Seán Doherty
There are 656 pages in the history book telling the story of Ballyboden St. Endas. Among the first names to appear is that of Seán Doherty on Page 11 under “Acknowledgements” as one of the people who contributed directly to the telling of that tale. For nearly six decades, his name has been indelibly linked with Ballyboden and will continue to be so.
A native of Glenealy, Co. Wicklow, Seán and his family moved to Dublin in the 1950s/60s when their father secured employment in Ballsbridge. As a school boy, he played football and hurling with Oatlands College and briefly with Kilmacud Crokes. But it was a chance encounter in the mid ‘60s with Fr. Paddy Ryan, an Augustinian priest in Ballyboden parish, that changed so much of his life. A cousin of Sean’s, Don Ferguson, lived in Ballyroan. While on a visit to Don, they bumped into the Clonakilty-born priest, who invited them to join Ballyboden Wanderers, which was in the process of re-formation at the time. Seán later recalled, “The club had only a minor team, but even though we were about 20, we joined up!”
By the end of 1968, “The Doc”, as he became popularly known, had led Wanderers to the Dublin Junior Football Championship title, its first since 1928. His football reputation was growing, and on 13 April 1969, he was selected for the Dublin senior team for the first time, for a challenge game against Louth. The manager was Kevin Heffernan. A relationship would blossom into the creation of arguably the most important year in the modern history of the GAA in 1974. 1969 was also hugely significant locally, and Seán Doherty was central to so much of what happened. Victory in the intermediate league play-off between Wanderers and St. Sylvester’s on 2 November secured senior league status for the club, which must have been a huge boost to the newly formed Ballyboden St. Endas. That same year, Seán attended the first general meeting of Ballyboden Wanderers and Rathfarnham Endas on 22 May 1969 and was present for the first AGM on 18 September of the same year, becoming an Executive Committee member of the new club.
He was to the fore in ‘Boden’s first championship success in 1971, when, along with his brothers Michael and Teddy, the intermediate football team brought senior championship status to the club for the first time following a victory over Fingal Ravens. While his football prowess is well known, Seán was also an able hurler, having soldiered with Brothers Pearse in the 1960s. On 22 October 1972, he starred in the club’s first adult hurling success in the win over Commercials in the Corn Fogarty final before going on in 1973 and 1974 with his brothers, to add junior and intermediate hurling championship medals to the football pair. ‘Boden was now a senior football and hurling club, a status it has never lost. Seán Doherty was a crucial part of that journey. During his heyday with the Dubs in the 1970s, Seán still found time to train the club’s senior football team and served on the Club’s Executive Committee on six occasions. He also brought his fitting and plumbing skills to bear on the construction of the first Clubhouse, which opened in 1976.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, his son Seán Jr. continued the Doherty tradition as a member of the senior and intermediate football teams. That record doesn’t all belong to the male members of the family, as Seán’s sister Lebby (Galvin) was a player (a junior championship winner in 1997), mentor and administrator during the vitally important formative years of ladies’ football in the club in the 1990s.
Even though he was an intercounty footballer at the time, Seán could easily walk the streets of Dublin unrecognised. That all changed on 22 September 1974 when Dublin beat Galway to reclaim the Sam Maguire Cup after an eleven-year gap. “Heffo’s Army” had arrived with Seán as captain. “Leading the team out the tunnel to the pitch. It was not what I expected. Normally, you just run out onto the pitch. Here, you see the crowd starting to rise in front of you, and the cheering starts, and you have never heard such noise. You lose all feeling, you feel you are running on air, not sure if you are running or walking.” That year, he also became the Club’s first All-Star. In the 51 years since that fateful day in 1974, Dublin has won 14 All-Ireland senior titles, Seán winning three. In the same period before 1974, they won 4. But the significance went way beyond that. Dublin brought barriers down in terms of team preparation, style of play, colour, celebration, wearing your county jersey to matches, bringing Gaelic games to unprecedented levels of popular support not only in the Capital but nationally, as other counties rose to the challenge, most notably Kerry. Seán typified much of those glorious days.
He would recognise the words penned by poet Noel Monahan in his work “The Football Field”.
“No surrender until the final whistle blows,
Their feet airborne, fingers claw the clouds,
The ball bounces over humps and hollows,
Forwards dance a can-can, backs are steadfast.
Clabbered in dust and clay about the square,
Hot and bothered, their tempers go haywire,
Their brawls now settled with the dust of years.”
Leaba I measc na Naomh Seán