Where Clare Leads Ireland Follows is the title of a new book by Ennisman Richard Fitzpatrick that will be launched by Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh this Thursday night in the Temple Gate Hotel. In an exclusive extract from the book Fitzpatrick profiles legendary Clare footballer Tom Morrissey, who has had an eventful life on and off the football field.

Did you know that Tom Morrissey crossed the Canadian border to get back into the States in the back of a bread van? Or that he travelled up to Leitrim with the Clare football team on crutches, having reefed his foot on a rusty nail at work in Ennistymon a couple of days earlier. Clare were getting thumped so Morrissey gritted his teeth, threw the crutches to the side and went on for the second half, scoring a goal as Clare, heartbreakingly, lost by a point. If only he had started the game.
Of course the stories are apocryphal, twisted and embellished with the telling over the years. There are so many stories about the man, enough to fill a book, not your Hans Christian Anderson variety though, more of the kind to be savoured over a few drinks in the local.
“Lads at home now,” says a former Cooraclare clubmate, “would sit around a bar for a night and tell Tom stories: ‘We’ll have a Tom story session.’ ”
Unlike the sullen English singer of the same name, Morrissey is a big rogue, full of bluster. He was blessed with an inordinate gift for Gaelic football but cursed by a short career, having played his last championship game for Clare at age 25.
A talent squandered? Unquestionably so, but the man made sure to enjoy – if not capitalise from – his brief brush with celebrity, and managed to pick up a Munster football championship medal along the way. And there aren’t many of those men alive outside Cork or Kerry.
Morrissey grew up on a farm in Cooraclare along with his eight brothers and four sisters. He came fourth in the brood, all of them “football crazy,” he affirms, including a sister Eithne, who has won six All-Ireland medals and two All-Stars.
“They had to fend for themselves at a very early age,” says Gerard Kelly, the principal of Cooraclare National School. “They’re a very loving family and very caring. Like at school, if a child fell in the yard, they’d be the first over to lift him up and see if he was alright. Even though they were reared hard there was no blackguardism involved.”
Morrissey’s mother, Mary, is something of a folk legend, the original Soccer Mom. A few years ago, when there was a Morrissey boy in every line of the Cooraclare side, the story goes that if the ball went in towards the full-back line, the cry would go up from the crowd: “Pat’s ball”; if it made it to midfield: “Tom’s ball”; arriving at full-forward: “Martin’s ball”; and when it slipped out over the sideline: “Mary’s ball.”
One of the many mysteries about Morrissey is that he was such a small, light fellow growing up. “He was insignificant in those days, a small wizened little lad,” says Kelly. At 17, he was five foot five inches and seven and a half stone, small enough to be thrown out a school window. A year and a half later, he had shot up to six foot three in height and thirteen stone in weight.
After an undistinguished under-age career, the change in stature was enough to help get him on to county teams. He played under-21 for Clare for two years, playing midfield against a Maurice Fitzgerald-Noel O’Mahony pairing in a trouncing administered by Kerry in 1990, and captained Cooraclare to an under-21 county title in 1991. His relationship with the county senior set-up was tumultuous from the start, though.
“I remember meeting him as a young fella,” says John Maughan, Clare senior football manager at the time. “He certainly wasn’t shy. The story was this young, raw lad,” he says, stifling a laugh, “from Cooraclare would never play county football again – along the lines: ‘I’m never going to play for them feckers’, dada, dada, da – because apparently he had some sort of a bad encounter where he had to walk home after being injured or going for treatment or something. Meanwhile, to the best of my knowledge, he was lighting up his Major at the same time. That’s the type of character he was. He hasn’t a care in the world, full of charisma, full of devilment.”
“If you want the real story,” says Morrissey, obviously used to amending details about the public’s understanding of his biography. “In 1990, Clare were in the All-Ireland ‘B’, playing Sligo and I was called into the panel. Brendan Brown and myself took off over to Ennis and there was only 16 players there, and we were playing above in Markievicz Park. No manager – Noel Walsh was missing. The only selector there was Donal Clancy.
