Tipperary’s greatest ever team

As we come to the end of 2024, the past year marked the 60th anniversary of Tipperary’s 1964 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship victory. KILLINAN END recalls arguably the most complete of the county’s 28 All-Ireland successes.

In the story of Tipperary hurling there are a few years which bid fair for the claim of the county’s finest hour. The men of 1930 hold a claim that echoes down the decades and still looks impressive. That was the year when the Senior, Minor, and Junior titles – the ‘Triple Crown’ – were won and left the county with no further peaks to conquer. Almost six decades later a resurgent Tipperary won the 1989 All-Ireland Senior title, which in that year was the Holy Grail like never before. Yet the bar was raised further when the Junior and Under-21 titles were also won.

You wonder if, back in 1900, the significance of winning a three-in-a-row was as apparent to players and supporters as it would be now. This was, after all, less than fifteen years into the association’s organised activities – maybe three-in-a-row would turn out to be routine? By 1951, when Tipp achieved this feat again by beating Wexford to complete the 1949-51 era, its rarity was well established as the GAA approached its 75th anniversary. For that team, at that time, it was a seminal achievement too and a high-water mark that has not waned with the passage of time.

There is another strong candidate. Some sixty years ago this year another of the great years in Tipperary’s hurling annals saw the county’s supporters bask in the glory of 1964 which was remarkable in how comprehensively it was achieved.

Bouncing Back

At the end of 1963 Tipp looked back on a year where both the League Final and Munster Final been lost to Waterford. The latter was a day when Tipp started well in Limerick but struck some seventeen wides in a rare off-day for a forward-line which had run riot against Waterford a year earlier in the second-half of the Munster Final. Perhaps an unspotted straw in the wind that 1962 Munster Final day was the fourteen wides they hit even on a good day. Waterford themselves fell short in the 1963 All-Ireland Final against Kilkenny and as Tipp set out on the National League campaign a few weeks later it was with a sense of starting over from scratch.

The opening League game was against Galway in Nenagh and produced a big win for Tipp. More noteworthy, perhaps, than the monstrous 34 point margin was the inclusion in the Tipperary fifteen of Cashel’s Peter O’Sullivan in goal, as well as Mick Roche and Michael ‘Babs’ Keating. All three had featured the previous September when Tipperary won the All-Ireland Intermediate title beating London in Thurles. That Intermediate team had also included Tom Larkin of Kilsheelan, centre-forward on the successful 1958 Senior team. All three newcomers would make their mark over the years to come, in the case of the latter two that impact would be significant and quick.

The following round saw Tipp win well over Clare in Ennis with the old firm of Mackey McKenna and Seán McLoughlin bagging a brace of goals each – not the last time they would leave a mark either. This was a time of many moving parts, and the following week Tipp were back in Croke Park to play the Oireachtas Final against Wexford in front of some 26,000 spectators. In mid-September Tipp had beaten freshly-minted All-Ireland champions, Kilkenny, in the Oireachtas semi-final at Nowlan Park. This was followed by a six-point win over the Model County.

The Munster Final may not have been a good day, but recovery was encouraging. The next League match against Cork in Thurles was another emphatic win against a Rebel team now firmly in the post-Ring era. It included Denis O’Riordan at full-back, a man who might be benignly described as uncompromising. Denis Murphy, John O’Halloran, John Bennett, Peter Doolan, and Pat Fitzgerald would be part of an unlikely All-Ireland winning team in 1966. The referee in Thurles that day against Cork, Paddy Johnson of Kilkenny, hardly imagined he would be back in Thurles eighteen years later to referee the Centenary All-Ireland Hurling final.

A drawn game at Nowlan Park saw Tipp at the top of the group with League semi-final against Limerick to come. This game was juiced up a little by the prospect that the eventual League winners might be heading to play New York afterwards in the States. In a sign of the times, the other semi-final between Wexford and Cork took place in Croke Park while Tipp’s meeting with Limerick was in MacDonagh Park, Nenagh. The unlikely venue came in for widespread praise for how well-organised affairs were on the day.

Not for the last time Tipp’s big win was based in a powerful second-half showing when a four-point half-time lead was stretched to fourteen. Mick Burns, Mick Roche, Jimy Doyle, and Larry Kiely were singled out for mention. If it was a sign of the times that a League semi-final with an attendance of 13,000 could be accommodated in Nenagh, other issues were both of their time yet also eternal. A display of the GAA’s enduring ability to attract all manner of Jesuitical argument in its meetings was given at a debate in a North Board meeting at the time as to whether two players described as “lashing” hurleys at each other could, for the purposes of rules application, really be regarded as “striking” with the hurley. No doubt that chin-scratcher was resolved satisfactorily.

