He Hurled with Red and Green

HE HURLED IN RED AND GREEN, HE HURLED WITH MACKEY AND RING!

He is beyond a shadow of a doubt the ONLY man to have played INTER-COUNTY SENIOR hurling with BOTH Christy Ring and Mick Mackey!

Not only did he play with both Christy Ring and Mick Mackey, he also marked both Christy Ring and Mick Mackey!

He is almost certainly the ONLY man to have played competitive senior hurling with both Cork and Limerick in Croke Park!

Ok, how about those for three sentences to adhere to the advise of an old hurling scribe of yesterday year who encouraged ‘capturing the readers attention with a catchy one-liner’

And, you know, when it comes to chronicling the hurling career of the ‘he’ in question,?catchy one-liners vie for prominence …

He has togged out twice with BOTH Cork and Limerick in National Hurling League finals, collecting a hat-trick of medals.

He might well be the only man to have played competitive senior hurling with both Cork and Limerick.

He is, without question, the ONLY man to have played championship hurling with BOTH Christy Ring (minor) and Mick Mackey (senior).

He played a game in and refereed a game in the same years Munster Senior Hurling Championship!

The game he took charge of was the 1951 Provincial final, the only SHC came he ever refereed, leap-frogging?the ‘apprenticeship’ phase. That final was a teak tough affair involving Tipperary and Cork and?even though he was a Cork native such was the respect the adopted Limerick man was held in there was not a murmur of complaint from the ‘homes of Tipperary’.

There were probably two reasons for the lack of complaint; one, despite seven minutes legitimate ‘over-time’ the Premier County held on for a one-goal victory; and, two, the referees wife Susan hailed herself from Tipperary, a native of Main Street Cappawhite!

He was selected on the Munster inter-provincial hurling team for four successive years, won four Railway Cup medals.

He won a Cork Intermediate Hurling Championship medal when still a teenager, he won a Limerick Senior Hurling Championship medal on a day he played the last match of a colourful career.

Who, you ask, is this ‘he’??

Well, some called him George, others called him Jim, he was reported too as GJ and JG but all agreed on the surname, Sadlier.

Having had it confirmed from by his eldest son Tony that George and Jim were indeed the same man and that the GJ referenced the fact his father was christened George James, we set about researching the unusual career of an unsung hurling hero …

Right, let’s put meat on the bones of those statements above …?

On November 12, 1939 in Cusack Park, Ennis, Jim Sadlier, still a minor, lined out at mid-field for Cork against Clare in the second round of the 1939-’40 National Hurling League. Partnered by Jack Barrett, the Rebels won and went on to win the ‘points competition’, G Sadlier named on the panel for the subsequent three games including the final v Tipperary in the Cork Athletic Grounds on April 7, 1940.

Cork regained the NHL title the following 1940-’41 season, G Sadlier again appearing among the named subs (unused) for all five games, including the final v Dublin in the Cork Athletic Grounds on March 31, 1941.?

Cork played Kilkenny in Croke Park on October 27, 1940 in the second ever Oireachtas hurling final, GJ Sadlier, just 19, lining out at left half back on the losing side, marking none other than Jim Langton, selected - alongside Mackey and Ring - on the Hurling Team of the Century.

While Christy Ring did not play the ’39-’40 league game in Ennis or that Oireachtas final in Croke Park, himself and ‘George’ Sadlier filled the two wing forward berths for two 1940 Tournament games v Waterford, the first in the Mardyke on March 12 for the Augustinian Church Fund, the second in the Sean Treacy Cup semi-final in Tipperary town on May 12. Cork won both.

Those 1940 games were not the first time Ring and Sadlier?played together, they had been colleagues on the 1938 Cork minor hurling team, both defensive ever-presents?during a five-match campaign that yielded Munster and All-Ireland honours, Dublin beaten in Croke Park, Ring scoring a crucial trade-mark goal from a free.

Sadlier was eligible for the minor grade again in 1939, manning the vital centre half back berth throughout another victorious five-match campaign, Munster and All-Ireland titles retained, Kilkenny beaten on the first Sunday of September, curtain-raiser to the ‘Thunder and Lightening’ senior final, the same day World War II began.

‘George’ Sadlier completed a personal three-in-a-row in 1940, a third?Munster and All-Ireland in a row, these ones at Junior level, yet another five-match campaign, Galway beaten in the final in Limerick, the 19 year-old lining out at right half back.

All of Sadlier’s Cork inter-county hurling was done while still a teenager. There were three reasons for this,?the settled nature of the county’s senior team, who went on to win an All-Ireland four-in-a-row, 1941-’44,?the fact that the NHL and JHC were discontinued due to ’The Emergency’ (brought about by World War II) and, of course, work bringing him to Limerick City in 1943.

Before we trace Jim Sadlier’s Limerick career, let’s go back to the Barrack Field in Buttevant where he learned his hurling, having it honed in St Colman’s, Fermoy, where he was also a All-Ireland sprint champion, winning that medal in St Munchin’s, Limerick, where, by a quirk of fate his five sons later went to school.

