Brothers in Sport (2 page)

Distinguished Service: For twenty-seven years between 1964 and 1991 the Henderson name was a constant on the Kilkenny team. Pat, Ger and John won eleven All-Ireland medals between them.
© Ray McManus/SPORTSFILE

In the sitting-room of their home on the outskirts of Kilkenny city, Pat and Mary Henderson have set aside one corner for a modest display of Pat’s sporting achievements. All Star awards from the early years of the scheme stand side by side with the Texaco Hurler of the Year trophy. Above that is the poster from the 1974 Texaco Awards, with Pat standing beside other Irish sporting legends like Willie John McBride,
Kevin Heffernan, Eddie Macken, rally driver Billy Coleman, athlete Neil Cusack and rower Seán Drea. Pat points out the various photographs of All-Ireland-winning Kilkenny teams. And then he lingers on The Fenians. Everything goes back to his beloved club in Johnstown, the home village in north Kilkenny from which he blazed a trail in the early 1960s that was followed by his brothers Ger and John, and is still being walked by modern giants of hurling.

It was into Johnstown that Pat Henderson was born in 1943 and where he would pick up his first hurley and learn the basic skills; from where he would travel to Thurles Christian Brothers School (CBS) for his secondary schooling and to further his hurling education. It was where he learned the values of community and fellowship that he passed on to his younger brothers and his own sons, values that are still so important at the start of a new century. It is to Johnstown that he consistently returns when looking back on his life and his sporting career as a player and coach during which Pat, Ger and John Henderson played a unique part in hurling’s history.

From the day Pat first proudly pulled on the famous black and amber stripes for the opening round of the Leinster Senior Hurling Championship against Wexford in June 1964, to John’s final game in the 1991 All-Ireland final against Tipperary, the Henderson brothers had a presence, and more often a dual presence, in twenty-eight consecutive Championships. Between them, they won eleven All-Ireland senior hurling titles and eight All Star awards. And they contributed substantially to a glorious era for The Fenians club, during which five county Senior Championships and a Leinster club title were won. Pat played senior hurling for Kilkenny from 1964 to 1978; Ger first appeared in 1974 and retired in 1989; John began as a sub in 1978, the only season all three were in the squad together as players, and retired thirteen years later. And Pat was the Kilkenny coach when Ger and John were members of the All-Ireland-winning teams of 1979, 1982 and 1983.

In amongst the exhaustive list of achievements is a remarkable September in 1975. Over the course of a fortnight between 7 and 21 September, John won an All-Ireland minor medal, Pat followed hours later with a senior medal and two weeks later Ger was a member of the under-21 team that captured a unique treble for Kilkenny, Johnstown and the Henderson clan. ‘It was a proud day for the family,’ says Pat quietly. John admits that it is only in hindsight he appreciated what had happened. ‘I remember after we won he [Pat] came into our dressing-room under the Cusack Stand. He congratulated us and said, “now you’ve done your bit we’ve got to do our part”.’

* * *

Gerard Henderson Senior was not a hurler. Cycling was his sport. His father, grandfather to the would-be hurlers, played cricket. But Gerard was an enthusiastic follower of hurling and encouraged his eldest son Pat from an early age. Pat recalls excursions to Semple Stadium in the late 1940s and early 1950s, being lifted onto his father’s shoulders to avoid the crush or to catch a glimpse of some of the great players of the time, including
Christy Ring. Back home in Johnstown Pat dreamed of emulating the feats of those players. There was no great tradition in north Kilkenny at the time. It had been in 1912 that the local team had last won the Kilkenny Championship and that was made up largely of men from Tullaroan. But there was great interest in the game. ‘We played in local leagues and in a small triangular field at the national school across the road,’ Pat remembers. ‘We made our hurls from bits of boards, we played with anything that resembled a hurling stick. A hurling ball was very precious and it would be carefully mended until it fell apart completely. Whoever had the ball decided when a game would be played.’

For secondary school, day pupils went to Thurles Christian Brothers School (CBS) while boarders went to St Kieran’s College in Kilkenny. Pat was twelve when he first made the journey across the county border into Tipperary to the CBS, and became consumed by the hurling tradition in the school. He played at every level and won Croke Cup and Dean Ryan Cup honours, losing in a Harty Cup final. ‘Tipperary were going well through my school days and there was great rivalry,’ he says. ‘I remember when they won the All-Ireland in 1958 and one of my teachers, John O’Grady, was in goal. An ex-pupil, Tony Wall, was on the team. They brought the cup to the school and it was a great day for everybody. Naturally they rubbed our noses in it.’

In Johnstown Pat was also enjoying some success. The juvenile teams were strong and, by the time they reached minor level, they had qualified for two Kilkenny county finals. It was a watershed. ‘At that time the area was not known for producing hurlers for the county team. I was fortunate that we had a bunch of very good players come along at the one time because it made sure that I was noticed. Without that team no one would ever have heard of me and I might never have played for Kilkenny.’

In 1961 Pat Henderson wore the number six jersey of Kilkenny for the first time and enjoyed his first taste of success. They beat Tipperary in the All-Ireland minor final and he marked Michael ‘Babs’
Keating. They had played against each other in schools’ competitions and would meet often over the following decade, generating a great rivalry that developed into a good friendship.

Pat played under-21 hurling in the inaugural year of that grade, 1964, but Wexford beat them. In that same year, he made his senior debut for Kilkenny. ‘The first time I was handed that Kilkenny jersey meant an awful lot to me, to the family and to Johnstown,’ he says. ‘Playing minor was great, but to be handed a senior jersey was special. It was unusual for someone from our area to play for the county at the time and I think that made it more important. It is one of the things that stands out for me. I cringe to this day when I hear that someone doesn’t want to play for the county. It means so much.’

