Funky Fennell - Two E's, Two N's and Two L's

Up until the time John Fennell arrived in CWC, my striking memory of biology, was a quoted ‘fact' from Mrs. Miller (RIP), that “Pigs fed on the cardboard boxes that Kellogs cornflakes were packaged in, and put on more weight than the pigs who were fed on the cornflakes themselves.” 

Oh, and in a rigorous scientific experiment conducted in Mrs. Miller’s laboratory, by the class of that time, extremely severe evaporation can take place when fermenting apple juice in a biology lab…..In particular when the large glass container is left close to a (slight ajar) window. Remember, there were no hosepipe bans in those days! 

And one final one from Mrs. Miller’s class, when TC pricked his finger to do the blood test to identify your blood type, and said blood emerged from his index finger, he promptly fainted and fell in a heap on the floor. Thankfully he didn’t consider medicine as a career. 

Although he did take a case of sexual discrimination against UCD when he was denied entry into Physiotherapy in UCD, which he won. Much to our dismay, he decided not to take up the offer of the place in the end. But I digress…….. 

Returning to Mr. Fennell, on his first day in Clongowes in biology class, he swaggers up to the blackboard. Then picking up a piece of chalk, he writes his name on the board, turns around and addressing the class, announces, “My name is Mr. Fennell. Two e’s, two n’s, two l’s.” Here was this new teacher staking out his turf, with some amount of bravado. I liked him instantly. He wasn’t known as Funky Fennell for nothing. 

On some Saturday mornings though, he didn’t as much swagger as stagger.

 

From memory, biology was our first class on Saturday mornings, and on more than one occasion one of his earnest students was dispatched to the refectory to get some oranges for a 'biology experiment'. The experiment involved squeezing the oranges into a glass, and the juice promptly consumed by Mr. Fennell, thereby illustrating the point of the experiment. Friday nights are not supposed to be followed by Saturday mornings in school. Particularly when you are the teacher. 

At on the St. Patrick’s Day SCT victory celebrations, Mr. Fennell introduced some more than willing students - all over 18 and legal I hasten to add - including myself, to Harvey Wallbangers. How sophisticated I felt. However, whatever imagined sophistication didn’t survive to the following morning. Some oranges for a biology experiment would have gone down well then. 

Looking back, it’s worth remembering "Funky Fennell" wasn’t that much older that we were; his 25 years of wisdom in comparison to our callow sheltered 18 years. He was one of the most engaging and fun teachers I had and biology was always a subject I enjoyed, even on Saturday mornings. 

He instilled a lasting love and interest in all things biology….and your minds can wander wherever you wish with that one! We’re all adults now, although some may set out to prove differently on the reunion weekend. Here's to Mr. Fennell: 2’es, 2 n’s, 2 l’s. 

Some other snippets: 

Week 2 in Rudiments in CWC in the top open, Paddy Digan - in the bed next to mine - and I were playing chess. Silently. Whereupon on discovery, we were summoned to Mr. O'Keeffe's room, and given 4 of the best with the leather pandy bat. Ouch! It wasn't as if we were disturbing anyone. 

In Latin class, our teacher Murtagh O’Shea gave me 100 lines: “I must not demonstrate cousinly affection in class.” The reason? I was sticking the pointy end of a compass into John Donnelly’s bum. 

On one late leave in Dublin after a cup match, having borrowed a pair of glasses to make myself look older, I was refused entry into Soldier Blue (who remembers that X rated movie of the time? not me anyway) as I was underage. I was mortified.....but I don't think I was the only one. Sparrow Harte & Dan Farrington too? 

But probably not as mortified as when in Madigans after a cup match, I was nominated to go to the bar to order pints. Slinking up to the bar - not the best strategy when trying to portray confidence - and in the deepest voice I could muster, I demanded “2 pints of Smithwick's and 2 pints of Guinness.” The barman looked at me, smirked, and asked “Where’s your mother son?” Mortified, I retreated to the laughing mob, to lick my wounds. Naturally they gave me plenty of help with that! 

Ned Carroll giving some of us a life to the races on a Saturday afternoon. Racing regulars would have been Morgan Mooney, John 'Conor Pass' Moore, Fran Fitzpatrick. "Puff' Carroll was such a kind man, who was given a terrible time in the Big Study. 

Remember the Stink Bomb episode, which I think occurred during Ned's Big Study watch? Poor Ned was picked on mercilessly. Paddy Crowe, Headmaster at the time demanding "I want the boy, and I want him now." I believe the boy responsible for said Stink Bomb episode may be one of boys the named above? 

