Inside Track: Patsy reacquaints with trophy he was presented with 68 years ago

Patsy Coleman wasn’t handling the Delaney Cup for the first time when St Mary’s members of this year’s Leinster Championship-winning Louth teams visited him at his home recently.

The Ardee man was there when Louth had previously won the senior championship trophy, in 1957, and, indeed, was presented with the cup, even though he hadn’t played in the win over Dublin.

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He quipped afterwards that he must have been the first non-playing captain in Gaelic football to be so honoured.

It’s part of the ’57 narrative how this teak-tough Ardee defender fought his way back to fitness after suffering a serious injury early in the Leinster Championship.

The 1957 campaign began with an unimpressive win over Carlow. Coleman was captain, and he led the team out in the subsequent wins over Wexford and Kildare, his team beginning to show promise at this stage.

However, in the game with the Lilywhites, he suffered an injury, but didn’t know the extent of it until afterwards.

He watched the final with Dublin from the substitutes’ bench, his arm in plaster from top to bottom. Louth won, and his colleagues – Dermot O’Brien, who had taken over the captaincy, included – insisted on him going up for the trophy.

Speaking to Eunan Whyte, author of Heroes of ’57, Coleman recalled: “I went up to the old Hogan Stand where I was presented with the cup.

Normally, you would be expected to say a few words in Irish, but I had left school when I was 12, so I was finding it hard to speak English, never mind Irish.

“There was a fella called Christy Timmons from Wicklow, who worked with the Ulster Bank in Ardee, and he was behind me at the presentation whispering a few words in Irish into my ear, and I was relaying them out to Croke Park.”

A delay in playing the All-Ireland semi-final with Tyrone gave Coleman the chance to get to full fitness, and regain the No. 5 jersey.

He wasn’t in from the start, but replaced the injured Peadar Smith at half-time. He came through the half hour unscathed, and was then selected for the All-Ireland final.

But who would captain the team? Patsy takes up the story: “Dermot had been made captain for the semi-final, but then it came that the two of us were playing in the final, so there was a big decision for the selectors to make. The two of us were living beside each other, and the way it turned out was that I wanted him to captain the side, and he wanted me to be captain.

“We came to an arrangement at the meeting when we decided to toss a coin, and whoever won would be captain, while the loser would be presented with the ball, if we won.”

O’Brien was presented with the Sam Maguire Cup and made the speech. Looking on was a happy and relieved Patsy Coleman. Playing football was his game, not making speeches. He had his medal, and the ball that Seán Cunningham had flicked to the net for the decisive score in Louth’s 1-9 to 1-7 win.

The laced brown pig-skin continues to occupy pride of place in the Coleman household in Ardee’s Sliabh Breagh.

The memory of a great campaign must have come flooding back to Patsy – who next month celebrates his 90th birthday – when the five boys from the St Mary’s club, which he had served so well in his playing days, brought along the prizes won by Louth teams in a glorious summer.