Brogan
The GAA is built on tradition, and there is nothing more traditional in Gaelic Games than great family dynasties.
Trace the history of any county team in Gaelic Football or Hurling and you’ll see the same surnames consistently reappearing as you move back through the decades.
In our series – The GAA Gene – we profile the families that have given outstanding service through the generations.
This week we focus on the Brogans of Dublin.
By John Harrington
It is no exaggeration to say that the Brogans of the Navan Road have played a more prominent role in the story of Dublin football than any other family over the course of the last 40-odd years.
Bernard Senior and his brother Jim played on the famous Dublin team that sparked a sudden Beatlemania-style craze for Gaelic Football in the capital by winning three All-Irelands in four years from 1974 to ’77.
Two of Bernard Senior’s sons, Alan and Bernard, played crucial roles in Dublin’s three All-Ireland titles this decade, and a third son, Paul, was also on the panel when they beat Kerry in the 2011 All-Ireland Final. Jim’s son, James, would surely have played a big part in those successes too were his career not so badly stymied by injury. While, away from main stage, a small army of Brogans, both male and female, have given or continue to give sterling service at club and underage inter-county level.
Like many Irish families that were formed in the 1940s and 1950s, the Brogans of the Navan Road can trace their branch of the family tree back to a chance meeting in a dance-hall. Jim Brogan Senior first met his future wife Bridget Gilvarry in one such ballroom of romance on Parnell Square. It’s easy to believe their ice-breaking conversation was about Mayo, because that’s where they were both from originally. Jim from Foxford, and Bridget from Ballymachola, which can be found between Crossmolina and Killala.
Jim Brogan didn’t play much football himself, but had a passion for it and came from a family steeped in it. His own brother Paddy Joe was a famous football fanatic, so much so that he enrolled his son Padraig in St. Jarlath’s, Tuam, as much for the football education it would provide as any other. Padraig would go on to win an U-21 All-Ireland with Mayo and play senior championship football with both his native county and Donegal. The investment in his footballing education proved worthwhile then, but it is the Dublin branch of the family who have left the most lasting legacy.
Brogan
Jim Snr and Bridget Brogan had nine children; eight boys, and one girl. Jim Jnr was the eldest, followed by Bernard, Francis, Ollie, Stephen, Anne, Benny, Kevin, and Aidan. All the boys had a spark for football. According to Bernard, it was brought to full flame by a combination of going to school in St. Declan’s CBS, Cabra, and joining the then only recently established St. Oliver Plunkett’s GAA club.
“We all went to St. Declan's, as did all of my children,” Brogan told GAA.ie. “There was a very good Brother there at the time in my day, Brother Karl, who was a good Gaelic Football coach. We were a small school but we it was a strong Gaelic ethos in the school. There was no soccer in the school or anything like that. Oliver Plunketts was founded in 1963. I was born in '53. So I just really played Gaelic with Plunkett's pretty much from the time it was founded. I was a sub on an U-15 team that won the first medals for the club. I was 10 or 11 at the time and I remember going to the park one day and they didn't have enough fellas to play so I went on as a corner-forward. So that was that.”
All of the boys played football for St. Oliver Plunkett’s, though Benny rebelled ever so slightly by defining himself as a hurler first and a footballer second. Oliver and Kevin would play bits and pieces for the Dublin senior footballers, but it was the two older brothers, Jim and Bernard who really made the grade. Bernard Brogan was one of those lucky people blessed with a natural flair for sport. He played schoolboy basketball for Ireland and was a talented track athlete as well, but Gaelic Football was his primary passion. He was fortunate enough to emerge on the scene at the same time Dublin manager Kevin Heffernan sparked a Gaelic Football revolution in the capital, but initially Brogan was reluctant to enlist.
“I was going to College at the time. I started College in 1970 and I was in my final year in 1973,” he says. “Kevin Heffernan and Donal Colfer came to watch me play for Plunketts in a League match. After the match he asked me would I like to go training for Dublin and I said I didn't want to because at the time no-one really wanted to play for Dublin because they weren't really doing any good, is the truth. So I said I was in my final year of college and I just didn't have time to play football for Dublin.
“Five or six weeks later they came back out again and had another conversation with me. And after that I went training with them. We trained at the time in a gym in Finglas, which I think was a little unusual for a county team. It was the first time a county team had done collective training so early in the season, I think. And then once I started training I just got into the rhythm, and that was that. My brother Jim would also have started playing with Dublin a few months after I did.
“Once you got into the training there was a commitment to the guys around you so there was a great spirit and that. Kevin was saying we were going to do stuff, and that's why we were approaching things in a different way than it had been approached in the past. Once we got going it, people just got into it. But did we think what happened was going to happen? I would say I didn't think it was going to happen, and that's the truth. Dublin hadn't won a Leinster Championship for several years, so even winning a Leinster Championship would have been a bonus.”
