Inside Track: A Louthman refereed the 1928 All-Ireland final

A lifesize statue of Bill Gannon was unveiled by GAA President, Larry McCarthy, in Kildare town recently. Gannon, seen holding the Sam Maguire Cup, was captain of the Kildare team that beat Cavan to win the 1928 All-Ireland football final.

It was the first year in which the country’s best known trophy went on offer. Kildare, appearing in their third successive final and defending their title, haven’t won the competition since. They went tantalisingly close on the 70th anniversary year of their ‘28 win, beaten by the Ray Sllke-captained Galway side.

The Sam Maguire Cup presented to Gannon was replaced by a replica in 1987. Mick Lyons was the last to hold the original aloft, in 1987, and it was a Meath colleague of his, Joe Cassells, who received what was known for a time as ‘Baby Sam’ twelve months later.

In each of those finals, Meath defeated Cork, but the Rebels avenged those defeats in 1990, having beaten Mayo in the final the previous year.

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There was a Louth connection with 1928.  The Referee was Drogheda’s Tom Burke, who, like Sam Maguire, played a significant role in the War of Independence, and was interned in Frongoch camp in Wales following the 1916 Rising. He is the only Louthman to have been the man in the middle for an All-Ireland senior final.

Attached to the Stars club and later Wolfe Tones, Burke was an outstanding worker for the GAA in this county. As a player he won county junior and senior championship medals and led Louth to a win in the 1912 Leinster junior championship.

In addition to taking up refereeing when he retired from football, he filled the roles of both secretary and chairman of the Louth County Board.

Bill Gannon also had the distinction of being on the Leinster panel for the eastern province’s first win in the Railway Cup, also in 1928. Among his colleagues were two Louthmen, Mick McKeown – Muckle’s father - and Willie Lawless.

McKeown was a Wolfe Tones colleague of Tom Burke’s, while Lawless was a member of the Dundalk’s Con Ciolberts club when he was selected for Leinster. However, it’s for his association with Dundalk Gaels that Lawless is best remembered.

He was a founder-member of The Ramparts outfit in November of ’28, and as a footballer had the distinction of winning Louth junior championship medals with three Dundalk clubs - O’Rahilly’s (1918), Con Colberts (’26) and Gaels (’33). He trained the Louth team for the 1950 All-Ireland.