Brothers in Sport

by Donal Keenan

  Theo reported back to his colleagues. They had been searching for new talent all winter and spring. They had come up short against Galway in the 1987 All-Ireland semi-final; they needed height and physique. Cormac was a defender but they felt he could provide them with the necessary assets in the forward line. He had another attribute Theo admired – pace, and plenty of it for such a big man. They knew he did not have a good experience in his previous incarnation as a Tipperary hurler, but everyone deserves a second chance.

  Six weeks before the 1988 Munster final Theo English spoke to Cormac. ‘It was a shock at first,’ he remembers, ‘and I didn’t jump at the chance initially. I wondered did I really want it. I had already decided that I did not want to make the commitment to travelling for club hurling and now I was being asked to make a major commitment to Tipperary. I really was unsure. But Theo talked me through it and I agreed to have a look. But once I got back into the squad and saw the potential, felt the atmosphere around the place, I knew I had to have a go. I was delighted and honoured to be back somewhere I never expected to be again.’

  Cormac had been on the fringes of the Tipperary team between 1979 and 1983, but injuries limited his opportunities. For the 1982 and 1983 National Leagues he formed a new midfield partnership with Michael Doyle. Then, before the start of the 1983 Championship, he was struck down by injury. In the first round Tipperary played Clare, and Cormac was brought on as a sub in the second half. Ten minutes later he was taken off again. ‘It was horrible,’ he says candidly. ‘It was the hardest psychological blow that any player had to take. It was really tough to accept and I still feel for players when I see it happening.’ He didn’t make the panel in 1984. The following year he headed for the United States for the summer. His inter-county career appeared to be over.

  In July 1988 he came on as a substitute in the second half of the Munster final against Cork. With his first touch of the ball he scored a goal. It steadied the ship because Tipperary had allowed a twelve-point advantage to narrow to two. The Munster Championship was retained and training for the All-Ireland series intensified. The manager, Keating, introduced training matches between the senior team and the county under-21 squad, which included Conal. When the squad was named for the final Conal was given a place in the extended senior squad. Colm started; Cormac appeared as a substitute.

  Twelve months later Conal, Colm and Cormac Bonnar played in the All-Ireland senior hurling final together as Tipperary ended an eighteen-year wait to embrace the Liam McCarthy Cup.

  Colm Bonnar won an All-Ireland minor medal with Tipperary in 1982 and finished his career eighteen years later when winning an All-Ireland junior title. © Brendan Moran/SPORTSFILE

  * * *

  In plying his trade as a block layer, Pearse Bonnar was happy to travel far from his native home in north Donegal in search of employment. Football, sports in general, were his mode of relaxation. He won junior football honours with Red Hugh’s of Killygordon in 1947. Maureen, his wife, enjoyed camogie success with nearby Crossroads. She too had an eclectic interest in sports. It was an interest they passed on to each of their thirteen children, providing advice and encouragement while inculcating a strong work ethic.

  Their search for stability in terms of employment took them to Cashel, the market town in Tipperary South Riding, which also boasted tourism as an industry. The GAA club was a natural attraction. Football was the dominant game in the town, but Maureen also found an outlet for her camogie skills. They liked all sports and as their children grew they sampled everything.

  The eldest son, Kieran, played football before academia claimed him. The girls – Mary, Fionnuala, Philomena, Eithne, Ann, Triona and Niamh – all enjoyed camogie success. Triona was also an accomplished handballer, while Philomena won County Championships in basketball and gymnastics. The boys – Brendan, Cormac, Colm, Conal and Ailbhe – played football, hurling and soccer, and dabbled in a variety of other sports. Conal remembers their leisure time being divided between the major sports as well as badminton, tennis and handball.

  At Cashel CBS Brendan and Cormac came under the influence of Br Noonan, who put the structures in place to create a proper hurling environment. This was carried through in the local club where men like Michael ‘Monte’ Carrie organised coaching and games. Michael O’Grady, who later became a renowned coach throughout the country, was teaching in Cashel at this time and also had a very positive influence on the boys. Cashel had not enjoyed much in the way of success at under-age level, but in 1974 they won a county football and hurling minor double.