“So off up to Sligo we went – the 16 of us. Donal Clancy and Martin Flynn picked the team. Martin Flynn was captain because Miltown [Malbay] won the [county] championship in ’90. No one knew me so they left me on the sideline.
“So that was grand until about 15 minutes into the game next thing Noel Walsh arrived in. ‘The Colonel,’ we used to call him. There was I standing above by the dugout and I smoking a fag. I’ll never forget it. ‘Have you interest in playing football for Clare?’ he says. ‘To be honest with you, Noel, not too interested now,’ I said to him. ‘Put out that fag!’ he says.
“So I put out the cigarette and in the second half Frankie Griffin got hurt and I went on and I was on 10 minutes when I got sandwiched. Oh, busted two ribs up under my shoulder blade. I had to come off. Frankie Griffin went back on again.
“I arrived home and didn’t go into the hospital or the doctor till the following day. My mother and father were going to Ballinasloe and they brought me over to hospital. I got an X-Ray, two ribs busted and got a prescription for painkillers and they sent me off on my way. I was out of work for about four weeks and I put in an insurance claim and they gave me £21.90. That was £10 for the hospital fee and £11.90 for the chemist so I told them to go away. I wouldn’t play senior. I’d only play 21s.”
His return to the senior panel could not have been timed better, as he played his first National League game against Tipperary in the spring of 1992. With the change to the open draw in Munster, Clare overcame Tipp a few months later in the championship semi-final to make their first senior interprovincial football final since 1949.
Nobody, save Maughan and his courageous, bouncing fit band of footballers, predicted the improbable 2-10 to 0-12 victory over Kerry in Limerick’s Gaelic Grounds on July 19, 1992, Jack O’Shea’s last game for the Kingdom.
“With about three or four minutes to go, the pressure was serious from Kerry,” remembers Martin Daly, goal hero for Clare that day. “They were four points down, looking for a goal, and constantly pushing forward. [Clare goalkeeper] James Hanrahan took a kick-out and it was coming towards the stand side. We were hitting towards the Ennis-side goal and Tom just went for a ball and he was head and shoulders above anybody else. Just when you wanted it: ‘let’s win the ball and go up the field and make an attack for ourselves.’
“That’s typical of Tom. The lads would be slagging him because he’s a super character but when it comes down to it you could count on him because he was that type of guy that could get the one hand in or the one catch or the one point that you’d need.”
“I remember some pictures of Tom catching the ball in the middle of the field and he would have his feet up that height,” says Joe Considine, a teammate with Cooraclare and a man who played midfield for Clare in the 2000 Munster football final, pointing at a bar table, “but it was the arc he could get on his body. He could catch a ball, jumping and his hands could be back here, catching the ball,” he says, with his arms cocked like a soccer player taking a throw-in.
“A lot of midfielders catch the ball over their heads or in front of them. Tom had this ability to lean, arch. His only difficulty was keeping his feet. He was light-legged. If he got the ball, he might often be knocked over.
“But on his day, when Tom put his mind to it, when he was on form, minding himself and applying himself, you couldn’t match him. When he had that year in ’92 it was off the back of anonymity. That was perfect for Tom.”
After the Munster final win, the team went on a tour of the constituency to celebrate the county’s first title win since 1917, finishing up in Milltown Malbay early on the Wednesday morning.
“We went over to training that Wednesday evening,” says Morrissey with that raspy voice of his, as dry and leathery as old cowboy boots, “and Maughan, he says, ‘Lads, if we want to win the All-Ireland semi-final, there’s one thing we have to do. What have we to do, Tom Morrissey?’ I knew what he was hitting at. ‘I suppose we’ve to go off the drink, John.’ ‘Well done Tom Morrissey.’
“Cooraclare played Kilkee in a club championship first round the following Sunday. We lost. By God, my tongue was hanging down to there,” he says, pointing at the ground. “I didn’t have one drink. No drink. We did – we stayed off the drink until the All-Ireland semi-final.”