He won his first Leinster Senior Championship that summer, but also suffered the first big disappointment of his career when they lost to Tipperary in the All-Ireland final. They lost to Wexford in 1965 but reached another final in 1966 when they were strongly fancied to win. They lost to a youthful Cork team captained by Gerald
McCarthy. Kilkenny’s success in the National League ‘home’ final and a subsequent visit to New York, where they played the exiles in what the GAA dubbed the ‘away’ final, provided some form of compensation.

By 1967 Kilkenny supporters were becoming impatient. The county reached the All-Ireland final again and this time Tipperary were the opposition. Kilkenny hadn’t beaten their great rivals in the All-Ireland series since 1922. Trailing by
1–3 to 2–6 at half time, their prospects of ending that losing streak looked bleak. But Kilkenny used a strong wind in the second half to turn the game around and win the title. ‘Because it was my first All-Ireland I suppose it does stand out,’ says Pat. ‘That and the fact that we had beaten what was a very good Tipperary team.’

Back home in Johnstown, Ger and John had watched the final on television. Pat’s first final in 1964 is also a treasured childhood memory for the youngest members of the family. Another brother Michael, next oldest to Pat, was a hunting and fishing enthusiast. Their sister Margaret ensured the hurling bloodlines would remain blue when she married into the Fitzpatrick family, well known in hurling circles in Kilkenny and beyond. They shared in the family pride. Pat recalls the 1967 victory fondly for another reason. His father saw him win an All-Ireland. Two years later, at the age of fifty-nine, Gerard Henderson passed away. Ger was just fifteen years old, while John was eleven and still in national school. ‘Pat became more of a father-figure to us then than a brother,’ says John. ‘He became a huge influence in every way. He was fourteen years older than me so I looked up to him in every way. But he didn’t just influence us. He influenced the whole of north Kilkenny. As a hurler he broke the mould and many others would follow him.’

Pat himself was greatly influenced by Kilkenny’s trainer at the time, Fr (now Monsignor) Tommy
Maher. ‘He was a great mentor. Himself, Donie
Nealon and Snitchie Ferguson invented hurling coaching during the 1960s and 1970s. They spent their summers in Gormanston studying the game, working out new training and coaching techniques. It was a whole new approach and those of us lucky enough to learn from him applied all the tricks of the trade when we began coaching ourselves.’ Fr
Maher’s legacy continues to the present day – Brian
Cody was one of his students as well.

‘Fr
Tommy’s philosophy was that the best way to train was playing hurling, but he also realised the need to prepare physically. For that he brought in an international athlete, Michael Lanigan, who showed us how to get fit. Dr Kieran
Cuddihy looked after our diet and everything else relating to our well-being. He was an excellent guy who made a great contribution.’

Johnstown had been home to a number of different clubs over the decades. In 1968 the town had both St Kieran’s and St Finbarr’s. They decided to amalgamate and took the name The Fenians, winning their first Kilkenny Senior Championship in 1970. Pat was captain and was given the honour of captaining Kilkenny in 1971. They won another Leinster Championship and again faced Tipperary in the All-Ireland final. It was the first of five consecutive finals for the team during the period of experimentation with eighty-minute games. They were considered good enough to win all five, but were stopped in their tracks in 1971 when Tipperary won by three points in a high-scoring game, 5–17 to 5–14. They did win three of the next four Championships, the sequence being broken when they lost to Limerick in 1973.

‘People talk today quite rightly about the achievements of the current Kilkenny team,’ observes Ger, ‘but that team from 1972 to 1975 was very unlucky not to win four Championships in a row. It was an outstanding team and, no disrespect to Limerick, but surely they would have done it if they had not got so many injuries in 1973.’

Ger had made his Senior Championship debut in the 1974 Leinster campaign, but lost his place on the team for the All-Ireland series. He was on the fringes during the 1975 campaign but was kept busy with a very talented under-21 side that won a second All-Ireland Championship that summer.
Kevin and
Ger
Fennelly, Dick
O’Hara, Joe
Hennessy, Brian
Cody and Billy
Fitzpatrick would all graduate to senior status. They too would come under the spell of Pat Henderson, this time in the guise of coach.

At club level, Pat and Ger played side by side in the 1974 Kilkenny and Leinster Club Championship successes. They lost the All-Ireland club final to St Finbarr’s of Cork, however, in the spring of 1975. But they won another title in 1977 and that meant that Ger would captain Kilkenny the following year. ‘What sticks out most in my mind about my career,’ explains Ger, ‘was being the captain in 1978 and leading the team out for the All-Ireland final in Croke Park. That moment was a brilliant feeling. Cork won the final, but it is still one of the highlights for me.’

Pat made an appearance as a substitute in that final in what was his final Championship game for Kilkenny. He played in the pre-Christmas schedule of League games, but over the holiday period decided that it was time to retire from the inter-county scene after a fourteen-year career in which he had adorned the game and won every honour possible. He was making his exit as John was beginning to establish himself as a regular. But their futures would be intertwined once again when Pat became joint trainer of Kilkenny with Eddie
Keher for the 1979 Championship.

The system for appointing managers in Kilkenny was quite different then, with the county champions allowed the right to choose. Shamrocks of Ballyhale had won the Kilkenny title in 1978, and early in 1979 Pat received a call from Kevin
Fennelly Senior asking him to take charge of the county team. Pat had been coaching informally with The Fenians, but had not seriously considered becoming involved at county level so fast. ‘It happened very quickly and we had to adapt quickly.’ Success was instant. With John and Ger holding down places in the back line, Kilkenny reached the All-Ireland final and comfortably defeated Galway. It brought the decade to a successful end. Kilkenny had played in seven out of ten finals and won four.