IN the delirious haze, Sean McGourty remembers a man walking into their changing room in Croke Park selling ice-creams. Antrim’s 1971 Vocational Schools hurling team had just climbed the highest mountain.
Along the way to their famous All-Ireland victory 51 years ago, they defeated Kilkenny, Wexford, Offaly and slayed Tipperary in the final.
The late Frank Corr, a county board member at the time, “bought the lot off” the ice-cream seller.
“Frank handed them out and we celebrated with ice-creams,” McGourty recalls. “When I was young there used to be people in Croke Park going around selling ice-creams in the innocent days of yore.”
McGourty was one of a number of bright hurling lights in Antrim in the late 60s/early 70s who experienced that sweet taste of All-Ireland victory on Jones’s Road.
Gerry Armstrong (St John’s), John O’Neill (RIP, Rossa), Paddy Cunningham senior (Lamh Dhearg), Jim Brogan (Dunloy) and Paul McCaughan (Larne) also played on the '71 Vocational Schools team that was moulded expertly by the late Brother (Larry) Ennis.
In the mind’s eye, Sean McGourty can still see the “grin of satisfaction” on Brother Ennis’s face after Antrim’s epic win.
Three years earlier, he helped guide the Vocational schools' footballers to All-Ireland success.
“Brother Ennis was a completely unique character, dedicated and best known for his interest in Gaelic football but equally interested in hurling,” McGourty says.
“I first got to know him when I was 16 and involved in the Antrim Vocational Schools Hurling team of '71.
“Organisationally, he was brilliant because you needed to know every school in Antrim, finding out who was playing and who was good and bringing them all together and getting them to Belfast.
“In 1971 that wasn’t easy. He was also into making sure players had everything they needed. We trained up on the all-weather pitch at St Mary’s CBS in the Christmas of ’71. There was snow on the ground, it was freezing and there were 25 new, green tracksuits sitting out for us. When he saw snow he wasn’t long in organising tracksuits for us.
“He knew what he wanted, he had people well drilled. One of the things he did that I thought was quite remarkable and I’d never seen any other coach do: if somebody made a mistake, he’d stop the game and he’d ask the player: ‘What did you do there? And why did you do that? Now, do what you should have done...’
“The next time that same fella was in the same situation, he’d know what was the right thing and wrong thing to do.”
Brother Ennis was indeed a unique individual. Wherever he went, he left the most uplifting trail behind him. There are literally thousands of GAA players, especially in Tyrone, Dublin, Antrim and Armagh who remember and are thankful that they met such a man.
A Westmeath native, he joined the Christian Brothers at just 15. He studied maths and history at Queen’s University between 1953-56 before completing his teaching studies at St Joseph’s Training College (now St Mary’s Teaching College).
His first teaching post was at the Christian Brothers primary school in Omagh in 1957.
It was the first and last place where Brother Ennis would leave his imprint. In the primary school, he produced "legendary" 11-plus results.
He managed 51 passes out of 52 and in another term 53 out of 55.
“It was accepted that he was a mathematical genius,” McGourty says.
“He was the go-to man for Applied Maths,” says Seamus Woods, who was friends with Brother Ennis during their long service to Ulster Colleges.
“Students from other schools in the town would come too. He opened the door to third level for fellas.”
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A FINE dual player himself, Brother Ennis won a county championship with St Enda’s, Omagh in 1963 under the alias of ‘Sean Mulryan’ as the religious order did not allow brothers to play Gaelic Games.
“Larry was never one for observing the minutiae of canon law – not remotely,” smiles Woods.
In 1967, he left Omagh for Belfast and taught at St Mary’s CBS on the Glen Road for several years.
McGourty says: “He always used to say if people are looking for me after half-three they won’t get me because I’ll be out on the pitch. That’s the way he ran his life.”
He also spent a good chunk of the 70s in Dublin before returning to Belfast where he was woven into the fabric of GAA life.
He managed St Teresa’s - a west Belfast club he helped found in the 60s - to their one and only senior championship in 1979 and had a very successful stint with the Antrim senior footballers between 1979-81 .
Armagh was his next calling where he led Pearse Og to their first-ever senior title in 1985 and followed up with another three years later.
