Country Living with Francis Farragher

Life can be a curious mix of riddles. The older we get the more we seem to regress back into childhood. We can remember the first day at school as if it was yesterday and yet we can’t figure out where we left the car keys or the mobile phone just five minutes before we had them in our possession.

A couple of weeks back, I was in the Ard Rí House Hotel in Tuam, a fine establishment let it be said, for a rather special occasion which in the space of a few minutes took me back to the mid-1960s and an evening when my late father, Denny, reminisced about the 1956 All-Ireland football final.

He had very special memories in the run-up to that delayed final played in October (due to a polio outbreak in Cork) but the story he always told was about the chats he had with one Frank Stockwell in the run-up to that final.

As chance would have it, Frank Stockwell, a painter and decorator like his father before him, was involved in ‘giving a lick’ to a pub in Abbeyknockmoy owned by one Bartley Synnott, often referred to as the Corner House. In later years, it was developed into the Abbey Inn and is now the location for a successful local garage.

My father often remarked on how down-to-earth Frank Stockwell was, and how he would chat freely about their chances in the All-Ireland of ‘56. And while not too many GAA stories involving the maroon have happy endings, this one had, when Galway won the final, defeating Cork on a 2-13 to 3-7 scoreline.

It was of course the final where ‘Stocky’ made history — never to be equalled again — when he scored 2-5 from play in the 60-minute final, an absolutely invaluable contribution to the Galway success story.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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