  ‘All I can remember,’ says Conal, who was born in 1969, ‘is from the ages of three and four playing hurling out the back of the house. There were always plenty of people around to play with. It was all we did.’ Pearse and Maureen were working hard to feed and clothe thirteen children, and as the family grew they moved into a bigger house in the mid-1960s. ‘Kieran, Brendan and Cormac helped out my father a lot with the house. By the time we younger ones came along all the work was done so we had the freedom in the evenings and at the weekend to play sport all the time.’

  Cormac, ten years older than Conal, moved away from home in 1977 to study at UCD. Michael O’Grady made the same move and continued to help nurture the talent of the youngster. Cormac won Fitzgibbon Cup medals in 1978 and 1979, but he was temporarily distracted from the game by the presence in the college of some extremely talented footballers. Gerry McEntee and Colm O’Rourke from Meath, Tony McManus from Roscommon, Jimmy Lyons from Mayo and Galway’s Morgan Hughes were just some of the star-studded line-up who had already won three Sigerson Cup titles. Eugene McGee coached them. Cormac decided to concentrate on football for the 1979–80 season and lined out at full back in the 1980 Sigerson final, flanked by Roscommon’s Séamus Hunt and Joe Joe O’Connor from Kerry. Though they lost the final to UCG, Cormac relished the experience. ‘It was fascinating, the next best thing to professionalism I was ever involved in.’

  He had missed out on minor representation back in Tipperary, but made the under-21 hurling panel in 1979 when they won the All-Ireland title. ‘I hung on to my place for dear life,’ he says and worked hard to secure a starting spot in 1980. He was full back when they retained the title, with Pat Fox playing at left corner back. Almost a decade later they would find themselves together again but at the far end of the field.

  By then the Bonnars were getting a taste of what the future held for the family. Colm was selected for the Tipperary minors in 1982 and won the first All-Ireland medal of what would become an almost complete collection. He played in the All-Ireland under-21 finals of 1983, 1984 and 1985, when he finally picked up a winner’s medal. He had also played minor and under-21 football for Tipperary but displayed the determination and meticulous planning that would mark his playing and coaching career when deciding in 1985 to concentrate on hurling. ‘I loved football, I still do,’ he explains, ‘but I felt then that if I wanted to play hurling at the top level I had to concentrate on it. There were so many good hurlers around at that time that if you started fooling around with football you could soon find that your place was gone.’

  Cormac’s elevation to the Tipperary senior hurling team and subsequent unhappy experience mirrored the state of the senior team in the early part of that decade. The long wait for a Munster title was stretching every year as 1971 grew more distant. But at under-age level Tipperary were competitive. Between 1975 and 1985 Tipperary won three All-Ireland minor titles and four under-21 titles. ‘What happened at the end of the 1980s was no accident,’ insists Conal. ‘People seem to think it happened suddenly, but there was a huge amount of success at under-age level leading up to it. You had a big number of players who knew what it was like to win Munster and All-Ireland titles. They had no fears of Cork or Kilkenny or Galway. They had grown up winning. In Tipperary a different club was coming through to win the County Championship every year. It was all healthy.

  ‘When Tipp lost in the Munster Championship in 1986 it was a huge disappoint
ment. The profile of the team needed to be raised. It needed to be made important to play senior hurling for Tipperary again. That’s where Babs Keating came in. He was the man to put the structures in place. While the older players at the time were used to losing, the young players knew nothing but winning. Babs had to tap into that state of mind and create an environment where those players would come through to senior level.

  ‘He changed the approach. He set up the first supporters’ club in Ireland. He improved the way players were treated. We were the only team wearing suits to the first round of the Championship. We went on team holidays. There were no problems with expenses. We always had enough hurleys and enough sliotars. There was loads of gear for the players. It was important and good to play for Tipperary. And there were sixty or seventy players around that were of a very high standard. Babs helped everything come together.’

