End of a boxing beginning

A little bit of Kilcullen sporting history was dismantled last week when Dan Brennan's Barn was demolished. The edifice, halfway up Hillside, once served as the first real 'home' for the embryo Kilcullen Boxing Club, back in the forties.



"We were all aspiring boxers as young lads," Pat Lynch recalled for the Diary as he and Jim 'The Brad' Berney watched the razing of the building. "We'd be down in the Ball Alley knocking the heads off each other, and Jim's mother, God be good to her, presented us with a pair of boxing gloves. So we decided we would put on a tournament."

The tournament was held in the barn, and local youngesters were charged a penny admission.

"I was only ten," Jim recalls. "We already had the beginnings of a club, with Frank Snell training us in his back yard. There was Ger Coleman, Myles Fenelon and Pat and myself. We had to leave Snells in the end and we set up the club in the barn."

Around the same time the Hibernian Billiards Club was located where the Bank of Ireland is now. They needed to move premises too, and Dan Brennan provided them with room in the shed beside the barn (below). So there was the equivalent of today's Community Sports Complex in place.



The Boxing Club was in the barn for several years, and then they got a more permanent premises back down the hill, where Coleman's B&B used to be up to recently. By the time they moved there, there were about a dozen committed regulars.

"We were being trained by Corporal Guilfoyle, who was stationed on the Curragh," Jim remembers. "He also boxed for Ireland at one stage. Others involved were Fr Ned Connors, Jack Brennan, Paddy Aspell, Al McDonnell, Eddie Doyle, Dick Jeffers, and Paddy Bathe."

Another was 'The Bird' Meaney, and the story is told of how he went AWOL from the Army at one stage. "We were out doing the threshing in Gilltown this day, and the Bird was up on the straw," Jim recalls. "The next thing somebody said the Guards were coming down the road, and the 'Bird' took off across across the fields like the hammers."

"He still had the uniform on, even," Pat Lynch adds with a grin.

The lads all took their boxing seriously, not least because Corporal Guilfoyle was a stern fight master. "He pulled no punches, you either mixed with him or got out of the way," Pat says. "But he was also a lovely fellow."

In the late forties the club moved on again, this time to the loft at the back of what was soon afterwards to become the Hideout pub (of which this writer has many memories, because that was my Dad's place). This remained its 'home' until the club got its own hall on land at the back of Berneys' pub during the mid-sixties.

Jim Berney recalls the first tournament in which he competed, which was held in the Carnival Field as part of the annual parish fundraising summer event.

"Ger Coleman fought a fellow called Lysaght from Newbridge, and I boxed Jimmy Phillips from Kilcullen. And Pat fought Paddy Fitzgerald, who was so tough that you might as well be hitting the wall. But Pat hit him so hard and so many times that he tired him out and won."

Other highlight events were the two re-enactments of the Donnelly and Cooper fight at Donnelly's Hollow in the early fifties, organised by this writer's father. Jim Berney played the part of Donnelly, and I've written about the event here.

Watching the demolition of the barn last week brought back several memories to Pat Lynch. "I played billiards here, I danced here, and I boxed here," he said. "It is a little sad, in a way, to see it gone."

Kilcullen is changing rapidly, both in built environment and in the passing of so many people with memories of its early days. It's good to be able to record some of these. If you have any of your own, send them in.

Brian Byrne.