 

Grattan Donnelly

The opinions expressed published works are those of the author and do not reflect the opinions of Clongowes 1978 Blog or its Editors.

The Special One.....

The 17th of March 1978 will always be a special memory for everyone in Clongowes at the time. But especially those of us in Panel 1. The truth is we overcame huge psychological and physical hurdles to win a Leinster Schools Senior Cup that we probably had no right to win. 

I guess when your school hasn’t won a senior cup in 52 years it is not surprising that you become conditioned to losing gracefully. The main reason 1978 was SO dramatically different though, was down to the arrival in Clongowes of one Michael Sheil.

Being a somewhat humbler sort than Jose Mourinho he certainly never called himself “The Special One” but there is no doubt he was special.

Greg Dilger, CWC Captain 1978

Over the years so many compliments and tributes have been paid to Michael that it is difficult to say anything particularly original. Yet to say that he was one of the most influential people in our lives is no exaggeration. 

Of course, he was a brilliant and innovative rugby coach - way ahead of his time. His training sessions were sharp and purposeful. Never before did we have such a clear vision of what we were doing both as individuals and as a team. He sensitively let you know what your weaknesses were and what you needed to do to improve. 

Woomba Woomba Woomba
Lansdowne Road Macrh 17th 1978

He wasn’t slow to let you know when agreed standards weren’t met. But was also hugely encouraging about what we did well and helped us to build on that. He helped us to understand and believe that it was worth doing the ordinary things extraordinarily well. 

He was enlightened and confident enough to bring in specialist expertise in the shape of Roly Meates and Ollie Campbell. That’s real leadership. Many coaches of that era might have been a bit too proud and threatened to do that. But as I already said - “he was way ahead of his time!”

The way he pulled together a bunch of ordinary guys who in all honesty had never shown any cup winning potential through the previous five years and turned us into a winning outfit, is quite simply an incredible coaching achievement.   

Vinny Murray, Martin Nugent with Noel Turley 1988 LSSC Final v St Michael's
Photo ©RMcDermott

Off the field as Higher Line Prefect he was even more influential. I think I can safely speak for all of our group by saying he tried to make us better people. He challenged us constantly. He helped us to think better about life and what was important. He wasn’t alone in this - we had some wonderful other Jesuits and teachers during our years in Clongowes - but he stood out a mile! 

Looking back, it’s clear he was a driving force in creating a culture of excellence - not just in Clongowes rugby, but in Clongowes generally.

And yet we know that WINNING was never Michael Sheil’s obsession. He was much more interested in helping individuals and teams to get better. After that the results would look after themselves. I suppose that’s why he enjoyed coaching the Super Thirds every bit as much as the SCT. 

Birthday Boy
Photo Robert Kryger

Michael Sheil always refuses to accept praise for the ‘78 Cup win without sharing it with his great friend the late great Vinny Murray. 

Vinny played a major part in our success and went on himself to lead Clongowes to even more Senior Cup success before he sadly passed away in 1999. Not surprisingly Vinny would always say that Michael Sheil taught him everything he knew.

The great man celebrated his 80th birthday in June this year. A very simple calculation reminds us he was only 40 back in 1978. 

And we thought he was ancient.

Greg Dilger on behalf of Rhetoric 1978 and Panel One

Back Row Vinny Murray, John Bolger, Mark Collis, Con Clifford, Tim Meagher, John Rock, Willie Burns, Mick Sheil
Front Row Martin Coyne, Ambrose O'Sullivan, Barry Walker, Greg Dilger (Capt), Dermot Waldron, Gerry Healy, Freddie Browne
Seated; Tony O'Sullivan, Mark Attride (RIP)

CWC 1978 Memories

Transition Vamp 1975-1976 - O'Levels

Photo: Courtesy Jeff Pioquinto SJ

I’m sitting in the Mullingar Park Hotel, it’s the 30th October 2017, we are at our son Daniel’s Clongowes graduation ball. Chris Lumb the Headmaster is speaking “You are a fine group of young men who have spent 6 years with us in Clongowes, whatever happens in your life, please remember that although you have left Clongowes, it will never leave you”. Profound, his words echo and make an impression on an old Clongownian who is at that point 39 years out.

Its’ September 1975, my brothers and I pull up at the Castle, another year starts, I am now in “O Levels”, a new experiment, this is the second year that “O-Levels” is being run in Clongowes. A number of our colleagues who started in Rudiments with us, skip the year, we are saying good-bye to John Carey, Paul Cuddihy, Eoin Halpin, Brendan Rumley, Daniel O’Connell, Tony Egan amongst others. We become a type of hybrid year as next year we will be joined by students who skip O-Levels. Does the experiment work, only time will tell? The merging of the years – it has its’ plusses and minuses. “O-Levels” is deemed to be part of “Higher Line” – lots of additional privileges, particularly late leave for all Senior Cup Matches and Internationals. The dreadful responsibility of more state exams, except these are English State exams “O-Levels”, which the Jesuits in their wisdom believe will enhance our status particularly if we are going overseas for employment in the future.

