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OUR LADY'S BOYS CLUB (31-05-12)
Our photograph today is of a 1950’s soccer team representing Our Ladys Boys Club, taken in Terryland where facilities were quite primitive at the time and as you can see, the preferred mode of transport apart from shanks mare was cycling. The team is, back row, left to right; Patsy Burke, Richie O’Connor, Brod Long, Brendan Dowling, Paddy Power, Tommy Carr, Paddy Beatty. In front are Danny Collins, Billy Carr, John Rushe, Steve Mannion, Gus O’Connor and Barney Birkett. The Boys club was founded in 1940, a time when there were no after-school recreational facilities for boys in working class areas. The Jesuit community gave them the use of a clubhouse at the back of the Columban Hall and here the boys were involved in many activities and prepared for later life. They were taught self respect, loyalty, how to help others and the importance of team spirit.
Much of this was done through the medium of sport, soccer, rugby, boxing, Irish dancing, table tennis, snooker, rings, swimming etc.
The highlight of the club year is the annual ‘camp’ where the boys are taken on a week long holiday. The following is a newspaper description of the 1944 experience. “Tanned and sunburned, 30 happy boys arrived back in Galway having just ended their week’s holiday together in Ballinamanagh House, Clarinbridge. For one brief week of glorious weather, they had left aside their messenger cycles, they had escaped from the dusty din of the Foundry, the hum of the woollen mills, the cinema queues, the drabness of the streets and gone out into the country to relax, to gain new strength, to get fresh courage to face their heavy lives of labour. They were all members of OLBC, all selected according to their attendance at meetings of the club in the Columban Hall on Mondays and Thursdays. With the boys went 7 helpers who have volunteered for this work. For the past year they have kept the club nights cheerful and orderly, and now they gave up a week of their holidays to the duties of ‘camp’ life. One helper tended the many outdoor fires and produced excellent meals. Another organized the boys into six groups that took turns at ‘fatigues’ --- fetching water, collecting firewood, sweeping and washing up, collecting potatoes and peeling them. A third looked after the games of rounders and football, the sports and the kite-flying, and rendered first aid in minor ailments.