Pa Fitzgerald recently trained Sandy Sea to win the Irish Cup at Limerick. He is a living legend winning at the highest level on track and field.
Below is an article penned by the Irish Examiner's Diarmuid O'Flynn back in January 2006 prior to the National Coursing Festival in Clonmel.
URBAN LEGEND
Tralee town centre may not be the ideal greyhound gallops, but Clonmel cousing hopeful Pa Fitzgerald wouldn't have it any other way. Diarmuid O'Flynn reports.
HORSE-RACING, sport of kings. Dog racing - sport of everyman. Not alone do you not need a small fortune to become a dog-owner and trainer, you don't even need a small field.
Nowhere is that more crystallised than in the case of famed Tralee trainer Pa Fitzgerald. A former Kerry footballer, Minor All Ireland winner in 1950, panellist for the senior success in 1955 (he never got a medal and he was one of three on the panel of 21 to lose out), Pa has been training greyhounds from his home in the heart of Tralee with nothing but your average front and back garden.
Successful? Well, how do an English Derby, three Dundalk Internationals and three Irish Cups sound? (my own research), just to begin with? Reeling off a litany of track and coursing successes isn't what turns on Pa. So unimpressed is he with his own success, in fact, he barely bothers to remember what or where he won last. Typical of his own kind, he loves dogs, loves to breed them, feed them, train them, race them, measure them, and measure himself against other like-minded doggie-men and women the length and breadth of the country.
At the moment, Pa is preparing for Clonmel, the annual National Coursing meet, where he will have four dogs involved, two of whom are among the favourites for the big one, the Derby.
A visit to his kennels, in a street behind his semi-detached house, suggests nothing out of the ordinary.
"These aren't the most fashionable kennels now anymore" he says, "but they do the job, they are clean and warm."
"Clean and warm, cosy, traditional, not clinical and cold, artificial or modern; sterile boxes stacked one on the other.
"Yerra shure that's the Yanks, their way of doing it. I wouldn't be into that at all. Some dogs are mad to break out of their kennels, these fellas can't wait to get in. You know they're happy then.
"I know some people use walking machines, but I'd give it up first, I'd just give it up. Sure the time will come too when they won't want to feed them, they'll just be giving them tablets and so on. I don't know, I'll stay with the old ways until I am finished, walking them, and galloping.
"The dogs love it. People don't realise it. They think dogs have no memory, but they have. Pass a gate with a cat, or a hare, a rabbit, and forever they'll pull towards that gate - look for it again. They'd miss all that if they were on a walking machine, and you inside sitting down reading the Dandy or the Beano.
"'He's after doing three miles' they'll say, but sure it's only the belt that did it. It's boring for them anyway but sure I suppose everyone to his own. That's the way I grew up, there's a fierce tradition with dogs around this area, unbelievable.
"My neighbour, Patsy Callaghan, he has a dog in the Champion Stakes and a bitch who won a reserve Trial."
Are ye friendly?
"Oh yeah, but you'd get a fright when you meet Patsy, it's in the dark always, he's out first thing in the morning, every morning."
A bit like Pa himself.
Ordinary-looking kennels then, but that's where it ends. Out come the dogs, some led by Pa's assistant, Paddy Moriarty, some led by himself; all in absolutely magnificent condition.
Powerful, perfectly conditioned, sleek, with smooth, shining coats.
First, there's Musical Time, his best bet for the Derby. A typically big and powerful animal. Well suited to the excruciating hill in Clonmel. Then Village Rover, another Derby Qualifier - Pa quietly fancies him - but just as big and powerful.
With each, Pa shows a trainer's rightful pride, the dogs standing tall, alert, confident, enjoying the rubdown from admiring hands. Then comes the next pair.
"Be careful now when we're bringing out the other two," he advises Paddy, then turns to us, "they're a small bit nervous".
Into the light, reluctantly, come two smaller dogs.
"Full brother and sister," says Pa; one wouldn't think so from the colouring, but the heads, the faces, are identical.
"Good boy, Blackie," he says to one with a reassuring pat.
"One time I'd have to lift him out here, no way he'd come out on his own, the bitch was the same. Even going to slips, if you made any bit of noise, he'd look back, he'd have to be pulled out of the slips; he got out of that, now he'd pull you into the slips, like a plough. Won the Trial Stake in Castleisland this fella."
The bitch is Chelsea Girl, half owned by Niall Quinn and the legendary Patsy Byrne (Patsy, a Kerryman by way of Duagh, based in London for decades now, owns most of the dogs trained by Pa).
She's a bit nervous, likes it away from the crowd. She went to Ballybeggan, where the crowd was way back from her, and did well. Clonmel will suit her and don't rule her out. Honest Opinion (Blackie) is also owned by Patsy. He's one of the smaller, modern dogs. The other two are 88lbs each - he's 78. But Lord he's a good pup."