Few of a certain age will forget the giddy excitement that took over the county in the run up to the game against Dublin. For most Clare fans it was a first ever visit to Croke Park. More alarming, with the exception of Noel Roche, a Compromise Rules star, it was the first time for all of the Clare footballers to play there. Not that it fazed Morrissey.
“I think that little garden will suit me,” he was heard to say to someone in the dressing room before running out onto the pitch where he and his teammates were met with a back-draft of noise they’ll never forget.
“Oh, Jesus Christ the crowd,” he says. “One thing I will never, ever forget is the run-out in Croke Park. I will never, ever forget the atmosphere in that field. Oh man, it just went straight through our heads. The roar. There was about 60,000 people there. It was fantastic.”
Did it get to you?
“No, no, I revelled in it,” he says, struggling for words to describe his enthusiasm. “The bigger the crowd – the bigger I am. That’s the way I was. I loved the crowd, being modest as I am,” he says, cackling in laughter.
Clare, possibly overawed by the occasion surrendered an early lead to Dublin which they never managed to claw back and, unlucky with two goal decisions, they lost in a high-scoring affair, 3-14 to 2-12. Morrissey excelled, but was cited after the game for decking Charlie Redmond with a box.
The irony was that he mentioned in a broadsheet profile before the match, that the use of video evidence was one of the ways in which the game could be improved.  Observers say that the suspension cost him an All-Star. He did, however, pick up a Munster Player of the Year award at the end of the season. “It was the most fantastic year of my life,” he says. He was 22 years of age.
The Maughan train continued on through a few more stations, reaching a quarter-final of the league in 1993 against Donegal in Croke Park in which Morrissey scored a wonder goal but a moment of personal disaster lay in store for him the following year.
“Oh, Jesus Christ, ’94,” he says despairingly. “A game I will never forget. We played Tipperary below in the Gaelic Grounds in the first round. We kicked 17 wides the same day. Two minutes to go, Tipperary’s Peter Lambert kicked in a ball from the sideline. I went in to catch it, dropped it into the net anyway. Down a point. Jeez, I’ll never forget that game. I was after playing a fine game. I just wanted to bury myself into the ground that day. ‘Will, you get out to midfield?’ Horse [Aidan Moloney] said to me. That was ’94 taken care of. John Maughan left after that.”
John O’Keeffe took over the reins, leading Clare to a Munster final in 1997, but Morrissey was long gone from the scene by that stage. Himself and O’Keeffe endured a frosty relationship, resulting in the fact that Morrissey ended up playing his last championship game against Cork in 1995.
“That day, he’d a bad run,” says a Clare teammate who played that afternoon. “He was moved from midfield into centre forward and full forward and nothing was working for him on the day. Nothing was working for any of us. We lost by six or seven points. But he was taken off with about 10 minutes to go and he walked over to [Cork manager] Billy Morgan and shook hands with him: ‘Ye have it now.’ Tom is gone off the field. There’s no way we’re going to win it now, like.”
Morrissey emigrated to Boston a couple of weeks later, working at “everything and anything,” including construction (or “destruction,” as he calls it, given the work entailed gutting premises); painting; and being a doorman for pubs. But mostly his time was having the craic and playing Gaelic football for the Kerry team in the city, alongside other inter-county stars such as Galway’s Padraig Joyce and Kerry’s Anthony Gleeson.
Out of the blue, the parish came calling for him one early morning in September 1997. Cooraclare had won most of its county titles in “the black and white television era”, according to Kelly, but they sensed an opportunity that year.
“Paddy Keane, who was over the [Cooraclare] team, rang me of a Monday morning at six o’clock. I remember it,” he says, still a bit dazed by a shot from the dark like that at the tail-end of a weekend. “ ‘Morrissey,’ he said. ‘There’s a ticket waiting for you in Logan airport on Thursday morning.’ What? Feck off, Keane. I’ll ring you back later. What’s wrong with that man, at all? Hah?
“So I started thinking then. I had a Munster championship medal and I had no championship medal. So I arrived back here of a Friday morning and had to go to [County Secretary] Pat Fitzgerald to get the papers sorted out that Saturday evening and togged out above Sunday afternoon against Ennistymon.”
