St Brigid's Christy Guiney and Tommy Burke on Championship wins and hurling being back in Towers

The game of hurling is firmly back in Kildare Town after last year’s Round Towers revival, but it’s not a brand new team entirely.

The club in the area that was known as St Brigid’s has a Kildare Senior Hurling Championship title win. And although the name is different and the world has changed around them, there is a man that connects the two teams.

Christy Guiney and best friend Tommy Burke were on the Senior Hurling Championship winning team of 1978, and the former played for the newly formed Round Towers side last year, 45 years later at aged 68.

“I enjoyed it. I didn’t enjoy the goals going by me though, it brought back bad memories.” Christy said. “I played another game or two and you’re getting stuck in and getting knocks. I suppose I’m probably getting too old for all that.

“I was asked about it (returning) and said no problem, and have been at it since. I keep going because I love it. I played football until I was 47 and I love both games. The hurling stands out of course, but I'm sure I won’t stop and I’ll be there next year doing the social stuff and keeping up with the young lads.”

Christy and Tommy Burke have a relationship that has been formed by the years of their full-back and goalkeeper connection
at the heart of the St

Brigid’s backline. Despite not playing into his late 60s, Tommy also played hurling well past typical retirement age.
“I nearly had a free bus pass by the time they told me to pack it in, but I’m very much retired now,” Tommy laughed.

The pair also have the mutual bond of coming from more traditional hurling counties with Christy arriving in Kildare from Cork, and Tommy from Kilkenny. They were far from the only non-Kildare men that togged out for St Brigid’s in those days too.

Those numbers were needed as the two lads played their best stuff during the hurling years in Kildare dominated by Ardclough and Éire Óg.

“I remember we got to a league final against Ardclough, I was out in the middle of the field that day” Christy recalled. We couldn't believe it, we were about 10 points up at that stage and a stray ball landed in front of me. I pulled on it and hit the referee straight in the eye and the match was called off. Tommy said to me while coming off the field, if we don’t win the next day, you're dead.

“We got destroyed the second day and I didn’t travel home with Tommy Burke that day anyways,” he laughed.
St Brigid’s would get their first crack at breaking the Éire Óg and Ardclough stranglehold in 1976, when they faced the latter in the county final. Christy and Tommy would narrowly come up short that day 2-11 to 2-9 against the defending champions.

“It was nearly our first year in senior and we got to the final, but that loss was tough to take, it took a long time to get over that,” Tommy explained.

It was never going to be easy for St Brigid’s to break into that elite county champion company. Barring one season (Suncroft in 1974), either Ardclough or Éire Óg had won the Kildare Senior Hurling Championship between '64 to '77.

When they did climb that mountain, St Brigid’s did it the hard way, beating Éire Óg in a titanic semi-final before lining out against Ardclough on May 28, 1978 for their date with destiny.

“We came back two years later after our disappointment and we had our breakthrough. We gave Ardclough the biggest beating, shock they ever got. I knew then we had something going,” Tommy said.

The 1978 county final finished 3-10 to 2-9 in Brigid’s favour as they won the club’s first ever and what remains their only Kildare Senior Hurling Championship.

“It was great to win because Ardclough and Éire Óg were the top teams at that time,” Christy said.
Tommy added, “I remember in the last five or 10 minutes I thought we were beaten. They (Ardclough) got a penalty and I actually saved the penalty. I can’t remember whether I gave it away or not, but I saved it anyway.”

The magnitude of the 1978 Championship win would be further enhanced by the years that followed. St Brigid’s remained highly competitive, but came up short in the 1980 and ‘81 county finals.

Of course the true tragedy was far from the sorrow of loss or the feeling of wanting to have won more. The true heartbreak came with the club’s disbandment years later as the prominence of hurling in the area fell away.

“1978 was a great year for us, but the biggest disappointment was when we had to fold maybe 20 or so years after. The great thing is that we have gotten it back and it is something that needs to keep going and bring in young people,” Christy said.

“We won an U14 Division 4 cup there in the last couple of years and that brought great excitement, to see a win coming back into Towers and exciting for hurling in the area in general.”

The men from Cork and Kilkenny are happy to reflect on their own glory days, but are now looking forward to seeing what can be built with the new hurling team that competes today.

“I am delighted that it’s going again and it’s brilliant that somebody is carrying on the legacy of it,” Tommy said.

“They deserve huge credit for bringing it back because it’s not easy to do. The under-age is now a proper set-up and in years to come that will make up the senior team.”

Two of the club’s finest servants, that were there in the finest hour of its hurling legacy, are more than pleased that what they were a part of has returned to Round Towers.

“It’s great to have hurling back in the club, it started in the schools, with Donal Fleming, the principal in St Brigid’s when they started off the school teams. They will come to us then and we have teams right through the underrage ranks. We are hopefully going to put a minor team in this year too,” Christy said.

“If we can then get a few of them up to the senior side for Junior Championship, that’d be even better. Paul Condon has done brilliant work for the last eight years there to get life back into the club.

“It is great to have it back.”