Free Brothers in Sport by Donal Keenan

and were trailing Limerick by five points, 1–11 to 2–13. It was not an insurmountable deficit if the team was playing well. It wasn’t.
    In the seconds after the awarding of the free for a foul on his brother Billy by Limerick’s Joe O’Connor on the 20-metre line, Johnny had a decision to make. The old hurling mantra ‘take your points and the goals will come’ invaded his thoughts along with the advice coming from the sideline. He stood over the sliotar as if he was obeying.
    Behind him to his right stood Billy willing him to go for goal, but staying quiet. The eldest Dooley, Joe, watched from the old dugout under the Cusack Stand, having been substituted ten minutes earlier, ‘not thinking at all, except that the game was probably gone from us’.
    Six Limerick players lined up in front of the goal at the Hill 16 end of Croke Park. With thirty minutes and five seconds showing on the clock, Johnny’s decision was made. He lifted and struck the sliotar, and watched as it flew through the defensive cover and into the net to spark one of the most incredible comebacks in Championship history.
    Just forty-two seconds later Pat O’Connor scored another goal for Offaly. Billy Dooley fired over three points in quick succession. Offaly supporters who had already left the ground in a despondent mood came rushing back to Croke Park. Some made it just in time to see Offaly’s captain Martin Hanamy collect the Liam McCarthy Cup. Offaly 3–16, Limerick 2–13. Seán and Betty Dooley’s three sons had scored two goals and eleven points of that total.
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    Clareen, also known locally as the parish of Seir Kieran, is a small rural community five miles east of Birr in County Offaly. Like his neighbours, Seán Dooley farmed the land to provide for his young and growing family. The work was hard, but a strong community spirit was sustained and strengthened by neighbourliness and the shared interest of agriculture and sport.
    For Seán no sport could compare with hurling. Although Offaly as a county operated below the sanctified level of the premier hurling counties, there was a small pocket of the county around Birr in which the game was a real passion. Seán had played club hurling with Clareen. They might not have enjoyed anything in the way of success but they loved their hurling. In the evenings at home or when they were gathered together out in the fields doing the various bits and pieces that youngsters could help out with on the farm, Seán regaled his young family with stories of the great Cork and Kilkenny teams he had seen. He painted pictures of the exploits of Christy Ring and Eddie Keher to his five sons and four daughters, passing to a new and willing generation a fascination for the game.
    Joe, Séamus, Kieran, Billy and Johnny travelled into Birr with him almost every Sunday during the summer months to watch club games. Offaly did not have ready-made heroes for the boys to worship as they grew up, but they absorbed the affection, passion and intensity of feeling for the game that the hurling people of the county exhibited at these events. The girls – Mary, Sandra, Patricia and Eilish – also came under the spell. ‘The whole house revolved around hurling,’ is Billy’s recollection.
    Though they regularly played football and soccer, hurling was the true pursuit of the young kids around Clareen. ‘The hurl was like an extension of your body,’ explains Johnny. ‘You always carried one around with you, going up through the farm, herding cattle, the hurl was always at your side. Seir Kieran was a small parish, made up of around 400 people. The club drew from about four or five families and we all grew up playing hurling in each other’s yards and haggards. We didn’t realise it at the time, but we were developing skills that would stand to us later. It was a great, tight-knit community and we developed strong bonds and a knowledge of each other that would help us in our hurling in later years.’
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