Throwback Thursday: Bobsleighs on ice on snowy days in Cork's Northside

HERE is another challenge in the enduring battle for supremacy ’twixt Northsiders and Southsiders. Not this time the carefree days of summer games and adventures, but something more unusual. Here is Michael Ryan on the heady days of winter sports on De Northside!

“I was looking at Tim Carney’s story on climbing trees in last week’s Throwback Thursday, and it brought to mind the days when we went bobsleighing or slaloming down the Tarry Road - or Sun Valley Drive as it’s called now - and Peacock Lane...”

In case some of you are unfamiliar with Northside locations, Michael obligingly supplies orienteering details.

“You come out of the parochial hall. The outdoor soccer pitches are facing you. Now turn right, and head to the roundabout. If you then turn left, and go down that road, you will end up by Neptune Stadium. Just next to Neptune is Peacock Lane. That’s where they shot a scene from the movie Angela’s Ashes.”

Back to Michael’s thrilling tales of the Northside winter sports. Of course, you had to wait a little longer than Austrian or Swiss mountain villages for your seasonal snow, but once it came, you didn’t hesitate.

“You had to find a plastic CMP milk crate. They normally came in a blue or red colour. Once you had that crate you were sorted, away for slates.

Then you took your turn in the queue. You had to run with the crate and jump on, then head out and down the hill as far as Peacock Lane.

“Depending on how bad (or good) the ice was, you’d have a good run off it. Mind you, we didn’t wear any head protection. Sure, we were children then, wild and carefree. We never thought of the safety implications.

“Another thing we did was to make a big snowball. It started off small, but by the time we got it to the hill it was massive. There were always lots of willing bodies to push it.

“It was happy times for us with our red cheeks and frozen fingers, but we didn’t care, we were happy out playing, battering one another with snowballs, and when we got fed up with that, we made a big snowman on the green. Everyone got involved in that, and enjoyed looking with pride at what they had created from the heaven-sent snow.”

They were different times then, observes Michael wryly. 

Sure, that snowman probably wouldn’t have seen the light of day now. All the kids would be indoors, keeping nice and dry and playing online games. But we had the best of it, I think. Ah, those were the days, my friends...

Now come on, Southsiders, show your mettle. Surely you have daring tales of courage and adventure on those snowy southern slopes of Vernon Mount or Carr’s Hill? Don’t let the Northsiders carry off the challenge cup on this one!

Jimmy Barrett also found memories of his own coming to the surface when he read in Throwback Thursday about the man who ran that legendary car breaking and car parts business down at Little Island.

“When I read about Johnno Higgins not being a man for bargaining, it brought to mind an incident between Johnno and a friend of mine. My buddy had a lovely Ford Cortina but had the misfortune to suffer a chip out of his windscreen. Needless to say, there was no such thing as windscreen cover at that time, so the only way to avoid buying a new one was to visit a scrap yard and hope there would be one there. I advised him to go down to Johnno, as I had got some parts there myself in the past.

“He duly headed down and poked around, and after a while he came across a Cortina with a lovely windscreen in it. He called Johnno over, and asked about the price.

“Johnno gave him the price but my friend thought he might get it a bit cheaper, so he said to Johhno, ‘Ah ’tisn’t worth that at all’.

“Whereupon Johnno picked up an old starting handle that was thrown on the ground and put it straight through the windscreen. He then looked at my friend, shook his head, and said ‘Definitely isn’t worth it now’. And that was the end of it.”

Others have confirmed this characteristic of Mr Higgins’ business dealings. 

“If he said a price, then you took it, or let it go,” said my brother, Tommy. “He was quite good at making sure you never tried to bargain with him again!”

Last week, our editor found that photo of my father Joey Kerrigan climbing a tree at 80, to accompany Tim Cagney’s memories of similar feats in childhood.

“Needless to say. Joey was a tree climber all his life. He taught all of us, his children, how to cross a river by climbing the nearest tree to the bank and inching out along a branch until it bent down far enough for you to jump off on the other side.

Of course, he always managed it successfully, while we, as often as not, fell in. I seem to recall he called it good training...

I remember well the occasion when Richard Mills took that photograph. We went up to see him when he was approaching his 80th birthday, to see if we could get a picture of him standing next to a tree, to evoke younger days. We even brought along a coil of rope, to add to the image.

But standing next to a tree? Rubbish! Up that tree went Papa, hand over fist, swinging from branch to branch like a ten-year-old.

