, in the Spike, beside the school. A further co-incidence was that they made the breakthrough in their sporting careers at the same time.

Martin Brennan aka ‘the Goggy’ won senior All Irelands with Kilkenny in 1967 and 1969. Mick Dowling aka ‘the Mella’ switched disciplines and in 1968 won the first of his eight senior bantamweight titles and later that year boxed in the Olympics in Mexico.

Each had an interesting addendum to their careers. Martin had his hurling career cut short by injury. It didn’t prevent him from becoming a classy golfer, proving that form may be temporary, but class is permanent. Mick after an illustrious career turned to coaching young boxers. He also became the well known RTE Sports boxing analyst."