The Dual Medalists

Extract taken from 1990 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Match Programme.

 

With Cork in line today to complete a rare double of All-Ireland senior hurling and football championships in the same season, it is interesting that the county is particularly well represented in the elite company of dual players who won national medals in both codes in the past.

In all fifteen players won All-Ireland senior hurling and football medals on the actual field of play, and the standard was set at the infancy of the senior championships.

William J. Spain, a native of Nenagh, was in the Limerick Commercials team that won the football final of 1887, the very first in the history of the All-Ireland series. He helped Kickhams, of Dublin, to win the 1989 hurling crown.

William Mackessy won medals with Cork in hurling in 1903, and in football in 1911, and so became the first to win both awards with his native county.

Pierce Grace, a native of Tullaroan, Kilkenny, was in Dublin’s football final winning teams of 1906 and 1907, and went on the collect three hurling medals with Kilkenny in 1911, 1912 and 1913.

Only Grace and Spain, incidentally gained medals with different counties.

When Wexford won the senior hurling title for the first time in 1910, their selection included P.J. Mackey and Sean O’Kennedy. Both were in the county’s senior football title winning teams of 1915, 1916 and 1917. A year later Wexford chalked up the first ever run by any county of four titles in succession in the code, and Mackey also played in that team.

Kildare-born Frank Burke won medals with Dublin in 1917, 1920, both in hurling and 1921, 1922 and 1923 in the “big ball” code.

Leonard McGrath helped to shape history on the double for Galway. He was in the side that took the All-Ireland senior hurling crown West for the first time in 1923, and then in 1925 helped to shape Galway’s first football final triumph.

Then, followed a long break until the ‘Forties, when Cork struck a purple patch in hurling by chalking up the only sequence of four All-Ireland titles on the trot. One of those heroes of that side was Jack Lynch, who later, of course, became Taoiseach. In 1945, Cork won the All-Ireland senior football title for the second time, and put their name on the Sam Maguire Cup for the first time, and Lynch joined the ranks of dual medallists.

In 1946 he won a fifth senior hurling medal, and in the process became the only man to win six All-Ireland senior medals in succession, again on the field of play.

Lynch lined out at midfield in all the hurling finals, and at right full forward in the football team.

Derry Beckett also joined the ranks of dual medalists from Cork in the ‘Forties. He was at left full forward in the 1942 hurling team, and remarkably enough filled exactly the same position in the Sam Maguire Cup side three years later.

Glorious ‘Seventies

Then came the glorious ‘Seventies for Cork. They beat Wexford in 1970 in the first 80 minutes All-Ireland final – that was in hurling – and their full forward Ray Cummins. He also wore the No. 14 jersey when the footballers regained the Sam Maguire Cup in 1973.

Cummin’s colleagues in the 1973 final included Brian Murphy, left full back, Denis Coughlan, midfield, and Jimmy Barry-Murphy, right full forward. Murphy at right full back, Coughlan at left half back, and Barry-Murphy at left half forward, joined the exclusive ranks after the 1976 hurling final win over Wexford.

Cummins also played in that hurling final game, and this quartet were colleagues in Cork’s Liam McCarthy Cup winning teams of 1977 and 1978. Barry-Murphy collected further hurling medals in 1984 and 1986.

Liam Currams brought Leinster back in out of the cold in a golden era for Offaly at the start of the last decade. He was at midfield in the side that won the Faithful County’s first senior hurling title in 1981, and a year later held down the left half back spot in that never-to-be-forgotten late, late, Offaly triumph that ended Kerry’s high hopes of a record five All-Ireland senior titles on the trot.

Teddy McCarthy was right half forward in the Cork side that beat Galway for the 1986 hurling title, and in 1989, added the senior football medal to his collection.

McCarthy, of course, won another senior hurling medal two weeks ago, as did Denis Walsh, who played in the 1987 football final against Meath and also lined out in the drawn summit a year later.