He went on to have memorable spells with the Orchard minors and U21s in the 90s. As he reached retirement age, the Christian Brothers ordered him to move to Baldoyle, Dublin – but Brother Ennis had his own retirement plan that was at odds with his religious superiors.
Instead, he headed west in his trusty Peugeot 306 and was reunited with Omagh CBS, where he continued to tutor in maths and helped the school reach MacRory Cup and Hogan Cup glory in the ‘Noughties’ alongside Kieran Donnelly.
Ravaged by ill-health in his later years, Brother Ennis passed away last December in Coralstown Nursing Home, just outside his home place of Mullingar. He was 88.
For over a century, he blazed a trail across Ulster, scorching the hearts and minds of young Gaelic footballers and hurlers everywhere he went.
“There was a sense of profound sadness,” says McGourty, upon hearing of Brother Ennis’s passing nine months ago, “because of what the man gave throughout his life, whether he was teaching or coaching or managing teams.”
“You cannot easily and exactly quantify the influence of Brother Ennis but in my opinion it was immense,” says ex-Antrim footballer and St Teresa’s clubman John McKiernan.
Even before Antrim’s vocational hurling class of ’71 were celebrating in the Croke Park changing rooms with ice-creams, Brother Ennis and his Christian Brother cohorts achieved the same three years earlier with the footballers.
“I knew Brother Ennis very well from a very early age because he was my form teacher in CBS Glen Road,” says McKiernan.
“The word was out that he had a very professional attitude and had a tremendous record in getting 11-plus passes. I remember he was very much into his biblical studies… Everybody had a passage to read and if you didn’t have your read bible in every day, God help you!
“Brother Nannery and Brother Ennis took the football and hurling teams and they got total respect from us. On the county front, Brother O’Connell also had a tremendous input into the Vocational Schools team that won the All-Ireland title in ’68.”
St Mary’s boasted eight players on the ’68 team including McKiernan, Danny Maguire, Denis Ferguson, Geordie Shields, Gerry Fitzpatrick, Jimmy McCorry, Sean Goodwin and captain Sean McGoldrick, who later moved to Derry, while St Gabriel’s and St Thomas’s supplied some fabulous footballers to make up the team.
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IF someone asked him to lend a helping hand to a team, the Westmeath man rarely refused.
St Teresa’s used to hold their committee meetings in the grounds of St Mary's CBS on the Glen Road. During one meeting in 1978, the modest west Belfast club were on the look-out for a senior football manager.
McKiernan’s father proposed Brother Ennis who lived on the school grounds. Before the meeting was over, St Teresa’s had a new manager.
“My father walked across the school knocked on Brother Ennis’s door and asked him would he take St Teresa’s football team and he said he would. That’s how he became our manager.”
At the end of his first season in charge, St Teresa’s were miraculously crowned county champions
“St John’s were the big force in those days with the likes of Peter McGinnity, Andy McCallin and Gerry McCann – they were all Railway Cup men. That was the standard there was in Antrim at that time. But we managed to win the championship in 79. We didn’t have a home pitch either, we played on a field on the side of a mountain…
“But Brother Ennis put in incredible hours after school. You don’t understand the amount of time him and Brother Nannery put in - hurling and football teams, every day of the week on the Glen Road. Those guys were incredible men. Then, to go and take the county team was just unbelievable.”
A brilliant midfielder, John McKiernan was arguably at his peak when Brother Ennis held the Antrim reins between 1979 and 81, claiming a Dr McKenna Cup in that period.
Loyal to the cloth as much as Gaelic Games, Brother Ennis left Antrim and was posted to Armagh in 1982.
“Nobody would say this and it’s probably not politically correct to say it, but after Brother Ennis left, Antrim football went on a downward spiral,” says McKiernan.
“I think they went down in all levels – school level, senior football level, county level – whereas Armagh and Tyrone football were in the ascendancy.”
In the early 80s, Pearse Ogs were one of the leading clubs in Armagh, but they could never get over the line in the senior championship.
Brother Ennis, who was by then teaching in the town, had taken charge of the Ogs and brought a bit of shape to them with the likes of Paul Grimley, Ger Houlahan, Colin Harney, Sean Gordon, Tommy Martin and the Donnelly brothers in their ranks.
“When he came into our club we had a great bunch of fellas, a great team and great camaraderie, but also the club football in Armagh in the 1980s was very, very competitive,” says Grimley.