  * * *

  Growing up, Colm Bonnar was accustomed to winning hurling trophies. He was successful with the club and with Cashel CBS. By the age of twenty-one he had acquired a neat collection of All-Ireland medals at minor and under-21 but was denied a medal at junior level in the 1985 final. By the end of 1985 the anticipated promotion to the Tipperary senior team came. It must have seemed like he was entering a different world. There were good players in the dressing-room, but years of defeat, especially the Munster final loss in 1984 to Cork, had cast a dark shadow over Tipperary.

  Supporters were becoming increasingly frustrated and even disillusioned. It was hard to understand why Tipperary were struggling with such a continuous flow of talent coming through the under-age ranks. Colm made his Senior Championship debut against Clare in 1986. Tipperary led by nine points at one stage, but they eventually lost by two points. It was a blow which prompted some serious soul searching. Michael Lowry, later to find fame in the political world, was the Tipperary GAA chairman. It was he who made contact with Babs Keating to ask him to become Tipperary’s manager.

  Changes were immediate. Tipperary reached the semi-finals of the National League in the spring of 1987. Players who had previously been discarded now returned. Pat Fox had been a corner back; in 1987 he was moved to corner forward. Colm Bonnar had played in defence in 1986 but by summer 1987 he was at midfield and would remain in the Tipperary team for the next decade.

  The new-look Tipperary, with All Star wing back Bobby Ryan now positioned at full forward, stumbled over Kerry and Clare (after a replay) to qualify for the Munster final, where the opposition was provided by Cork on 12 July. On a sultry day in an electric atmosphere Tipperary let a seven-point lead slip in the second half and had to rely on a free in the final seconds of the game to snatch a draw. But they had survived and lived to fight another day; they had turned a corner. An official attendance of 56,000 was given for the day, but many more thousands gained entry when two gates were forced open. A momentum was building.

  The replay was set for Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney the following Sunday. It was another epic encounter that went to extra time. Again Tipperary had flirted with disaster but emerged intact. The added time would be theirs. With fresh legs they pummelled Cork. Colm galloped around the field bewildering opponents. Michael Doyle scored two goals, Donie O’Connell scored another. Few who witnessed the scenes when Terence Murray of Limerick blew the final whistle had ever experienced such an outpouring of emotion. The youthful captain Richard Stakelum lifted the trophy and declared: ‘The famine is over.’ The celebrations were wild.

  ‘That was probably the proudest moment I ever had in a Tipperary jersey,’ says Colm. ‘It is hard to describe the day, to explain the emotions. A generation of Tipperary people had grown up without experiencing the county winning the Munster Championship. There had been so many disappointments. And the games were so tight and there was so much tension. It was a great experience.’

  The sequence of games and the celebrations took a toll. Preparations for the All-Ireland semi-final against Galway were adversely affected and still Tipperary had an opportunity to win against more experienced opponents. They lost by six points, but it was a much tighter game than the scoreline suggests. Despite defeat, there was still a feel-good factor around Tipperary. Colm wonders if it might have been a missed opportunity. ‘There’s no doubt that the effort to win the Munster title took a toll. The celebrations had gone on too long. It was as if winning Munster was the main thing and anything else that came along was a bonus. And that was a mistake.

  ‘Galway had lost the 1985 and 1986 finals and they were under pressure. If we had beaten them in the 1987 semi-final a lot of pressure would have come down on Cyril Farrell [the Galway manager]. Who can tell what might have happened then? Some of the senior players might have gone, players like Conor Hayes, P.J. Molloy, Noel Lane, Brendan Lynskey. And without them you have to wonder how we would have fared against Galway in 1988 when they beat us in the final. The 1987 semi-final was a tight game and it was one of the better hurling games between us. It had none of the enmity that built up between the teams over the next two or three years.