With Morrissey in tow, Cooraclare marched to a county final where they came up against their neighbours, Doonbeg, who were closing in on a three in a row. Instead of being played in Cusack Park, the county’s GAA headquarters, the game was to be played in Michael Cusack’s pitch in Carron, the Burren.
“I was talking to Tom beyond one day,” says one of Cooraclare’s selectors that year, “and he said to me. ‘What are they bringing this county final up to Carron for?’ So I said, ‘There’s some anniversary to do with Michael Cusack and they’re doing it in his honour.’ ‘Jaysus,’ he jokes. ‘That place can only take about 3,000. There’ll be 3,000 come to see me alone.’ And he hadn’t played inter-county for a few years.”
The day of the county final, the bus for the panel and mentors left Cooraclare at 10 o’clock, took in mass in Cree, where some of the other panel members lived, and continued on to Ballyvaughan for lunch, with Morrissey belting out ballads from the back of the bus along the way. What better way to stave off the pre-match jitters?
The match was a dour battle. “A war of attrition,” says Considine, who picked up the Man of the Match award. Morrissey’s brother, Martin, scored the decisive goal for Cooraclare as they won their first title since 1986. Morrissey spent most of the game at midfield, cancelling out Doonbeg’s Francis McInerney, who he credits as being “the best footballer I’ve seen”.
“To win a championship is great, but to beat Doonbeg in a championship is fantastic,” says Morrissey. “We were the underdogs but we rattled into them like we always do. Ah, jeez, the scenes above after that. I won a Munster final but I’ll tell you one thing the scenes with the club are much better. Ah, you’re with your own, your closest, your own kin.”
Putting the kibosh on Doonbeg was the easy bit. The emigration officials at Shannon airport a couple of weeks later proved to be a lot stickier.
“I went in below to the airport,” says Morrissey. “I had my ticket got and everything. I went into the bar. Everything was going great guns. Out to the check-in desk and next thing, ‘Mr Morrissey, can we speak to you a minute?’ Off in to the office. Denis Riordan was Head of US Immigration in Shannon and he was a great football man, actually. He sat me down.
“He had the Clare Champion out there in front of him on a table and he had the Examiner beside it. ‘Now, look at that, Tom,’ he said: ‘Tom Morrissey returns after two and a half years illegal in Boston.’ Lovely. ‘And this: Morrissey, non-starter, going back to Boston tomorrow.’ Sorry Tom, I can’t let you back to America. If I do, I’ll get fired. So, out the door; that finished that,” he says, laughing.
At the end of January, he went over to England, jumped on a flight to Toronto, got a bus to Montreal and was picked up by a guy who drove up from Boston and smuggled him back over the border. Six trips a year he does, says Morrissey, for $1,200 a pop.
Morrissey spun out another couple of years in the States, but came home to work the land. “I came back,” he says, “to farming, sure, but I’d say I’m the only farmer in history that got a P45 from it. I came home from holidays one time and my mother said, ‘I’m leasing the land to your brother.’ OK, so. Good luck. That finished that.”
He’s managed to evade marriage so far. “I came close once or twice,” he says. “I just didn’t want to, I suppose. I was over in America when I asked this lady, a Kerry lady, to marry me. She said, ‘Yeah.’ The following morning, she woke up, a big smile on her face.
‘Did something happen last night?’ I said. ‘I don’t remember a thing.’
‘Ah, yeah. Ah, yeah,’ she says. ‘Well damn you.’ That was that.
“There was one or two girls I let slip away from me, the mother would be telling me that, but ’tisn’t the mother that’s marrying them. But, no, I’m happy. I’ll tell you one thing: I have 27 nieces and nephews.”
He works as block-layer these days but the body is in poor shape. He needs a hip replacement and both his knees are a bit gamey. If he’s to play golf, he has to use a buggy. “I’m dragging away, but I’m used to it now,” he says without a trace of self-pity.

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