THOMAS MAHER (1922-2015)

'The Godfather of Hurling': Bringing Science to Gaelic Games

Student 1941-48

 

Thomas Maher was born on April 5th 1922 into a farming family at Whitepark, near Gowran in Co. Kilkenny, the second youngest in the family of twelve of John Maher and his wife Anne (nee Fowler). Four of his siblings had died by the time he was born and a fifth within a year of his arrival, at about the same time as his father; his mother would die four years later.

Supervised by his uncle and then by his older brothers, Thomas went to the local Dungarvan National School in the village near his homd and then in 1936 to St. Kieran's College, where his older brothers underwrote the fees, and where he became friends with a late-arriving classmate from Wexford named Nicholas Rackard. Tommy and Nicky, as they were now known, featured in St. Kieran's Leinster Colleges Championship wins in 1939 and 1940, part of a five-year winning streak at this level (their 1940 score against Knockbeg College was 10-4 to 0-1). He later played in goal for the Leinster Colleges Interprovincial team that defeated Munster in the 1941 series (the All-Ireland series had not yet been introduced).

Showing aptitude in both arts and science subjects, he chose science when he went to Maynooth College in 1941 to undergo seminary training for priestly service in the Diocese of Ossory. He graduated from the National University of Ireland with a B.Sc. in 1944 and was ordained in a class of sixty in 1948 by Archbishop John Charles McQuaid of Dublin, whom he would serve on loan for the next seven years with a short break in 1954, when he returned to Kilkenny to substitute as a teacher of English for the departing Dr. Peter Birch, recently appointed to the staff of Maynooth.

 

 

For a short video extract from a television programme on his influence on the game of hurling  CLICK HERE