Article May Week 4 2005
Gaelic Football legend, Tom Long
The recently presented McNamee Award to Radio Kerry's Terrace Talk was the result of an hour long interview we conducted last August with Tom Long before the Kerry/ Derry championship match. To the best of my knowledge it was the only in-depth interview given by a man who in many experts opinion was one of the all time great Kerry footballers. Quiet, unassuming and reluctant to talk of himself Tom has documented in the interview an ere of Kerry football in the fifties and sixties when style of play, dress, training methods, travel, match reporting and in fact all aspects of the GAA was beginning to undergo massive changes. It was an ere of the great Down team, Galway's terrible twins, Stockwell and Purcell, Kerry's dramatic loss to Waterford, the first and only players strike by Kerry players, the great midfield partnership of Mick o Connell and Seamus Murphy, Dr. Eamon 0 Sullivan and much much more.
So this week and next as all eyes will be on the beginning of the new championship and Kerry getting off to the expected winning start over Tipperary we recall the great career of a man of whom the legendary Paddy 'Bawn' Brosnan used the following words to describe. 'Tom Long is my kind of footballer, High, Wide and Handsome'. This beautiful summing up of his West Kerry friend was delivered to one Michael Hussey brother of 1959 All Ireland medal winner Paddy on the Dingle pier one day many years ago as 'The Bawn' returned from a days fishing off the Kerry coast. Readers who will have seen Tom in action while at the peak of his powers will realize exactly what the legendary Kerry great was referring to here. It's the first time I have heard this phase used to describe a Kerry footballer and it sums up Tom perfectly.
July 29th 1956 is a day that is firmly etched in my memory in relation to the history of Kerry football, the memories are both good and not so good, it was the first time I had seen a Kerry team beaten on a playing pitch and it was my first ever Munster final. Transported in the summer by my parents to work my holidays in the silver pantry of the Parknasilla Great Southern Hotel under a man named Harry Leavens whom I later discovered came from county Louth and traveled to the hotel each year to earn his keep I was just fifteen years of age and the great bug that is Kerry football was beginning to take effect even at that young age, I was playing school leagues with the Monastery and palling around with The Legion lads.
That Sunday I was up at 5 30 am. did my washing and shinning for Harry, (everything had to be bright and glossy), and after a quick breakfast headed for the Sneem road where even though cars were as scarce as hens teeth in those hungry fifties a thumbed lift to Killarney was quick to arrive. The terrace of Fitzgerald was a heaving mass of humanity, no crash barriers then, no safety regulations, no yellow numbered stewards, and the only colors to be seen were rosettes or badges sold on the way to the grounds by Killarney entrepreneur Pats Coffey
What a day to attend your first Munster final, Kerry had three teams out that afternoon, and a man from Ardfert Tom Collins played in both Junior finals , hurling and football, he was later introduced as a substitute in the re-played senior final. He thus created a record which is unlikely to be equaled in our time and it was in that re-played senior final as Kerry faced Cork that I laid eyes for the first time in my life on Tom Long. He had made his debut in a first round game against Tipperary in Tralee, as Kerry won 3-7 to 3-2. Jim Brosnan later saved Kerry in the final in Cork with a last minute goal and 'Marcus' o Neill had brought of some miracle saves in the Kerry net, Cork led at half time, six points to no score, it was described as highway robbery as the game finished in a draw.
So now as I strained to follow the action jumping up and down in the huge crowd with only a minute to go and the old dilapidated score board reading 1-7 each, the crowd was in frenzy, it certainly looked like we were heading to overtime. However it was not to be, Cork army captain Niall Fitzgerald picked up a ball around the center of the field and headed in a flying solo for the dressing room end goal, on and on he went shaking off a series of tackles until he reached the thirty yards mark and I can still see the ball as if it was to day rising high in the sky, it seemed to go on for ever until it landed right on top of the Kerry net. The white flag went and Kerry who had won that memorably final against Dublin only the previous year was out of the championship.
Thirty five years later as I recovered from a hip operation in hospital in Cork feeling sick and sore for myself the man in the bed along side me struck up a conversation, football was the topic and low and behold I quickly discovered that my room mate was none other than the afore mentioned Niall Fitzgerald. During the next two weeks we spend long hours late into the night talking Cork and Kerry football, a great companion, Niall quickly corrected this often mentioned speculation that Tom Long was marking him when he scored that dramatic last minute point back in 1956. 'No Tom was not marking me at that time, I had just been moved out to mid field from centre forward when I went on that match winning solo run and Tom did not follow me, he was one of the best Kerry players I ever saw'. And in our interview Tom was quick to make the very same point in relation to who and who was not marking Niall. The name of that man is a story for another day, I kept in touch with the army an during the following years and he obliged by coming on Terrace Talk one night and clearing up what was a complete misunderstanding.
Born in Ventry football for the young Tom Long was always going to be a way of life, he was surrounded by some of the greatest names in the county's history, Batt Garvey, Dan Kavanagh, Bill Casey, Bill Dillon, Mick Murphy and of course just in the road Paddy :Bawn' was at the height of his powers, and it was with that legendary player that the fifteen year old from Ventry played his first senior game at corner back. 'We had no team in the Gaeltacht that time and one day you would have plenty players, however emigration was rife and the following Sunday you might have only the bare fifteen, when I went to America in 1959 with Kerry I met more Ventry footballers there than were back home. Fr. Jackie McKenna, now Cannon Jackie was the man behind football there at the time and he did great work for the youth, organizing school leagues and matches between the different areas'.
Tom played four years with the West Kerry minors, losing in the final one year to the Mitchell's, school days were spent in Colaiste Iosagan Ballyvourney, it was all football there morning, noon and night, even in the snow, the school team led by Tom won three Munster Championships. Straight on to the Kerry minors in 1953 and '54, Cork beat them the first year, 2-9 to 3-5 and the following year there was absolute heartbreak. 'We were leading Dublin in the final by five points and the game gone into injury time, they were awarded two very harsh frees, two goals resulted and we were beaten, we had great players, Brendan kennelly, Frank o Leary, Teddy Dowd, Johnny Culloty, Brian Sheehy, and Jack Dowling.
Next week: Playing with Kerry, Munster, Ireland, scoring four goals in a county final, going on strike from Kerry training, one of his greatest Kerry footballers, beaten by Waterford, and Derry, wining his first All Ireland and much more.
Weeshie's Week 
