The Late Mick Fallon Another great Gael to depart this earth in '07 was a former Rathnew footballer Mick Fallon. Fallon played on the great Rathnew team that won a three in a row in the early forties. Mick was a Galway man with a quite remarkable record on the football fields of the land. He stated his playing career with his native Ballinlass but first sprang to prominence with Cavan Slashers when work commitments took him to that county. In 1939 he made the Cavan Junior team in the good company of Simon Dignam. He won his first major inter-county medal when Cavan won the Ulster JFC. In 1940 both Fallon and Dignam were promptly promoted to Senior ranks. In 1942 he helped 'Slahers' to win the Cavan SFC after a lapse of ten years and won his first Ulster SFC medal with Cavan the same year. Later he was again on the Cavan team that lost to his native Galway in the All-Ireland semi-final. In 1942 he returned to play for Galway but was again out of luck when his native county went down to Dublin in the All-Ireland final. Mick also made the Connacht Railway Cup team and add to his honours list. In that year he came to work in the post office in Wicklow town and linked up with Rathnew Club, despite strong pressure from Carnew and other clubs to join their ranks. He was just in time to get on the Rathnew team that were about to make a strong bid for a three in a row in the Wicklow Senior football championship. So in between playing Railway cup football for Connacht and an All-Ireland final with Galway he managed to turn in a man of the match display for Rathnew in their county final victory over Blessington. A year later he helped the men from the Thatched Village to victory over Donard in the county final to complete that three in a row. We got all this information from Mick's nephew Tommy Brennan, the principal in Dunlavin N.S. and the Secretary of the West Cumann na mBunscol. Mick, it appears was a great man to keep records and left a great collection of press cuttings - a number from the 'Wicklow People' behind. His son gathered up the cuttings and put them into book form and that is the real source of all our information. Incidentally the book, which Tommy was good enough to send me has one great picture of Mick being carried, shoulder high off the field by proud Rathnew supporters after Rathnew beat Donard in the '43 final. Another picture in the book shows the surviving members of the team celebrating in the Royal Hotel in Wicklow in 1983 on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of that three in a row. Courtesy of the Wicklow People 23rd January 2008 Tweet

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