Rhinestone Cowboy by Glen Campbell is number 1 in the singles chart as we arrive back in September. I didn’t know it at the time but I personally preferred Country music to rock and roll. David Bowie with Fame takes over the number 1 slot in October. Liverpool retain the first division title and win the European Cup – what a season. I can’t recall any Liverpool fans amongst us, which is surprising, in that among current Irish kids Liverpool vie with Manchester United as the most supported club. United once again break my heart, we lose the F A Cup Final to 2nd Division Southampton in the 83rd minute to a goal by Bobby Stokes and only finish 3rd in the League. Most of the above games are watched together in our wreck room on a black and white TV.

Our “O-Level” year was the last year of corporal punishment, next year a changing of the guard from Jake Brennan SJ and Paddy Crowe SJ, to Phil Fogarty SJ and Michael Sheil SJ would herald in a new era in the school. I can’t remember any of my colleagues or myself receiving any “pandy-bat” retribution in “O-Levels”. Perhaps we had matured to the point where a strong word of reprimand from our Teachers/Jesuits was sufficient to quell any teenage rebellious thought. There was one memorable incident when Alan Hoban had a “strong disagreement” with Poetry prefect Chris Murphy SJ, thankfully both stood back from the brink, it was more “handbags at dawn”, but perhaps Jesuit discipline was ebbing.

Our new prefect is a Jesuit scholastic David Coghlan, nicknamed “Joe Bugner” (aka British Heavyweight boxer) due to an unfortunate nasal collision at some point in his life. Mr Coghlan was pleasant to deal with and looking back I’m sure it was difficult trying to placate 60 plus teenagers. As well as keeping discipline in check. I had the surreal experience of Mocky Sheil reading out the internal report that Coghlan had written about me, when I got into a bit of trouble in Poetry, I was quite startled to find out “Fitzpatrick is a bit of a maverick, very personable and easy enough to deal with, however there is a bit of a Mafia streak in him………..”. Now as the Dad of 6, I can understand the difficulties of the job that Mr Coghlan, the Teachers and Jesuits had of policing us.

As a year we all seemed to get on better, we are now 4 years together and I suppose we had learned how to get along. Claims were pretty much non-existent, everyone had their space, there were the “Jocks”, “Smokers”, “Intellectuals”, “Debaters”, “Canoeists” and “Loners”. One minor altercation in the dorms resulted from a banana bed that a few of us made on a number of unsuspecting classmates including one of the Rugby Props – Gucks took the hit, and we all felt guilty. We pretty much knew where we stood in the CWC microcosm of the world. Were we all institutionalized at this point, possibly – the system worked reasonably well.

 

Michael Sheil

Academic Life continues pretty much as normal. Fr Johnny Looby SJ our English Master keeps a strong level of fear going in class, he questions us on our poetry recall, choosing one of the three rows of desks to recite the poems which he has proscribed. I learn to gamble, 3-1 the odds are in my favour, so I don’t spend too much time learning poetry. There is always the “second method”, where when your turn comes you confess that you didn’t learn it off and must learn the poetry for the next class when you repeat it to Fr Looby personally prior to the class. On one occasion I take the second method – and find that the extra pressure of repeating the poem before class is severe and not worth gambling with……..Johnny Looby’s 2nd method has certain similarities with the TV Game Show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” life-lines (“phone a friend”, “take away the 2 wrong answers”)………..perhaps English class did prepare me for life after CWC.

John Looby

Our esteemed editor was tasked with looking after home-work, a role whereby he would collect our English copies, bring them to the Serpentine Gallery for collection, reading and correction by J Looby SJ. Most of the time the mark was either G or VG being good or very good, occasionally one would receive “excellent” which was deemed a prize worth having, and Rossa would congratulate you as he returned your copy.

Recently in May 2017, at Fr John Sullivan’s Beatification ceremony I met Fr John Looby and bought his excellent book, “Fr John – A Man sent by God”. I requested him to sign “excellent” for one last time, on my copy…………nostalgia is a wonderful thing.