Alan Brogan with his father Bernard in the GAA Museum, looking at an exhibition honouring them and other prominent GAA families
Not only would Dublin win the Leinster Championship out of the blue in 1974, they shocked themselves as much as they did the country by also lifting the Sam Maguire Cup for the first time since 1963. It was Brogan’s fortune to have joined the panel in ‘74, but misfortune to miss out on the Provincial and All-Ireland Finals because of injury.
“My first game that I remember playing for Dublin was against the Combined Universities and I was midfield marking John O'Keeffe,” he says. “I had a very good game, I have to say, but I twisted my knee in that match and didn't play again for a number of months. Then I played in the National Leagues. We were in the Division 2 Final that year, and I played in the first round of the Championship against Wexford at full-forward. Jimmy Keaveney hadn't been asked back at that stage and I played full-forward but then Jimmy was asked back for the following match and I was a sub.
“Then I played against Offaly and I had a very good game, but twisted my knee again. We had used all of our subs, there were only three subs then, and I had to finish the match in corner-forward with a very bad knee. I didn't play after that in '74. I went and had an operation in August in 1974 and was in plaster for six weeks. I remember in the All-Ireland semi-final I was in the dug-out. Today, that doesn't really happen, if you're injured now you're moved to the side or into the stand. I know it's a cliche nowadays to say it's all about the squad, but with that Dublin team under Kevin Heffernan it very much was. So I was in the dug-out, and even though I didn't play in the All-Ireland semi-final or Final, I still felt I was very much a part of it.”
The 1970s in a GAA sense was defined by the rivalry between the Dublin and Kerry football teams. Bernard Brogan had a more intimate relationship with it than anyone else because he had a foot in both counties at the time. Work had brought him to Tarbert in Kerry, where he would meet his future wife, Maria Keane-Stack.
“I left College in 1974 and the oil crisis hit that year,” explains Brogan. “So there were no jobs. I was going to the ESB as an engineer, but they reduced the number of engineers that were to be taken and I wasn't taken. I was one of the guys that was cut out. So I went back to College and did a Masters in UCD. During the summer of '75 I had finished my masters and my tutor was a very well-known tutor by the name of Professor Seamus Timoney. He called me in one day and said, 'I have a job for you'.
"It was as a contractor with Atlantic Plant and I went down to them and told them I was playing football and wanted a job in the City. They told me it was a job in their offices in Mount Street so I said that's great. But when I started the job in June or July, about three weeks afterwards they had a project in Tarbert in Kerry and my boss called me in and told me they had a problem because the engineer in Tarbert was after leaving. They needed someone to go down, and I was the only person they had. So, four weeks after I started a job on the basis I wouldn't be moved out of Dublin, I was sent to Kerry! And I ended up being there for a year and a half. Kerry beat us in the All-Ireland Final that year and through that I got to know (Kerry footballer) Jimmy Deenihan who was from Finuge. We used to train together and did a load of stuff together. We went to a dance one night and he introduced me to Maria, and that's how I met my wife.”
Brogan
There were no real footballers of note in the Keane-Stack family, but Maria likes to say that the Kerry blood she contributed to the gene-pool must take some of the credit for the footballing talent of her three sons, Alan, Bernard and Paul. Whoever or whatever was responsible for it, it was clear from a very early age they had what it took to follow in their father’s foot-steps. When Bernard Brogan Snr was interviewed by the journalist David Walsh for his epic 1989 article – The Return to the Hill: The Remarkable Story of Heffo’s Heroes – he admitted that a then 6-year-old Alan looked like a footballer in the making. His words would prove prophetic.
“When he was young, did I think he'd be a good footballer? Yeah, and Bernard as well,” says Brogan. “They were very athletic and you could see in the teams they played on at underage that they were the dominant forces on the team. At U-12 you could look out on the field and you'd know they were good. Johnny Quinn from Na Fianna played alongside me (with Dublin) and Johnny's son played for Na Fianna. I'm not belittling anyone else that played for the team, but when Na Fianna were playing Plunketts underage, it was pretty much Johnny's son against Alan. When either of those guys got the ball, something was going to happen.”
Alan’s rise through the ranks of Dublin football was meteoric. By the time he captained Dublin to an All-Ireland U-21 title in 2003, he was already an established player on the senior team too. Bernard would arguably go on to eclipse Alan in terms of his importance to the Dublin team, but he was not an overnight success in the same way.
