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Irish Times
2 days ago
- Sport
- Irish Times
Mason Melia building towards thrilling end to St Pat's chapter ahead of Tottenham move
Richmond Park is the League of Ireland's Cape Canaveral – the latest rocket to be launched from there is Mason Melia . We borrow the introduction from The Bard of Burgh Quay. Back in 1982, Con Houlihan was referring to Paul McGrath just before he landed at Old Trafford. Houlihan never laid eyes on Melia, having passed away 13 years ago this month. In December, as Ian O'Riordan noted in these pages , Con would have turned 100. Comparing a player to McGrath, at any point in their career, is like comparing a sports columnist to Houlihan. It is unfair, even foolhardy. READ MORE Melia turns 18 in September. Come January he will be training down Hotspur Way alongside Richarlison and Dominic Solanke, becoming Irish football's modern test case, an unintended consequence of Brexit that prompted the best teenagers to stay home until they are legally permitted to sip a pint of plain. ' Tottenham have a plan for me,' he informed a handful of reporters recently. 'We'll take it step-by-step here and see how I'm feeling in January and go from there.' St Patrick's Athletic understood the assignment, negotiating the sort of seven-figure fee that Shamrock Rovers now seek for Victor Ozhianvuna and Michael Noonan. It is what Cork City could have received for Cathal O'Sullivan until his cruciate ligament snapped for a second time in three seasons. [ Behind the scenes at St Patrick's Athletic's academy, where the next Mason Melia may already have arrived Opens in new window ] The past two years of impressive displays may not be enough for Melia to storm past Mathys Tel and Mohammed Kudus in the Spurs pecking order, never mind Richarlison and Solanke, but no more can be asked of the club he joined from Bray Wanderers at 14. Last night, in Istanbul against Besiktas, Melia made his twelfth European appearance for the Inchicore institution. 'I'm still only 17 but I've played over 80 games in senior football now,' he remarked. 'I think everything has worked out the way I would like it to work out.' He also has 20 goals and six assists. 'I've grown into more of a man. I'm feeling more physical and ready for a bigger challenge.' Beşiktaş (a) ⏳ 📸 Eoghan Connelly — St Patrick's Athletic FC (@stpatsfc) There will be moments to savour between now and Melia's move to London in December. On Sunday, if Shelbourne have their way, it will be his last FAI Cup game for St Pat's. Bizarrely, St Pats versus Shels down by the River Camac is not being televised as RTÉ instead choose the Saturday night rerun of last year's final between Drogheda United and Derry City. Melia's last game for the Saints is also scheduled to be against Shelbourne at Tolka Park on Saturday, November 1st at 7.45pm. Primetime. If the Dublin rivals are still scrapping for a European spot, an electric atmosphere will be broadcast by Virgin Media. Both TV stations were absent from Tallaght stadium last week as Tammy Abraham plundered a hat-trick for Besiktas before half-time. Despite an impossible task, the St Pat's fireflies were a constant nuisance as Melia, Simon Power and Kian Leavy refused to accept their fate. RTÉ slept on their League of Ireland coverage and lost it to Virgin, but by securing the FAI Cup rights until 2027 they may provide the final stop on Melia's farewell tour. A possible ending has Stephen Kenny guiding St Pat's to the decider at the Aviva Stadium on Sunday, November 9th. The cup final is still the best advertisement for Irish soccer. If the 2025 version pairs Pats against a double-chasing Shamrock Rovers, with Melia, Ozhianvuna and Noonan on show, it would certainly capture the zeitgeist. Or we will get a completely different narrative, like Bohs v Shels or Derry City v Cork City. Let's see how the last 16 pans out. As the light declined in Turkey on Wednesday evening, St Pat's club photographer Eoghan Connelly captured the entire travelling party with the Tüpraş Stadyumu backdrop. Melia is among them, pointing at the match ball as if to suggest a freakish hat-trick was in the post. 'I kind of like attention,' the teenager told us. 'If you've had attention, you're doing something right. I've dealt with it since I was young, I have a good family behind me. Everyone keeps me humble. I think I'm humble.' The son of north Wicklow, whose mother Pamela ferries him 50 kilometres to training in Abbotstown, has taken flight of late. Mason Melia heads home for St Patrick's Athletic against Sligo Rovers at Richmond Park. Photograph: James Lawlor/Inpho Last Sunday he made it 2-0 against Sligo Rovers with a header off Brandon Kavanagh's corner. Four minutes later, he powered past Ollie Denham before a scandalous rollover touch grounded Rovers goalkeeper Sam Sargeant and allowed him finish from an acute angle. The only pity was the absence of a camera behind the goal where Con Houlihan used to stand. Up Next Dreams will be dashed or kept afloat tonight as the cup serves up three localised last-16 duels. Waterford go to Turners' Cross to face a troubled Cork City, Salthill face Galway United in Eamonn Deacy Park and Kerry host Cobh Ramblers at Mounthawk Park.
Irish Times
27-07-2025
- Sport
- Irish Times
Ian O'Riordan: Con Houlihan would have been 100 this week – what would he make of this year's All-Ireland final?
