Staunton, Joe
February 22, 2011
The Late Joe Staunton
A company rep calls to a pharmacy in Athboy, Co. Meath, owned by Pádraig Staunton, son of Mayo's All-Ireland winning wing-back of 1951. The visitor introduces himself to the proprietor. They exchange names and pleasantries, and each learns where the other was born.
"Staunton" said the rep, "I was in digs once in Dublin with a man named Joe Staunton. We never talked much; he was quiet and didn't have a lot to say. Only when I saw him running onto the field in Croke Park with the Mayo team did I learn that he was playing in the All-Ireland final."
John Staunton vouches for the story about his father's mind-set in that final. And to those who knew him it will not have been an unfamiliar characteristic of the man they buried in Murrisk on Thursday.
That pearl of reminiscence summed up the quiet, private, unassuming nature of the right wing back from the ever-thinning stock of Mayo heroes whose All-Ireland success has been not been emulated in sixty years.
Joe Staunton was a remarkable man in a squad that was invincible during the two opening years of the fifties. While the others prepared collectively in Ballina and Castlerbar for the second of those titles, Joe was busy preparing to open his new pharmacy in the Galway Gaeltacht.
The squad's preparation consisted basically of fieldwork. Professional training was not on the agenda in those days.... which takes nothing from the achievement of the team. For the fact is that Mayo had no equals in Ireland in those two years.... and with a bit of luck might have won a further three titles in that era.
Because he could not join the squad, Joe ran a few lengths of the road between Carraroe and Costello in preparation for the match. There were no supervised press-ups, or sprints or diets or tactical talks for the newly-qualified chemist.
They had more physical action in their daily living than modern players and , therefore the runs and a weekly match kept Joe in trim. The selectors were aware of his physical condition and saw him a single-minded defender...confident and unswerving.
News of his performances while in Dublin playing with Civil Service dissuaded any challenge to his place on the All-Ireland winning side.
Joe played with Murrisk in 1944 during the Emergency because they were no teams in Louisburgh or Westport. They reached the final and since curfews were in place, the team travelled in Ballina in the back of two lorries provided by Austy Lyons and Tommy Harney.
They left at 6 o'clock in the morning to avoid being detected by Gardai. They sat on loose wooden benches that swayed back and forward at every turn. Some blamed their two-point defeat by Belmullet on a feed of meat provided to them before the game by Louisburgh native Seamus Durkan.
Joe worked for a while in pharmacy in Newport and played with the local team of which Larry McGovern, Jackie Bracken, the Kilroys- Joe and Peader- Michael Green and Sean Meenaghan were leading members.
On moving to college in Dublin he met up with Eamon Mongey and joined the Civil Service Club where the quality of his football was causing a stir in county circles.
Young, ambitious talent was mushrooming in Mayo, Tom Langan and Mongey were in Dublin, Sean Flanagan in college, Padraic Carney growing in stature, Paddy Prendergast starring in Donegal.... all eventually to be welded into an irresistible force that swept the country.
The vortex they created not only won Joe Staunton the distinction of being the first Louisburgh man to win a Celtic Cross but also in Galway of being the first man living in Carraroe to win an All-Ireland senior football medal.
Joe was full-back on the Louisburgh county junior winning side of 1950, the final of which was played the following February. By then he had won his first All-Ireland medal as a member of the Mayo junior side that defeated Derry in 1950. Features of that final were the four goals scored by his clubman Anthony O'Toole.
The Louisburgh man was the only member of that junior team to get his place on the senior side of 1951. In the shake up following an injury to star midfielder Billy Kenny in the 1950 final, he was slotted in at right-half back.
It was a highly successful shuffle that earned Mayo a five-point win over fancied Meath. Joe later claimed that he had difficulty in trying to curb his opposite number Paddy Meegan, but all the evidence points to a performance as vital to the success as any of the other five defenders.
In an interview with this writer some years ago, from which much of the material for this article is drawn, Joe concurred with the general opinion of Flanagan as a great motivator. But the leadership qualities of Mongey, Langan, Liam Hastings and Joe Gilvarry were also important, he said.
He was not an admirer of the modern game. The old-fashioned catch and kick was being deserted. Football had become a hand-passing game. It was much more professional now, but much less exciting and it annoyed him that hand passing had become so common.
He was also disappointed that subsequent managers and players never once sought the advice of the men of that dual winning era. Those who had been through the All-Ireland cauldron had something to offer them, he believed.
Joe retired from inter-county football in 1952 after Roscommon brought Mayo's All-Ireland reign to a stop at Castlebar. And he played his last game for Louisburgh in 1958 following their defeat by Ballyhaunis in the county final.
On Valentine's Day, death finally claimed Joe, and in the pantheon of former greats he will have elicited a warm welcome from old comrades, from Mongey and Langan and Forde and the Flanagans and the rest.
Only four of those who played in that 1951 final are still with us.... Paddy Prendergast, John McAndrew, Fr Peter Quinn and Padraig Carney, an awesome foursome in their heyday.
Nothing can dim the memory of what they, Joe Staunton and all the rest achieved in that golden football era sixty years ago.
To Joe's wife Breege and family we tender our sincerest sympathy.
On his gentle soul, dear God, gently lay your hand.
Courtesy of the Mayo News
February 22, 2011
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