A London voice for Louth
December 30, 2009When Willie 'Bill' Reilly left Dromiskin for the bright lights of London in 1958, Louth was still basking in the warm afterglow of its 1-9 to 1-7 All-Ireland football final victory over Cork the previous year.
Fifty-one years later, Willie is still living in the English capital but the football landscape has changed completely. Louth are now sadly among the also-rans, having failed to win even a provincial title since the late Dermot O'Brien raised the Sam Maguire aloft on that famous day at Croke Park..
"It's disappointing to think that we haven't won anything of significance since then," bemoans the company director.
"There have been a few false dawns and I suppose the latest one came when we won the O'Byrne Cup at the start of this year. That got everyone's hopes and expectations up, but the year just seemed to peter out after that.
"But I'll keeping supporting them. I have been travelling back and forth for matches for 50 years and I'm not going to stop now. I never miss a championship match involving Louth."
After struggling past Carlow in this year's Leinster championship opener, Louth bowed out at the hands of Laois. Further disappointment followed when they lost to Tipperary by a point in the All-Ireland qualifers - a defeat which ultimately brought the curtain down on Eamonn McEneaney's reign after four years.
Willie is concerned that there isn't enough emerging talent to apply pressure on the Wee County's more seasoned campaigners.
"The lack of young talent is worrying. We're not producing as many good young players as we should be. Mattock Rangers won the county championship this year with an ageing team. I'm not trying to take anything away from their success, but it is a worrying sign for Louth GAA overall.
"We need new teams and new players coming through all the time," he added.
Willie played football with the Dromiskin Unknowns before emigrating to London as a 22-year-old. He marked the great Jimmy McDonnell, who was playing for the Darver Volunteers, in his final game for the club.
"We were called the Unknowns because we couldn't decide on a name. Then, in the early 1960s, Dromiskin joined forces with Darver to become St. Joseph's. The Joe's won their first senior championship in 1996 and won the Joe Ward Cup again in 2006 when Stephen Melia won his senior medal at the age of 44," he explains.
Willie subsequently played with the Fintan Lalors club in Hammersmith. He later joined Brothers Pearse and has served as the club's chairman for the past 20 years. Brothers Pearse holds the distinction of being London's oldest surviving GAA club and will celebrate their 90th anniversary in 2010.
"We've been the oldest club in London since Brian Borus went out of existence a few years ago. It's a great club to be involved with. Traditionally, we were known as a hurling club, but things have changed over the years and we're now equally as strong in football and camogie.
"Like every other GAA club in London, we have a high turnover of players with lads coming and going all the time. It was very difficult during the Celtic Tiger years when nobody was emigrating from Ireland. But since the onset of the recession, our numbers have been picking up again."
Originally based in South London, the club later relocated to the Irish stronghold of Kilburn. Brothers Pearse is one of London GAA's most successful clubs, having claimed many titles in both hurling and football over the years. The club enjoyed a golden era in the 1950s and 1960s which included an unprecedented four-in-a-row of senior hurling championship successes between 1957 and '60. Among the stars of that great team were Tim Tennyson, Billy Duffy (who marked the legendary Christy Ring when playing for Galway in the 1953 All-Ireland final), Fintan Spillane, Mick Kersey, Paddy 'Blondie' Murphy, Mickey Doolin and Eamon Murray.
After a lean spell in the late 1970s and 1980s, the club assembled a fine hurling team again in the early 1990s and won the senior league in 1990 and '96 and the Collins Cup in '94. In 1998, Pearse's won the senior hurling championship and the junior football championship. They also claimed the All-Britain senior hurling championship before losing to Down and Ulster champions Ballygalget in the All-Ireland club quarter-final.
But the club's hurling fortunes experienced a downturn after the likes of Andy and Martin Comerford (Kilkenny), Daithi Regan (Offaly) and Charlie Ahern (Waterford) returned home to Ireland.
"The Comerfords were born in London and Andy actually played championship hurling for London before he played for Kilkenny," Willie explains.
In the late 1990s, Pearse's began to make their mark in football again after a long absence. They won the McArdle Cup in 1998 and again in 2002, as well as the league in 2001. In 2003, they won intermediate championship for the first time in 64 years. Brothers Pearse is the only club in London to field senior hurling, football and camogie teams in the same year.
"2009 was a disappointing year for us, but we hope to make amends next year. It would be great to mark our 90th anniversary with a championship win of some form," he says.
Married to Anne and father to Jean, Willie is managing director of W Reilly Ltd, who are building and civil engineering contractors based in Kilburn. He set up the company 20 years ago and has a 50-strong staff on his books. Tweet