They say one kind way to remember your heroes is not just the year they left this mortal world, but the year they entered it, which for Con Houlihan is now a century ago in the winter of 1925. Con once said he was born on the night of a blizzard in Castle Island (not Castleisland, and God help the person who misspelt his part of the Kingdom), where he would always call home, even after he moved to Dublin to join the Press Group when already into his 40s. By that stage he'd established himself as a sportswriter of promise, learning his trade in the Kerryman among other places. It was 'where the first three days of the week are spent studying the racing sheets and in other nefarious activities, until about 10 o'clock on Wednesday – in the morning that is – all purgatory breaks loose'. Con enjoyed a great affinity with all sports, though he once admitted 'which sport I would pick if forced by a cruel master to confine myself to one – the answer is racing. That game abounds in stories, not all of which – I need hardly mention – can be published.' READ MORE He described the 1985 meeting of England and the Republic of Ireland at Wembley Stadium as his first foreign mission for the Evening Press, apart from a National League game between Roscommon and Dublin in Dr Hyde Park on a wet Sunday in the previous November. That 1985 game at Wembley was where Ray Wilkins seemed to be clean through to score the winner, if it wasn't for for a young man named David O'Leary, who 'saved the day with a clawing tackle', according to Peter Byrne, formerly of this newspaper. 'In fact, he saved the night,' said Con, 'but I wouldn't quibble with the man from The Irish Times, that last bastion of the semicolon.' Con would later travel the globe, covering the World Cup and the Olympics, including Barcelona 1992 when, in the sweltering heat, and dressed in trademark jumper and anorak, he began walking up Montjuïc to get a closer view of the men's marathon. 'Then the Wall hit me,' he wrote, 'and it never recovered.' There is also his immortal line about missing Italia '90 because he was away at the World Cup. Jerry Kiernan crosses the line to win the Dublin City Marathon in October 1982. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho He loved athletics too, often writing about Jerry Kiernan – the 'celebrated long-distance runner who grew up in Brosna, on the eastern verge of that great expanse of bog and little fields' – and John Lenihan, the farmer from Bearnageeha, who became World Mountain Running champion in 1991 and, according to Con'of all our unsung heroes, just about the most unsung'. There were few subjects closer to his heart than Kerry football, and I know that because of the honour in sharing some special evenings at what he called his 'harbour' in Portobello. Events invariably began with Con pulling out an old £20 note from under the telephone next to his chair and politely insisting I go round the corner to Spar and purchase two bottles of Yellow Tail wine, describing it as 'easily drinkable'. In select moments he would reminisce about Kerry and the All-Ireland final, never losing his draw to the third Sunday in September, knowing that back in Castle Island the turf was already saved. This July final would be truly befuddling. For him it all began 'in the same year as an unsuccessful artist called Adolf Hitler had started a commotion' and Con was at an age 'deemed fit to be unloosed on the good people of Dublin'. [ Prose and Con — Frank McNally on the rise and fall of a famous local newspaper Opens in new window ] 'On that September long ago, I hadn't been beyond Tralee; Dublin seemed to me a city of magic – as enchanting as Paris or Petrograd or Samarkand itself. Fuel was scarce and thus an institution known as the Ghost Train began voyaging to Dublin and into folklore. 'It departed from Tralee on the stroke of midnight (and if you believe that ...) and only God knew when it would reach Dublin – and I suspect that there were times when even He wasn't too sure. Women wept as their menfolk set out from home, fearful (perhaps in some cases hopeful) that they would never see them again.' It was also during one of his early visits to Dublin for an All-Ireland football final that Con recalled spotting a well-known delicatessen advertising a variety of 'sandwhiches' and later feeling properly confused at a small restaurant that was offering the choice of three 'deserts'. Nothing dismayed Con more than the gradual decline of the English language. From his early days with the Kerryman the signs were there, when he once heard a certain sports reporter say to the editor, Séamus McConville: 'You are capable of thinking that a colon is part of your backside.' Con Houlihan embraces Irish Press chairman Eamon de Valera, after a settlement averted the closure of the group in 1990 This remains right up there with some of Con's own immortal words, 'a man who will misuse an apostrophe is capable of anything'. He considered himself akin to those who emigrated from Kerry to settle in places like New York and London, and the need to recognise some loyalty to the place you are living while never losing sight of the place you are from. That was never better expressed more than after the 1978 All-Ireland football final when his 'friend girl' Harriet Duffin, who certainly considered herself a true Dub, was in Croke Park to see a young Kerry team take apart Dublin. When asked how she was coping with such a defeat, Con's simple response became folklore: 'House private. No flowers.' This was the 1978 final where Kerry put five goals past Dublin, one of which came after Dublin goalkeeper Paddy Cullen argued with the referee over the awarding of a free. 'And while all this was going on, Mike Sheehy was running up to take the kick – and suddenly Paddy dashed back towards the goal like a woman who smells a cake burning.' Con always said the idea of a natural-born footballer or hurler was a myth, but sometimes myths are more powerful than the truth, especially when it comes to Kerry football.
Irish Independent
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Pics show north Cork pipe band's cake sale going down a veritable treat with the whole community
A selection of baked goods adorned the many tables and the wonderful aroma of the home-baked product appealed to supporters as did plants and flowers. Prior to the hosting, the Cullen Pipers delivered a recital following Sunday morning Mass and the favourable weather added to the atmosphere. Founded in 1941, Cullen's Pipe Band first official engagement came with a recital at the 1943 Knocknagree Races and many hours of pleasure surfaced in the subsequent years for the people of Duhallow, Cork and Munster during the intervening years. Amongst the destinations covered regularly were performances at Cullen's Feis Laitiarain, Millstreet Carnival, Munster Football Finals, the Rose of Tralee to the annual Sean Moylan Commemoration in addition to numerous other cultural, political and sporting occasions. Current Pipe Major Con Houlihan assumed his position in 1976 and oversaw the Band joining the National Band Association where over recent decades, Cullen Pipe Band earned an unrivalled musical reputation for ability, versatility and wins in prestigious competitions at home and abroad. Looking ahead, Cullen Pipe Band will perform at the long standing Feis Latiarain on Sunday, June 8.
