The late Bernard Flanagan
July 24, 2025
The late Bernard Flanagan and the Kells Harps squad of 1954. Front l-r: Tom Gavigan, Henry Flanagan, John Dunne, Michael Regan, Michael Grace, Patrick Maguire, Joe Kellett, Gerard Smith, Bosco Rourke, Jim Connell, Jimmy Morris. Back l-r: Benny Caffrey, Joe Flanagan, Tommy Morris, Ken Lougheed, John Clarke, Harold O'Sullivan, Sean Muldoon, Peadar Lynch, Bernard Flanagan, Brian Caffrey.
It is with sadness that we inform you of the passing of Bernard Flanagan, a cherished member of the Meath GAA community and a proud All-Ireland winner with the Meath Senior Football team in 1954.
Royal county Meath GAA Yearbook caught up with Bernard in 2001
Meath's All-Ireland SFC title-winning celebrations of 1954 may not have been the original of the species but they were enjoyed to the full nonetheless by gaels across the Royal County - none more so indeed than by former county player of the time Bernard Flanagan.
Bernard Flanagan speaks with the sort of grá for Gaelic football, a la fifties style, which practically makes a body want to go back in time for a taste of same. The Kells man talks about his time with Kells Harps and Meath with a kind of passion and vigour that characterised his approach to the game as a flying defender for club and county. In simple terms, the retired postman would make for a good PR man for the the world of Gaelic games as existed some 40/50 years ago. Not that he's a man who's wont to live in the past. No, it's just that the 'oul days were full of so many bloody good days on the GAA scene for him.
A member of the Meath senior panel which skipped to All-Ireland honours in 1954, Bernard looks back on his football career with great fondness and, significantly, absolutely no regrets. "I enjoyed my time on the football field immensely. We had great craic playing the game and a lot of fun meeting up afterwards with different fellas you might have played alongside or against," Bernard reflects. In this respect, the former Kells and Meath star relates of how much he enjoyed meeting up earlier this year with surviving team-mates to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the club's success in winning the 1951 Junior Championship. "It was a great night. Unfortunately there are quite a few of the players from that era who have since died."
But what of the '51 success itself? "I don't think it was any great shock to anyone in the county that we won the junior title that year. Beating Kilberry in the final wasn't easy but I think we were the best team in the county that year and we proved it. "The win in '51 was Kells' first major success in a long time and there were great celebrations afterwards. I remember Cissie Smith from the park prepared a terrific meal for all of us in the technical school." In the days when every gasun in the county ate, slept and drank football and when getting into a match set a body back no more than one and six, the young Flanagan was in his element and, boy, did he have a whale of a time: "We were forever kicking a ball about up and down the streets and over in the park. If there wasn't a match on a particular Sunday, we might go to see a film, otherwise it was football all the time because there was very little else to do at that time," Bernard recalls.
Not that our man Flanagan and his contemporaries' enthusiasm for the big ball game was fuelled by any suspicion that they were snowed under with medals or other types of silverware. Far from it. During Bernard's time with Kells seniors, the opposition was poker-like in its stiffness and medals were extremely hard to come by although Bernard and co. did pick up a Feis Cup medal on their travels.
During the height of Bernard's football career, if you wanted to meet up with hungry, hardy fellas you could take your pick from the lads from Skryne, Oldcastle, O'Mahonys, and Ballinlough. There were great derby matches too. Like the jousts against the Fintan Ginnity (Co. Board Chairman) powered Drumbaragh lads when "you'd have fellas getting out of their sick beds to play." Bernard recalls the strength of the Skryne club of the time in particular. He talks of how Skryne were able to supply the core of the aforementioned all-conquering Meath team of '54. He thinks, in this respect, of men like Tom, Sean, Miceal and Paddy O'Brien. There was Brian Smyth too. All outstanding footballers and men who so often stood between Kells and senior championship glory. For instance, Skryne and St. Vincents of Ardcath (powered by a Des Taaffe/Mick Donegan/Cha Hand/Jimmy Curran axis) denied Kells in the blue riband finals of '54 and '55. "We could have won both of them but didn't. Skryne would have been the favourites to beat us and they were just too strong and had too much experience for us. " On the other hand, we were more experienced than 'Vincents, having played in the final the year before, and we should have beaten them. They had more physically stronger players than we had though with the likes of Des Taaffe well over six foot and built in proportion."
Despite the relative lack of success which came his way, Bernard had the personal satisfaction of proving, year after year, that he was a more than useful defender. The born and reared Kells man didn't quite make the Meath first team for their All-Ireland final triumph over Kerry in '54 perhaps but he is proud nonetheless to say that he was part of the squad back then. Along with fellow Kells clubmen, Miceal Grace, (voted Man of the Match) Nobbie Clarke and Gerry Smith (plus Ballinlough's Mattie McDonnell), Bernard was collected by car in Kells and transported to Dublin on the morning of the match. A snack on arrival in Barry's Hotel preceded the journey onto Croker.
He has a smile to himself when he witnesses all the razzmatazz that accompanies the visit of All-Ireland finalists to headquarters these days. Ironically, because he didn't come on as a sub against the Kingdom, he didn't actually receive a winners' medal (shades of the Hassetts of recent Kerry vintage). He did however receive a beautifully inscribed gentleman's watch as a memento. Understandably, the affable 70-year old still has the self-same watch to this day. Even though he didn't figure on the Royal County's successful side against Kerry, Bernard was still regarded as one of the best defenders in Meath during the fifties decade. He was good enough, indeed, to man the centre-back berth for Meath in the 1955 league semi-final against Armagh.
Bernard was, in truth, always going to 'get a run' with Meath. He had shown tremendous promise as a teenager and was one of the few players to shine (Brendan Maguire was another) over the course of the Royal County's defeat to neighbours Westmeath in a Leinster minor football championship first round tie at Mullingar.
Son of Joe Flanagan (famed for scoring a point in a hurling club match at Navan's Erins Own ground from a puck-out), Bernard mentions quite regularly how he gained great satisfaction and enjoyment from his involvement in the GAA. And although he still follows the fortunes of the Meath seniors, it's been 1996 - the year of the Mayo/Meath row at Croker - since he last attended headquarters. "I don't agree with a lot of this business of taking frees and sideline balls out of the hand. It's better to see a fella placing a ball on the ground and sending it accurately to a team-mate or over the bar. "The idea of kicking the ball out of your hands was supposed to speed up the game but you're always seeing refs pulling up the player when he tries to take it quickly. I didn't like to see the way Padraic Joyce was allowed this year to get away with taking so many steps forward before kicking the ball. "There's too much hand-passing too. You can't beat a long, well-directed ball into the forwards. Look at how well Meath have done over the years by sending in long balls to the full-forward line." So we can expect Sean Boylan and co. to recover, post-haste, from their shock defeat to Galway? "Oh, definitely. Sean has a great way with the players and if anyone can lift their heads, he can. I think a bit of work will have to be done though on the half-back line and at midfield but overall there's not a lot that needs fixing."
Bernard doesn't go as far as to advise a body to make a B-line for the local bookies, but his enthusiasm does tend to be very convincing and infectious. Somehow some people never change.
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