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Every GAA club has a pub it favours above the rest and, for us, it’s Teddy Byrne’s.
The name over the door is a bit misleading – poor Teddy died in an accident in 1975, before he was even 40, and it’s his widow, Nóirín, who is the matriarch of the pub and, by extension, the club.
A top camogie player in her day, she won a couple of O’Duffy Cup medals with the county, but had to retire after Ted’s death in order to rear her two young children and run the pub into which she had married.
For the past three months, she has been at a loose end for the first time. If it wasn’t the pub taking up her time, she was holding down some role in the club – she has been a selector on men’s and women’s county-winning teams – and she transferred the camogie talent into a mean golf game.
At a parish wedding, she’ll buy drinks for everyone and they’ll thinking they’re getting a freebie when, in reality, they’ve paid for the drinks themselves with the wagers they lose to Nóirín at golf society outings.
Why in the name of God would we be wanting to go into that new place – for a bad pint of Guinness and music on a jukebox?
Byrne’s is a rural pub and we’re a town club, but our original pitch was next door and the pub was used for changing in the days before dressing rooms. It’s a symbiotic relationship, apart from a regrettable episode at the height of the boom, when a new superpub opened up and sponsored the club, in the hope of grabbing business.
The backlash wasn’t long in starting, though, and Larry Maher summed up why: “Why in the name of God would we be wanting to go into that new place – for a bad pint of Guinness and music on a jukebox?” To be fair to Nóirín, she never held a grudge and the superpub is long gone – it’s a gym now.
A girlfriend of one of the county players was wrecking poor Nóirín’s head, asking for extra lime with her vodka, until enough was enough
If Nóirín takes a shine to you, you’re golden, but she doesn’t suffer fools – and in our place it’s a winding road one has to take to avoid them. When the county won the All-Ireland back in the 1990s and we had Ginger Farrell on the team, there was a huge crowd around the night that Liam MacCarthy came. A girlfriend of one of the county players was wrecking poor Nóirín’s head, asking for extra lime with her vodka, until enough was enough.
“I’m sorry my love, I’m afraid you’ve the wrong premises altogether,” she told her. “You’d be better off heading for Clashduff Lime Quarries, about three miles out the road.”
Similarly, the American couple who were passing one summer’s day were requesting too much ice with their Diet Cokes.
“Ah Jaysus, it’s a pity ye didn’t come in January,” Nóirín said to them, “we had loads of it then!”
Any first-time visitor to the bar would probably wonder why there’s an out-of-place looking partition – a tallish screen, like they used to have on Blind Date so the contestants couldn’t see each other. That all dated back to the Paddy’s Day Punch-Up.
There was a league game one St Patrick’s morning at the pitch and, in a bid to promote some team bonding, the manager – Jerry Scanlon – insisted that everyone go to Nóirín’s afterwards. The team’s star Paul O’Regan wasn’t overly enamoured with the style of play being employed and, as the day-long session became a night-long one, things took a turn and the only bonding going on was fist to face.
Jerry had to resign, of course, but Nóirín couldn’t be risking (a) losing custom or (b) having to umpire another skirmish. She had the screen erected and the two antagonists and their connections were told to keep to either side of it. It was soon christened the Byrne Wall.
A loyal customer is no use to me in the graveyard or in jail
As drink-driving laws became stricter, Nóirín would add “taxi driver” to the list of services provided. Lads who had had their scatter of pints and then tried to pilot their own way home would be firmly told to wait and she’d drop them back in her Mercedes-Benz 190, still as pristine as it was when she bought it in 1993.
“A loyal customer is no use to me in the graveyard or in jail,” she’d say to them. Of course, Nóirín was one of those asked to cocoon so that she wouldn’t end up in the graveyard but – and hopefully this won’t land her in jail – she did break the restrictions a few times as she drove from her new house to the pub, cutting the lawn outside and keeping things in order.
Thankfully, she has that certainty of things restarting on 20 July and she’ll be ready. Last week, I was out for an evening walk and she was just locking up as I passed the pub.
“Up to much, Nóirín?” I asked.
“Just pouring a few practice pints,” she said. “I have to make sure to keep my eye in.”
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