The Tipp team which lined in the League Final against Wexford was now taking on a familiar form. When Tipp paraded around Croke Park on the first Sunday in September it differed from the League Final by only one player. Tony Wall had a hand injury and had been replaced, ably, during the League by Moycarkey/Borris’ Pat Ryan. Liam Devaney was another guaranteed starter but had broken a couple of bones in his hand which opened the door for Babs Keating to stake a claim on a spot at wing-forward for the summer.

Wexford had lots of form in the early 1960s, having served Tipp a first All-Ireland Final defeat in 38 years four years earlier, and bringing Tipp all the way to the wire in the ’62 final. This day, however, was disastrous for those of a Purple and Gold disposition. By the 22nd minute, Tipp had raised four green flags through Babs Keating, Donie Nealon, team captain for the day Seán McLoughlin, and Jimmy Doyle. Wexford faced a seventeen-point deficit at half-time. The minds of ‘glass half-empty’ advocates would have drifted to eleven years earlier when Tipp blew a sixteen-point half-time lead against the same opposition. But this was a different Wexford and different conditions. An attendance of over 42,000 saw Tipp win by twenty points in the end.

The Big Apple

Three weeks later, Tipp did it all again in the Big Apple when they beat New York in Gaelic Park. This was the fourth time since 1950 that Tipperary had travelled to New York. John Doyle, the one participating player on all four trips, once generously acknowledged that he’d never have seen America but for Tipperary hurling.

The American trip nicely bridged the gap between League and Championship, yet Tipp did not play Clare until early July. Liam Devaney and Tony Wall were back in to face a Clare team with plenty of good hurlers like Jimmy Cullinane, Pat Cronin, and Jimmy Smith. The Banner seemed in a decent position at half-time turning with the breeze with a small deficit against a Tipp team not firing on all cylinders. It was a false dawn, and the second half was a blitz and Clare ended up shipping a twenty-point margin as goals poured in from all angles.

The Munster Final against Cork was the first between the counties since the chaos and controversy of 1961. This was a day when Cork came in hope after a decent League campaign but left in despair. A fourteen-point beating was out of kilter with the white-knuckle meetings of Tipp-Cork since 1949, but these teams were on different trajectories. If there was a chink of light for Cork that day, it was the winning of their first Munster Minor title since 1951 by a team which included Con Roche and Charlie McCarthy. An interesting feature of the Munster Championship was that matches were refereed by Donie Nealon and Jimmy Smith who also hurled in the competition.

Resounding success

The All-Ireland Final was against the defending champions, Kilkenny. If you had gripes about how the previous year turned out this was the opponent Tipp wanted in the final. It is difficult with hindsight to imagine that in some quarters the 1963 champions were considered likely winners, but it turned into another resounding win for Tipp.

Things were tight and cagey in the first-half, but the floodgates opened after the break. In the end Donie Nealon helped himself to a hat-trick of goals, while inevitably Mackey McKenna and Seán McLoughlin raised green flags too. Not until 2019 would Kilkenny endure the likes of this in an All-Ireland Final with a fourteen-point margin in the end. It scarcely has been better for Tipperary hurling than this championship when they swept all before them.

The year was sweetened a little further when the inaugural All-Ireland Under-21 title was won when Tipp beat Wexford in the final. And if that wasn’t enough throw in the Wembley Tournament and the Oireachtas Final both of which were won at the expense of Kilkenny.

The All-Ireland winning panel, full of iconic names, were: John O’Donoghue (Arravale Rovers), John Doyle (Holycross/Ballycahill), Michael Maher (Holycross/Ballycahill), Kieran Carey (Roscrea), Mick Burns (Eire Og Nenagh), Tony Wall (Thurles Sarsfields), Michael Murphy (Thurles Sarsfields, Capt), Mick Roche (Carrick Davins), Theo English (Marlfield), Jimmy Doyle (Thurles Sarsfields), Larry Kiely (Gortnahoe/Glengoole), Michael ‘Babs’ Keating (Ballybacon/Grange), Donie Nealon (Burgess), John ‘Mackey’ McKenna (Borrisokane), Séan McLoughlin (Thurles Sarsfields), Liam Devaney (Borris-Ileigh), Mick Lonergan (Moycarkey/Borris), Pat Ryan (Moycarkey/Borris), Len Gaynor (Kilruane MacDonaghs), Peter O’Sullivan (Cashel King Cormacs).