Mind you, a ten-year-old wouldn’t be correctly clad in collar and tie, but Joey always believed in dressing properly, whatever the occasion. (Even when canoeing, now I come to think of it. He often said that the tie came in very useful when rescuing a stranded sheep in a glen or gully through which his canoe passed.)

Richard and I looked on in disbelief as Joey disappeared from view, only the rustling of branches 20ft up betraying where he had got to. What had we done? Then down came the coil of rope, dropped contemptuously at my feet. A voice from far above, “Don’t need that sort of thing! Superstition.”

The ensuing picture, shown last week, duly appeared on the cover of the Examiner’s Weekender.

Even a decade later, aged 90, one of my father’s most frequent complaints was, “These old people, they don’t take enough exercise!”

If he didn’t feel like climbing on one of his expeditions, he would go foraging for firewood, swinging great branches against the nearest stout trunk, and arranging the shorter pieces a few feet off the ground, on handy branches, so that they could dry out properly before being brought in to stoke the fire.

Meanwhile, Donal Donovan has sent us some marvellous memories of Turners Cross football stadium in the days of his childhood.

“It may be impossible to establish with certainty, but there are valid reasons to assume that Turners Cross is the oldest sports ground in Cork. In the early years of the last century, hurling and rugby were also played there. My father could remember attending hurling matches too, although the limited dimensions of the playing area were hardly conducive to that great sport.

“My own memories of Turners Cross go back to the later war years, when it was vastly different to the present all-seated arena with its beautiful playing surface,” recalled Donal.

In those days, there was a significant slope running down towards the Curragh Road end. The normal practice therefore was that the team winning the toss would elect to play ‘against the hill’, in the expectation that a likely half-time deficit could be assessed and eliminated in the second half.

“The pitch was surrounded by timber picket fencing. There was no seating, spectators being accommodated on the grassy banks. The banking at the upper end was very steep and could hold quite a number of attendees who had the benefit of a virtual birds’ eye view, but of course much of the action took place at the lower end!

“In the late 1940s, soccer at all levels below League of Ireland was played at Turners Cross. Matches were often advertised in the Echo and Examiner. An added attraction, which was the case occasionally, should the senior Cork team be involved in an important game in Dublin, was that an official would be dispatched to carry a board around the perimeter of the playing area with the up-to-date score.

“This procedure would occur once only, when the match was well advanced. Accessing this information probably involved a pre-booked ‘trunk call’!

“Admission to these games was a shilling for adults and 6d for children. I suppose you could call it six cents and three cents in today’s money.

Donal adds: “I have one particular memory of a later date - a damp February Sunday in 1953. On that day there was a clash of fixtures, and I made what proved to be an unfortunate choice by opting for Turners Cross.

“In the first round of the FAI Cup, AOH (Ancient Order of Hibernians), a Munster senior league team, were drawn against Longford Town, who in those days played in the Leinster Senior League. Both teams had qualified as a result of successes in the Intermediate cup.

“On the same day, Cork Athletic were due to play Waterford at the Mardyke in the League of Ireland. AOH was the outstanding team in Cork at intermediate level, and the organisation was probably better known for its assembly hall on Morrisons Island (now a building site for a new hotel).

“That hall featured an excellent pantomime every Christmas, I well remember. The organisation was also responsible for developing the Flower Lodge stadium, nowadays Pairc Ui Rinn.

Anyway, back to Turners Cross. As already mentioned, it was a wet day. The main component of the playing surface was mud, pockmarked by small puddles. The main man on the Longford team accessed the pitch while still finishing a cigarette.

“There was of course no difficulty in quenching same - it was just a matter of dropping the butt in one of the puddles! The match was a scoreless draw, and AOH lost the replay in Longford.

“Meanwhile, the match at the Mardyke was no ordinary affair because Horatio (Raich) Carter was making his debut for Cork Athletic. He was aged 39, played 13 times for England and would have played many more internationals if the war had not intervened.

“Cork Athletic were paying him £50 a week, when the maximum weekly wage in England was £12 or thereabouts. He was the star of the show and continued to be for the rest of the season.

“Cork Athletic won the FAI Cup by defeating Evergreen United in the final. In short, Raich was worth every penny of his weekly wage!

“Nowadays, Turners Cross is smooth and level with a perfect playing surface. All spectators can be seated, although those frequenting the famous Shed choose to stand. No further expansion is possible, but every square centimetre is used to advantage. Long may it survive!”

Readers will love the details you share, Donal, of games played so long ago. Anybody else with similar stories, tell us, so we can tell everybody!

Email jokerrigan1@gmail.com. Or leave a comment on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/echolivecork.