  ‘We had so many great hurlers and we didn’t seem to go on and do more. We won two All-Ireland titles but you have to think that we were good enough maybe to win another two more at that time. Galway had a very good side. They won two All-Irelands as well. They were a strong, physical team and they had a brilliant half back line. They played a different style to us, a hand-passing game, and we weren’t cute enough to deal with it. There were so many times that if we had just managed to get over Galway we would have achieved a lot more; even the 1993 semi-final was one we should not have lost.’

  The arrival of his two brothers on the squad during the 1988 Championship added something of a novelty factor for Colm. ‘Our first priority was to look after our own place, but it was good to have the two brothers involved. We are a close family. As well as being brothers we are friends. After games we would seek out each other’s company. That made a difference.’

  Cormac relished his second chance. His appearance – the helmet with faceguard, the absent teeth, the beard – and his obvious determination made him an instant hit with supporters. He was christened ‘The Viking’. ‘Those months in 1988 when I was coming on as a sub were a big learning curve for me. I remember coming into the All-Ireland final and the first thing that struck me was the pace of the game. My hurling was not up to scratch that year. It was a big step up from club hurling. So it really took me until the following year to catch up to full standard.’

  He worked hard throughout the winter of 1988 on his fitness levels and on his skills, spending as much time as he could in a handball alley. He enjoyed the new physical regime introduced when former international athlete Phil Conway was included as fitness trainer. Team-mates recall gruelling 300-yard sprints repeated a dozen times an evening, with Cormac setting a savage pace.

  ‘I was a back who played with the instincts of a back but my job was to play between Nicky [English] and Pat [Fox] at full forward. I was the one to do the donkey work. I was there to harass, to hook, to chase and to block. My job was to make room for Nicky and Pat to do their thing. If they could get the ball they would score. My job was to help them get it. It was comforting to know those guys and the other forwards could score from any angle.’

  The plan was working. The three brothers played together through the 1988–9 League campaign. Tipperary reached the final but were defeated again by Galway. They reached another Munster final and on 2 July 1989 the three Bonnar brothers played Championship hurling together for the very first time. ‘Not many players start their first Championship game at the age of thirty,’ Cormac chuckles. Uniquely Cormac featured on the front cover of the match programme in his first Championship start, while Colm, then coaching in the Waterford Institute of Technology, was the subject of a special feature in the programme. Nicky English scored thirteen points against Waterford that day, eight of them from frees, as Tipperary won their third Munster Championship in a row by 0–26 to 2–8.

  Conal recal
ls the experience of playing together. ‘In the dressing-room it was like being back at home at the kitchen table, it felt like home. It also made it easier for me being so young. Coming in I felt comfortable, this was a natural place to be. It was very enjoyable. We are a very close family so we enjoyed preparing together, enjoyed the games and what came after the games. But we always knew we were part of a team and we were lucky that it was a very close setup. It was special and it wasn’t the same playing for Tipperary when they weren’t there. You still wanted to do it but you no longer felt like it was home.’

  They beat Galway in an ugly semi-final and met surprise opponents in the All-Ireland final, Antrim. Tipperary were raging hot favourites to win. Conal recalls: ‘I remember sitting beside John Heffernan on the eve of the final and being a naïve nineteen-year-old getting caught up in the hype about the opposition and saying to him “it’s a pity it’s not Kilkenny we’re playing tomorrow” and he said “go away ye fecking eejit, I wish it was the Isle of Man.” We hadn’t won an All-Ireland in eighteen years so the only thing about it was to win. And I think Antrim were the second or third best team in the country at the time so they deserved respect. I have as good memories of that All-Ireland as the 1991 win. We had to beat the teams put in front of us and we did that. We started poorly in the final and if they had got a few breaks that game could have been very close. Once we got going we dominated everywhere. Fox got a great goal, Declan Ryan was very much in control at centre forward and when he got his goal it took the pressure off us. We were a team playing under pressure, and when that goal went in we let loose and there was no one better to let loose than Nicky [who scored a record-breaking 2–12].’