“Bernard was on a Dublin minor football and hurling panel and then he broke his collar-bone and they dropped him off the football panel but not the hurling panel,” says Bernard Snr. “Then he did his cruciate ligament at 21 which took him out of football for nearly two years. Alan played minor and U-21 and until very late in his career had no injuries of any real significance. Whereas Bernard had those injuries and it took him out of the system. So when he went back into the system he had to earn his stripes. He was played at half-forward for a long time where, in my opinion, he shouldn't have been played. He was the top-scoring forward in Dublin club football at the time and really should have been played at corner-forward from the start.
“Football today is all about the 15-man game so everybody falls back and goes forward together. But that's not really Berno's game. His game is more about staying close to the goal and being a scoring forward. So he did have to work harder and stick at it. But Alan was there as well and that helped him stay at it.”
Brogan
Bernard Brogan Jnr might have had to overcome some set-backs before finally making it to the top, but he was a good deal more fortunate than his brother Paul who would surely have more than one All-Ireland medal to his name had he not suffered three cruciate ligament injuries.
“Yeah, Paul has had a load of injuries. I think Paul would tell you he's never actually finished a season since he's started playing football, so he's just been very unlucky. Do I think he was good enough to get more chances? I do. But that's the way it goes. He's a huge part of the club in the sense that he has a big presence on the field, he creates momentum when he gets the ball, so people look for him to get on the ball.
“But he's just been unlucky. To have three cruciate ligaments! Last year he came back after a cruciate ligament and he fell and hurt his shoulder and needed another operation and that put him out for six months for an operation that was, relatively speaking, innocuous. So he's had loads of injuries as well as those three cruciates.”
Alan and Bernard Junior have matched their father’s achievement of three All-Ireland medals, and there’s a very good chance that Bernard Junior will eclipse it before he finally hangs up his boots. Regardless of what he wins, he’ll be doing well to go out on the sort of high his brother Alan did last year. After coming on as a sub in the 66th minute of the All-Ireland Final against Kerry, the 34-year-old kicked the best point of the match to put the result beyond all doubt.
“Myself and my wife would be very proud of them because we know that it takes hard work,” says Brogan. “It requires a lot of dedication and it doesn't come easy. There are disappointments along the way, and you have to keep at it. Last year we were just delighted for Alan. He didn't get that many chances, but for him to finish his career the way he did, you couldn't have asked for a better way.
“That whole sequence of play if you watch it, shows all the good things about Alan's football. Carrying the ball, giving it off, making himself available to take it again, drawing in defenders and then taking the decision to shoot. There were loads of bits and pieces in that snippet of play that showed all the good things about Alan's skill-level and knowledge of the game.”
Brogans
The Brogan brothers were not the only sons of former greats on the Dublin team that won last year’s All-Ireland Final. The fathers of Dean Rock, James McCarthy, Jack McCaffrey, and Kevin McManamon all wore the sky-blue jersey before them. When you see blood-lines like that re-emerge a generation later it is easy to believe there must be some latent talent in the genes. But Bernard Brogan Snr is convinced nurture rather than nature is the key to being a successful sportsperson.
“I'm a firm believer that it has more to do with environment,” he says. “I read a book recently called 'Bounce', and if you read 'Bounce' it's about answering that question as to whether great sportspeople born or made. You asked me earlier about that article that was written in 1989 when I spoke about Alan having a talent for the game. He would have been six or seven years of age, and at that time I was training the Plunketts senior football team.
“Alan used to come training with me and in the dark would run up and down the pitch beside the adults on his own with the ball. He was playing like a child, but he put the hours in. And Bernard was the same. They weren't born with it, they worked at it. And they were in the right environment, because that's what I did, that's what Jimmy did, that's what our family did.
“Alan, Bernard, Paul, and (my nephew) James all grew up just playing Gaelic Football, that's what they did. It was the same for me, and I have to give a lot of credit to my mother, Lord have mercy on her. If you went home to my house on a Saturday at six o'clock, there could be five pairs of boots on the wall outside stuffed with newspapers, drying. There were always five or six of us playing at the one time, and when we'd go home we'd drop the kit-bag in the kitchen and the next morning all the stuff was ready to go again. That's not that easy, and we didn't really appreciate it at the time, the amount of work that she did behind the scenes to keep nicks and socks and football boots ready to go.”
The family tradition of encouraging the young has been passed on again. And even though it’s very early days yet, it looks like the third generation of the Navan Road Brogans could have what it takes to do the name proud.
“Alan has two boys,” says Brogan. “Jamie has just turned seven and Harry has just turned one. Jamie now is just beginning to get into it. His Christmas present from us was a set of Gaelic Football posts. That's not that easy to be pulling in and out so he can play, but that's started to happen. Alan has an interest in it still. Even though he's retired from the county he's still playing with the club and he goes out on the Saturday morning with the kids.
“Will they play something? They will. Will they be Gaelic Footballers? Highly likely is the answer.”