“You could've picked from six to eight teams that could win the championship, it was that strong. Us and the Harps maybe dominated but St Paul’s and Killeavy were great sides at that time too, as well as Carrickcruppen, Maghery, and ‘Cross were always there.
“Brother Ennis was vice principal of the Christian Brothers school at the time. He was football mad and straight away he got instant respect from the players. If he told us to run over the Mourne Mountains we would've run over them. That’s just the way it was.”
A common thread in the story of Brother Ennis was his legendary driving skills – or lack of them. Seamus Woods recounts being driven to a Vocational schools’ match in Portlaoise.
From that day on, Woods drove.
“We went to Portlaoise another 20 times over several years and he never, ever, drove again because he scared the bloody wits out of me,” Woods says.
The Pearse Og boys experienced the same.
“We went to games in a mini-bus and, I swear to God, you’d no time to be nervous before the game because we were just happy to get there,” Grimley laughs.
“There was silence on the bus. He would have taken over on a hairpin bend and talked away, and it didn’t matter who was flashing lights at him or beeping the horn, he went on ahead. Sometimes the fumes would come up through the back axle and by the time we got there we’d be nearly gassed!”
Brother Ennis spent six blissful seasons at the Ogs but because he knew the playing resources at schools’ level, it made perfect sense for him to step in and take the Armagh minors in the early-to-mid-90s.
The young Orchard men, backboned by captain Paul McGrane, Diarmaid Marsden, Des Mackin, Barry O’Hagan, Andrew McCann, and Justin and Enda McNulty, suffered a gut-wrenching All-Ireland final defeat to Meath in ’92 that left some scars.
“This might sound very, very basic but he was a very good example to us when you look back at it now,” says McGrane, who went on to win a senior All-Ireland title in 2002.
“You didn’t realise you were looking for an example back then, but he was a good example just the way he went about his business. I just have good memories of that time and I’m very thankful for them.
“Brother Ennis had great passion for Armagh football, whether it was with the schools, minors or u21s. It was great to be part of that minor group. Irrespective of where he was he would push on as best he could with the group he had.”
NOT many Gaels are held with such deep affection in so many counties as Brother Ennis.
When he decided to head west and back to Omagh in 1999, he enjoyed some of his happiest days involved in Gaelic football, helping CBS win MacRory Cups, and a Hogan title in 2007.
Upon his death in December last year, former Tyrone forward and St Enda’s Omagh clubman, Ronan O’Neill posted on Twitter: “A great man has passed away. Lucky I got to see him a few years ago. He was a big influence on my career. Bro Ennis – Legend.”
Reflecting on the Westmeath man’s influence, O’Neill says: “I knew about Brother Ennis before because he’d played for St Enda’s Omagh [in the 1960s] and my father would have been friendly with him. He would come up and watch the county games, up to the back gate and my father would let him in.
“He took me when I was first year in 2005. He wasn’t a man of many words but he was one of the first men who taught me to play with my two feet.
“We were going out as mad-keen first years, there must have been about 60 or 70 of us and I remember him picking me out and saying: ‘If you want to reach the top you need to have two feet.’”
There are few more two-footed players in today's game than Ronan O’Neill. He also remembers writhing in agony with cramp during a McCormack Cup match in Brewster Park one night.
Brother Ennis told O’Neill to lie on the ground and he proceeded to massage the cramp out of him.
“I have never experienced a rub like it in my life. No solution, just the bare hands and it worked. I got up and was able to play on.”
In those later years, when the Omagh boys were taking their shot at MacRory Cup glory and touching the sky, Brother Ennis was Kieran Donnelly’s right hand man.
With the new school year upon us and Gaelic football and hurling teams beginning to assemble, the spirit of Brother Ennis will be felt in school corridors and playing fields in Belfast, Armagh, Omagh and Dublin.
“He was a great man and friend,” says Donnelly, “who had a serious passion for coaching and promoting Gaelic Games within our school in Omagh CBS.
“His energy and enthusiasm was boundless and his contribution to the CBS in which he coached thousands of pupils over the years and who all benefitted greatly from his football prowess is incalculable.”
Westmeath's Pied Piper now rests in the cemetery at Marino Institute of Education on Griffith Avenue, Dublin - but his legacy lives and breathes in so many who were fortunate enough to know him.
