Brian McCarthy, whose uncle Paddy is a well-known member of the Boston Beara Society, is hoping to begin a Beara G.A.A. (mostly football) web-site soon. I have helped him in every way I can with the history from pre-1927 (when the G.A.A.began in Beara) up to 1976. And I have no doubt but that John Murphy, Restaurant, Castletownbere, present Secretary of the Beara Board, will willingly bring him up to the present day. 'Tis many the story that is told about the characters who played football back over the years. The story is told of an Adrigole man who travelled to Cork to play for one of the city teams. The following day, being "broke" financially --- as money was very scarce at the time --- he chanced his luck for a lift back on the train from the city to West Cork. When the ticket collector arrived, our man let on to be sound asleep. The collector was about to awake him when a friend of his came to his aid saying: "Yerra, let the poor old devil sleep away there for a while. He must be dog-tired". The ticket collector passed on, saying he'd return after a while. Our man knew that he would be nabbed if he stayed there much longer so, when the train arrived in Drimoleague, he jumped out quickly and headed for the road walking (about 50 miles). Just outside Drimoleague he came across a stray donkey/ass which he duly "commandeered" and rode all the way back to Adrigole. Just before the Beara G.A.A. clubs affiliated to the Cork County Board in 1927, the Urhan junior team (then unofficial Beara champions) issued a challenge to Macroom who were the county senior football champions. The game took place in Bantry, and Urhan won by a point. Commenting on the game in the "Macroom Notes" in the Southern Star newspaper the following week, the local correspondent said that Macroom were beaten by the representatives of "that remote land" !! At the time there was very little contact between Beara and the rest of the county. Refereeing was a problem then. One young fellow refereeing a challenge match in Ballycrovane, near Eyeries, came in for some heavy threats in the first half. He decided to make a break for it at half-time, but as soon as a section of the crowd saw what he was up to, they set off after him. As he was "clearing" the nearest fence, one of his pursuers caught him by the leg. The ref. somehow wriggled loose and escaped, but he arrived back in Kilmacowen, about four miles away, with only one shoe. Most of the football togs in the olden days were home-made. A Dursey Island woman made a pair of togs out of a flour-bag for her son who was playing with Garnish. In the next game, as the Dursey man was soloing up the field in the Castletownbere pitch, printed across his backside was "Sunburst Flour, 140 lbs. net weight". Football was pretty rugged in the early days. A poetic spectator writing in the "Southern Star" Newspaper about a match played in Bantry (around 1930) between Kealkill and Whiddy Island described it in the following terms: "The ref he blew the whistle And finished up the game; And of the thirty players, Twenty-nine were lame " !! ---- Riobard. -- I am using the free version of SPAMfighter. We are a community of 5.7 million users fighting spam. SPAMfighter has removed 1950 of my spam emails to date. Get the free SPAMfighter here: http://www.spamfighter.com/len The Professional version does not have this message