Replying To LongfordgaaAbú: "Seamus Flynn who was a legend of the 1960's for Longford and Clonguish was from Bornacoola. The late great Bertie Allen was responsible for getting him and his brothers across the divide to play their football in Longford."
Interesting insight. I think Annaduff and StMarys have a few lads from "across the bridge" from their respective parish boundaries, as do Ballinaglera from the Cavan side. Shoter travel to training and games, where you went to school etc. can factor where you play. if you came up through the underage system, noones business really
Replying To CARPS: "Laois won a Leinster SFC in 1937 with five players from county Carlow on the starting 15: Martin Farrell, Jim Slater, Tommy Murphy, Mick Haughney and Jack McDarby.
The reason they were playing in Laois was that Carlow had suspended their club- Graiguecullen-eleven years earlier after a man was killed during a county final against Milford.
Ironically, Carlow had won the Leinster Junior in 1923, with six Graiguecullen players on the starting team. Including the captain Barney Hennessy (who had also won it in 1913). In those days there were only six senior teams in Leinster, so the junior was a sort of partial early version of the Tailteann Cup.
Tommy Murphy's grandson (Jody Morrissey) and great-grandson (Jordan Morrissey) would go on to be important players for Carlow. But they played for Eire Og, not Graiguecullen."
I do remember reading about the Graiguecullen - Milford brawl in the 1926 Carlow county final. Nobody was killed but Graiguecullen thereafter played in Laois - away from that rough crowd in Carlow.
The river Barrow runs through Carlow town. Graiguecullen is west of the river in County Laois.
Graiguecullen is part of Carlow town but not part of County Carlow. Similarly Gracefield is part of Portarlington town but it is in County Offaly, not Laois.
Replying To facethepuckout: "On the Roscommon theme, quite a bit of Galway influence in our clubs along with Creggs and St Croans. A good portion of Ballyforan once you cross the bridge over the Suck is in County Galway and they proudly represent St Aidans in Football and Four Roads in hurling. Bits of Athleague also in Co Galway. Very fluid situation with Creagh on the edge of Ballinasloe ( mostly caused by rapacious hands of Galway County Council) but most turn out for the Roscommon Padraig Pearses."
For many years, Ballygar hurling teams used to play in Roscommon while their football teams played in Galway. This resulted in the legendary Mattie McDonagh playing minor football for Galway against Roscommon and minor hurling for Roscommon against Galway in the same year. (He also won a Roscommon county minor hurling medal with Ballygar). I would imagine that there must be others from Ballygar that played hurling for Roscommon over the years.
Replying To saorkick: "I do remember reading about the Graiguecullen - Milford brawl in the 1926 Carlow county final. Nobody was killed but Graiguecullen thereafter played in Laois - away from that rough crowd in Carlow.
The river Barrow runs through Carlow town. Graiguecullen is west of the river in County Laois.
Graiguecullen is part of Carlow town but not part of County Carlow. Similarly Gracefield is part of Portarlington town but it is in County Offaly, not Laois."
I just remembered where I had read about above - GAA Grassroots Volume 2 contains an account of this incident.
This account, written by a Carlow man, is fairly detailed. In summary there was a pitch invasion after the Graiguecullen full-forward was kicked in the head by the Milford full-back while clearing a ball. Both agreed afterwards that it was an accident. However the row following the pitch invasion was vicious and generated ill-will and incidents for years afterwards.
The article also explains that part of Graiguecullen is actually in Co. Carlow while the larger part is in Co.Laois.
Carrig Riverstown is almost exclusively in Co. Tipperary but play in Offaly. They had 3 on the Offaly u20 hurling team in 2024 who beat Tipperary in the all ireland. There would have been plenty of Tipp flags flying around their parish. Knockshegowna in Tipperary is of the same parish and there would be quite a bit of transferring back and forth between the 2. They play together as St Cillians for Camogie in Offaly. The Brennan sisters represented Offaly all the way up along before Rachel played for Tipp for the last number of years. She is back playing for Offaly this year.
I heard before from a Galmoy man that players from the portion of Galmoy that are over the Laois border technically can't play inter county for anyone. James Dunne in 02-03 and Ryan Murphy in 2017 had to get special permission to line out for Laois at minor level.
Very little if any of Shinrone is in Tipperary (up around Cloughjordan/Kilruane) and there would have been very few Shinrone players on the Offaly team when Babs was around.
Ballyskenach is a small club sandwiched between Shinrone and Roscrea where Cistercian College Roscrea is famously situated (and that's why CCR play in Leinster). They produced greats such as Paddy Kirwan, Pat Cleary, Brendan Murphy and David Franks. Paddy often says that their tiny area has more all Irelands than Roscrea. Paddy went on to hurl with Birr, Pat hurled for Kilmacud and Tullamore and David hurled with Carrickshock. Brendan is the Tipperary team doctor. Ballyskenach are now joined at all levels with Killavilla, another tiny club, whose pitch is on the main road between Roscrea and Borris in Ossory and yet is in Offaly. More recently, Ballyskenach have lost promising hurlers to Shinrone, such as Luke Watkins and the Carney brothers (both of whom play for Munster rugby now).