Finally from another part of the kennels his current pride and joy.
Castle Pines, winner of last year's Irish Cup, the most gruelling and demanding coursing event of all.
"He's a beaut, isn't he," says Pa, and it's not a question, simply a fact, as handsome an animal as you'll ever see.
"He's fit from walking now, he looks well, but if you locked him in a back garden, and provided you didn't feed him like an elephant, if you came back in 12 months, he'd look as fit as that now. He's just a natural athlete, muscular, at any time."
A bit like our own Tom Aherne, in fact, asking most of the questions on this trip.
Tom, in fact, is a little taken back that Castle Pines, with the Irish Cup around the corner (at the end of February), is only just back galloping.
"No," explains Pa, "he won a Cup in Ballyduff late last year, I brought him back to see had he retained his speed, and he had, obviously. That was November. He's doing a lot of exercise, walking all the time, not much galloping until now, but we have six weeks still to prepare him."
So, if a dog is well walked, six weeks is enough to finish him, with the gallops?
"Of course. He gets the odd gallop, but six weeks is enough time, he has until February 27."
The walking is all done early in the morning. Pa and Paddy each with a handful of leads. "Paddy played for Kerry one day against Armagh and the two captains were called Paddy Moriarty," Pa told us; "I'd say that hasn't happened very often!"
This is by necessity as much as by choice.
I'd be getting up around five, you have to. I'd leave them out to do their business, then take them walking, but if I were to try and do that at half seven, it would be impossible, with the traffic.
"Tralee is no different now to Cork or Dublin, with the roundabouts and so on; coming into town, from all roads, there's very heavy traffic. If you're not gone before six, out for an hour, maybe an hour-and-a-half, you just couldn't do it. And even then, you meet traffic.
"I remember when you'd only meet one or two cars at any time of the day, back in the '40s. Now you're taking your life in your hands every time you you go on the road. A narrow country road, you couldn't walk dogs. It's gone too dangerous, people nearly driving over you.
They have these fellas now with the big exhausts in their cars, I don't know what they call them (boy racers). I was in Brands Hatch one time, there were 120,000 people, but there wasn't as much noise as there is off these cars."
And then there's the danger from loose dogs.
"Another problem, people don't seem to realise, they're supposed to have their dogs on a leash also, the law applies to everyone. How could I ring up an owner who had just paid a lot of money for a dog, say he'd been attacked or bitten? And the people who own them don't care, 'oh he never did that before' they'll say."
What was the biggest thrill Pa ever had? "Sure it wasn't with a dog at all!" he exclaims, and the comapny nearly collapses. Alright then, with a dog.
"I couldn't say, I've had them since I was a young fella. Look at that photo (from nearly 30 years ago, four dogs, a group of men), any of the three dogs in that could have won the Derby, and she (the bitch) was beaten in the semi-final of the Oaks (one of those dogs was Best Man, the fastest dog ever clocked in Clonmel). I got a thrill from them all. I still do."
He's not finished yet. Pa Fitzgerald, that last big triumph, the Derby or the Oaks, Clonmel, still beckons. Should it happen this year, and he has a chance, not a soul in the deep-rooted far-flung family of coursing will begrudge it to him.
One thing though, keep your money in your pocket.
"You can't tell anyone to back a dog for money," says Pa.
"This fella (Musical Time) was in Abbeydorney, his Trial Stakes; ran the first round anyway, and the second morning, he was 4/1, 3/1, I couldn't believe it.
"Clocks, you see. Anyway, he won his semi-final by four lengths, his final by six legths, going away, but the clocks. I wouldn't tell any man to back a dog for money.
"Clonmel is a different test altogether, a great test of stamina, strength, fitness; then if you get a few turns, people don't realise about all the little dips up at the top of that field, it's all undulations.
"I will say this. This dog is stronger the second day than he is the first, but people fancying a dog because of good clocks is ridiculous.
"Even that dog there (Blackie) does good clocks, he's a rocket out of slips, but Clonmel is twice as long as anywhere else. How do they maintain the strength for 550 yards? You just don't know - up that hill."
Stage set then, all Pa (and Paddy) can do is wait - wait, walk, gallop, feed, nurture, hope to get the dogs to slips in top form.
"You see those houses there, at the end of the street? That's Urban Terrace, about 20 houses, years old now.
"Kevin Heffernan (former Dublin player and manager) was down here for a funeral. Plunkett Devlin pointed it out to him; 40 All-Ireland medals, he said, came out of those houses. 'The Black and Tans should have burned them!' said Heffernan."
True or not, a great story, by a great storyteller.
Wouldn't it be just dandy if he got one more story to tell.
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