French class carried on pretty much except I am moved from Ray Lawlor’s class. I miss Ray Lawlor SJ, teaching us “French through music”, it was one of my favourite classes which didn’t carry the level of fear that Chemistry/English did, nor was it boring such as Maths. I did have great sympathy for our maths’ teacher Benny Coghlan SJ, he could barely get any response from our O-Levels class of the “non-interested” for the most part “pass maths’ students who needed “Trigonometry, Formulas or Fractions like a hole in the head”. I had known early on in the CWC pass maths classes in rudiments that maths was clearly my weak spot! 

While Chemistry under Ben Sherry, continued to be run on Machiavellian lines of “the bond of fear is greater than the bond of love” – Ben did make class interesting and often told stories of “past pupils who wrote to him when the problems of life got the better of them”. I recall in particular one story of a guy who lost his business and was at his wits’ end, but who recovered through a combination of prayer, hard work and hope………..we were prepared for all eventualities in life. 

Chemistry surprisingly provided me with my best Leaving cert/matric results yielding the necessary points for Law in UCD, I owe that to Ben’s class! Now as my son George has just this year completed his Transition Year in CWC with work experience trips to France and the UK, time in a Solicitor’s office, experience with a barrister in the Four Courts and a week with Fr Peter McVerry SJ – our O-Level’s transition year was not comparable with his, however I believe we were prepared for life with best practices at that time in 1975/6.

One of the loves of my life is horse-racing and Ned Carroll one of the Latin Masters started a “racing club”. The President of the Club is one of the Rhetoric Boys “Peter Taaffe”, a son of the jockey of the greatest horse in Steeple Chasing History “Arkle”. We would go when possible to the local race-courses “Naas, Punchestown, The Curragh”.

On a trip to Punchestown, Morgan Mooney and myself had lost all our bets and were hoping to make it home for tea as we were starving. We hitch hiked and a kindly racegoer took pity on us, brought us for a meal in the Gem in Naas and then for a couple of pints. It was my first pint of Guinness, which I quickly developed a fondness for. Morgan and myself had a problem now, we had to get back in to the Big Study prior to 8pm so that it was not noticed that we had bunked off to the races. At about 7.20pm with a couple of pints on board we each had an excuse for the Study Master – one improvised and exclaimed that we had been at an away tennis match!

1976 was a strong year for CWC rugby, the Team captained by the late Tim “Mush” Cronin” lined out in the semi-final of the SCT at Lansdowne Road with Barry Walker, Eoin Halpin and Alan Hoban starring. The Clongowes Team featured Irish International Paul McCormack and Leinster Inter-pro Jimmy Whelan. Castleknock won the day but Clongowes were back as a potential rugby force in Leinster. An emotional and disappointed Captain Cronin in an impassioned speech in the Gallery forecast that the holy grail of an SCT victory would come now that Clongowes had implemented “O-Levels” we were competing on an even pitch with the Dublin schools of Blackrock etc” …………..how right he was – in forecasting 1978’s success! We had a good super-thirds team with Fr Liam O’Connell proclaiming that we had the 2 fastest wingers in Leinster in John Hickie and Gerry Healy.

Dingle had become a force for good, in his own mind at least in attending, as our year representative the “Catering Committee” presided over by Chef Dagger. I couldn’t quite understand the advantage for Dingle until he explained that “knowing the chef and guiding the menus” was useful. I attended on a couple of occasions with him and found that once the catering staff got to know you, your helpings did improve and getting seconds was easier. A life lesson, particularly for the branch of life I qualified in, law…. knowing your Judge was definitely an advantage!

Our college librarians feature Cormac Lucey one of our year’s top academics, ably assisted by future IFSC senior civil servant Martin Moloney, David Nunes and future Scottish GP Morgan Flynn. Members of the Poetry and O-Levels quiz include Martin Coyne who is sporting an Afro in the picture in the Clongownian, Paddy Ryan and Cormac. The Phoenix Revival Debating Society picture features Con Clifford, D J Hegarty, the late Joe Prendiville and the late Brendan Rumley both of whom continue the debate in heaven.

I note also from this year’s Clongownian that we win the annual Triangular contest between the Cadets, Newbridge and CWC. Cathal Ryan and Eoin Halpin make the senior cricket team.

David Coghlan

Our fourth year together deepened the bond between us, we share many memories, many days were dull and routine, some days were magical, as we travelled together, along the teenage years road toward adulthood. No doubt our parents and elders indoctrinated us with the usual cliché “School days are the best days of your life”, we didn’t know it then and probably are just about appreciating it now. Our school of hard knocks provided us with skills and stamina that still serve us today. Yes Mr Lumb – Clongowes never left us.

Till next month – continuing the theme, born in 1960 and made in CWC.

Written by Francis Fitzpatrick CWC 1972-1978 @fitzlaws

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the Clongowes 1978 committee or other groups or individuals.