Even his colleges career has attached to it a colourful story. Seorse Saidleir of Colaiste Colmain, as the ‘Examiner’ and ‘Echo’ often referenced him, did not play Harty Cup hurling but he did play Munster Colleges senior hurling?! You see Colman’s, along with five other schools including St Finbarr’s, Farrenferris and St Flannan’s, Ennis, set up a alternative competition as a protest to the the banning of ‘foreign games’ in their schools, most particularly rugby.

Seorse Saidleir and Colaiste Colmain played in the Munster Cup of 1936, ’37, ’38 and ’39, contesting the final in ’37 thanks to a semi-final win over Flannan’s, but having played an exciting draw in St Cronan’s Park, Roscrea, Mount St Joseph’s won the final replay in Fermoy.

During Cork’s 1938 minor campaign St Colman’s was always included in brackets after the name G Sadlier but he did play minor hurling with Buttevant as at the club’s 1939 AGM James Sadlier was elected captain while at the same AGM the elected Treasurer was George Sadlier, so even in the one report that christian name varied!

George and James were happy ‘men’ on August 18, 1940 when the final score from the Cork Intermediate Hurling Championship Final in the Athletic Grounds was Buttevant 2-4, Ballincollig 1-4. The club?had been 15 years trying to win the title, had lost five?finals - 1926, 28, 29, 30, 32, two to no score. Batt Thornhill, the barber from Buttevant, full-back on the Cork four-in-a-row team, captained the victorious 1940 team, scored the crucial goal while teenage Sadlier - who played in the Cork SHC with the Avondhu group team in 1940 and 1941 - may well have been the final piece in the jig-saw.

1943 saw Jim Sadlier working with Fitzgibbons in Limerick and playing his club hurling there, city team Young Ireland the obvious choice due to the involvement of his cousin, Micky Fitzgibbon,?a former Limerick All-Ireland hurler. The new arrival hurled, without success, with the YIs in ’43, ’44 and ’45, did a stint with a new city club, St Michael’s in ’46.

It was while with St Michael’s he made his Munster SHC debut with Limerick, lining out at No 6?against Tipperary?in Cork Athletic Grounds on June 16, a win giving Mick Mackey and his men a place in the Munster final against Cork in Thurles, Sadlier and Ring operating at mid-field on opposing sides, the Rebels the victors.

That was the first of three Munster Senior Finals Jim Sadlier played with Limerick, the others in ’47, when he marked Ring, and ’49 against Tipperary. Alas Limerick lost on all three occasions, narrowly twice.

Jim Sadlier did, though, win a National Hurling League medal with Limerick, beating Kilkenny in a final replay in Croke Park to win the 1946-’47 competition, that final played on March 7, 1948, ‘the big snow of ’47’ having held up the completion of that years NHL.

Sadlier had made his league debut with Limerick in late ’45, again his debut delayed by the absence of the NHL for four seasons during ‘The Emergency’ and the settled nature of the county senior team.?

In all he donned Limerick green on 35 competitive senior occasions - 9 championship, 19 league, 1 Oireachtas (again v Kilkenny in Croke Park, just as with Cork) and 6 Thomond Shield contests.?

Jim Sadlier, a stylish hurler,?was selected on the Munster Railway Cup hurling panel in 1948, 1949, 1950 and 1951, won four medals, played three times, coming on as a sub (for Dermot Solon of Clare) in the 1948 final while in 1950 he was corner back for the semi-final win over Ulster and the St Patrick’s Day final victory over Leinster in Croke Park, a game watched by 40,236

Jim Sadlier was back playing club hurling with Young Ireland in ’47 and ’48, again without success, and in ’49 was part of the Canon Punch ‘inspired’ Croom-Young Ireland amalgamation, organised specifically to end Ahane dominance. The amalgamation won the match but hurling was the loser as one man was badly injured and another ended up in jail. St Patrick’s beat the amalgamation in the next round.?

Jim Sadlier threw in his considerable lot with Treaty Sarsfields, the Thomondgate club, in 1950 and in the quarter-final beat Ahane with Sadlier at full-back marking an ageing Mick Mackey. St Patrick’s, another city team, again ended Jim’s SHC ambitions.

1951, Treaty Sarsfields beat Ahane twice, the first round and the semi-final, played Geraldines, drawn from South Liberties, Doon, Cappamore, Boher, Fedamore and Pallas, in the final on Sunday, September 16 in the Limerick Gaelic Grounds. Treaty, with the Cork man a star at full-back, won 1-6 to 1-2.

It was George, GJ, Jim Sadlier’s swan song. His hurling days were over.?GJ Sadlier Fish & Poultry, Roches Street, Limerick, his wife Sue and new family - the first boy was born in 1950 - now took precedence.

However, on the weekend his native Cork and adopted Limerick clash ash for the first time ever in the All-Ireland Senior Hurling final, it is only right to shine a light on a man who gave both red and green sterling service, a man who passed away in 1984, a man who was born 100 years ago this year.