“These two young men from Glengarriff in west Cork were in Dublin on 15 August 1943 for the All-Ireland football semi-final between Cork and Cavan. My father, Paddy O’Shea (on the right), and his friend John O’Mahoney had left Glengarriff the previous year to work in a turf-cutting camp in Kildare. The regime there was pretty frugal during those years of the Emergency, so an outing to Dublin would have been a welcome respite. They went home that evening pretty disappointed as Cork were beaten by Cavan by a single point. Paddy O’Shea joined the RAF two years later and after three years in the Middle East he returned to Glengarriff. John O’Mahoney left for the USA about the same time and settled there.”
(1945)
Submitted by Andrew O Shea