Cork's Mick Barry and his impact on the development of the Seandún Division

When you look at the history of the Seandún Division, and the part individuals have played in its development over the last 100 years, many names come to light.

One of those is that of former officer and current president of the division, Mick Barry.

His involvement with the division, club and Cork at county board level is second to none, all for someone who never wanted to be an officer in the first place.

Mick was born in Spring Lane in Blackpool and went to the local national school where he played hurling.

He recalled that there was no underage hurling at that time, and so there were no clubs around that someone would go to because they didn’t cater for 12 or 13-year-olds.

“But I went boxing and I became county champion at five stone seven weight at 13 years of age,” said Mick.

That was with the famed Glen Boxing Club, which was only two doors up from where he lived.

This meant that during his teen years, Mick never really got involved with club GAA.

“I went away at 17, I was serving time at the Savoy as a confectioner. The foreman in there was a Scotsman, Macintyre Barnes was his name, and he went to Wicklow and he got on to me to know would I come.

“So I packed my bags and went off to Arklow.”

With all this going on Mick also had another issue that shocked him and his family at the time.

“I was due to fight in the county finals at Collins Barracks. I went to Tony Sullivan, who was the boxing doctor at the time, and he failed me. He said I had problems with my heart.

“At that time, my sister worked as an usherette at The Savoy cinema, and tickets were very hard to come by for Sunday night, you know, special tickets. There used to be touts selling them outside the door.

“She was friendly with a specialist and his wife, and she was telling him the story.

“So, they took me into him, and he could find nothing wrong, but even at that, my father had to sign a waiver to let me fight and I won the county title.

“But even at that I had it in the back of my mind that there was something wrong and I gave up everything and went up the country to work.

“Then I worked in Dublin before I came back down to Limerick. I started to play with Saint Patrick’s in Limerick.

“But my mother got a stroke, and I rang home on Saturday night to see how she was, and they said come home my father was dying, he got pneumonia.

“He died that Sunday I got home, my mother was unconscious in the bed at the time. I went to work in Harrington’s Confectionery, so I stayed at home.

“A member of Delanys, Mick Downey, coaxed me back in my 20s and I started playing again.”

Had he not gone away to work then Mick could just as easily been a Glen man, as his father, Robert, was a founder member of Glen Rovers.

Robert was on their first team and was also a board delegate for the club.

Because Mick went away for several years to work, he lost all that contact.

“I was nearly 23 when I came back and we got a very good team together, because in 1954 we won the City Football Championship and we were beaten in the county final by Glanworth.

“But then in 1955 we beat Mitchelstown in the county final.

“I have some great memories of playing with Delanys and I can remember there would be about six or more double decker buses leaving from the grotto in Blackpool to take supporters to the games.”

Time moves on and Mick started running underage teams at the club, and it was a long time before he became a delegate for the club.

“I didn’t become a delegate for a long time.

“I was running underage teams above and I had opened up my own business at that stage. I opened that in 1957. That’s why I stopped playing, because the business took off and I had no time.”

Phair Cross was where he opened the business, and then he moved to Fr Mathew Street.

But in 1972, the business burned to the ground.

To Mick’s credit, he started again at Blackpool, where he worked until the late 1980s, before he retired at the age of 68.

Mick was a delegate to the old city Bord na nÓg before he became one to the Seandún Division.

He said that sometimes if they were being well beaten at underage level he would slip on a few ‘extra’ players and there might be 20 or so Delanys ones on the pitch and when the opposition used to find out they would be going mad!

“Delanys had no hurling, but Kevin Barry’s started a hurling club.

“They got into a bit of a row with the Barrs at Ballinlough, and we had a couple of young fellas playing with Kevin Barry’s, and the Seandún Division suspended everyone involved with the club, so they couldn’t play football with us.

“We (Delanys) approached the division to ask them to lift the suspension and only suspend those involved on the day, and the club officers, because there was a serious incident to be fair.

“But they wouldn’t do it, so in protest, we nominated a few people to contest the elections and become officers of the division.

“I’d never have stood, because I was really busy with business, and it was coming up to Christmas, which was a very hectic time for us, so I forgot to withdraw my name, and I was elected....I was never a delegate to the division, I went straight in as an officer.

“I was treasurer for 13 years, but I never knew what I was going into really when I was elected. At the time, interest rates were 18% and they were crippling us.

In time, they cleared the debt the division had.

“The 18% was crippling everything we were trying to do.

“But once the debt was cleared, we were able to turn our attention to other things, like keeping the pitch in good condition.

“We had great people involved at the time, people like Derry Maher, and Dan Murphy must have been chairman for around 30 years. He had the unusual distinction that he had no club when he became chairman, before he joined Nationals, which were over near the Turner’s Cross area.

“When he stepped down, I became chairman for several years, and after that I served in a number of roles with the County Board, including registrar, development officer and vice-chairman.”

Reflecting on some of the great players that either played at club level or with Seandún, Mick said there were many of them.

“Great players like Justin McCarthy, Pat Sullivan, Bernie Meade, Finbarr Kiely, Weeshie Murphy, Sean Lucey and Jimmy Nodwell are just some of those that come to mind.

“These were inter-county standard hurlers playing really, and were a joy to watch, but there were plenty others as well, and we had some great days with the division over the years.

“I remember getting the better of the Barrs in the county championship one time up the Dyke and also a game against Clonakilty.

“We scored a point that day, and it was waved wide, and it cost us the match. We took it to the Munster Council, but we didn’t win the appeal, but we were certain it was a point and some involved with that team still talk about it to this day.”

Seandún is hoping to get their divisional sides back up and running again, and Mick thinks they should look at doing this.

“I think it’s only right they should try and get them up and running again, but I would suggest they should do it one at a time as there is a lot of work involved.

“The standard at senior level now is high, but it’s only right that Seandún should try to get back involved at this level.”

Mick said that he enjoyed his time involved as an officer of Seandún and the County Board and he wishes all involved the very best going forward.

This story was originally published in the 2025 Holly Bough.