O’Connor ready to roar Gunners to final win
Seamus O'Connor, who received a signed hurley from the Ballygunner team is pictured with his daughter Louise and his niece Catriona.
Ballygunner GAA club means so much to so many people, not just to those in the village itself, but to the county as a whole and even further afield as well.
On Sunday, January 18, the Ballygunner players and their faithful supporters will make the trip to Croke Park as they take on Galway’s Loughrea in the AIB All-Ireland Club Senior Hurling Championship final.
Having tasted success in 2022 with a famously dramatic victory - coming from two points behind in the dying embers of the final to beat Kilkenny's Ballyhale Shamrocks thanks to a goal from Harry Ruddle with the last puck of the game - Gunner will be going all out to once again get their hands on the Tommy Moore Cup.
One of the plethora of people eagerly awaiting the game is Seamus O’Connor, brother to Vinny and Marty, who were part of the three-in-a-row Ballygunner team that won the Waterford Senior Hurling Championship in 1966, '67 and '68.
Seamus has plenty of hurling pedigree himself and is one of the surviving hurlers who played on the Ballygunner side that won the minor final over 70 years ago, all the way back in 1954.
Seamus moved to Wales shortly afterwards, where he married his wife Pat, with whom he had three daughters, Elizabeth, Anne and Louise.
But despite his absence, Seamus never lost his love for Ballygunner hurling, always listening to the matches on WLR and reading the reports from the Waterford News and Star, which was regularly posted to him in Swansea by his ten brothers and sisters back home.
Seamus, now at the wonderful age of 87, recently made a visit home to Ballygunner in October, where he was joined by many members of his family on a night out at O’Sullivans on the Mall in Waterford.
It was on this night that the legendary Billy O’Sullivan agreed to arrange for the Ballygunner senior hurling team to sign a hurley and gift it to Seamus.
Catriona O’Connor-Rose, daughter of Vinny and niece of Seamus, was home with family in Ballygunner for Christmas, where she collected the signed hurley and stopped off in Swansea on her way home to deliver it to her proud uncle.
"Seamus was very happy to receive the Hurley, it now holds pride of place next to the winning sliotar from the last final," Catriona said.
"Seamus is a true Ballygunner hurling fan and believes Jimmy McGinn saved him in those early years by getting him involved in the Ballygunner hurling team, so he has a lot to be thankful for and will be very excited to watch the match on the 18th of January."
Billy O’Sullivan once said that "Ballygunner have never lost small parish mentality,” but the O'Connor family in Wales and a myriad more like them prove that this parish stretches well beyond the bounds of James McGinn Park.
Seamus, like so many around the world, will be waiting with bated breath to see if the Waterford champions can get over one final hurdle and beat Loughrea to reclaim the coveted Tommy Moore Cup.
