Tipp hurling was in Shane's heart and soul

AUTHOR SIOBHAN MacGOWAN ON HER BROTHER'S PASSION FOR CLUB AND COUNTY

- DEREK FOLEY

SHANE MacGowan didn't just love Tipperary hurling, he ended up as one of the faces of it.

The chief Pogue was a great-grandson of John Lynch, a key Land League figure who attended the famous GAA Hayes Hotel meeting in 1884.

Lynch was a founder member and first chairman of the club at the northeastern corner of Lough Derg, Shannon Rovers, where the river is indeed at its most broad and majestic.

A club which would, in turn, became MacGowan's obsessive sporting love, specifically asking for one of their jerseys for his funeral, and from which base he supported Tipperary inter-county hurling so passionately.

It's a good guess that today Shannon Rovers, from a picturesque triangle of townlands, Kilbarron, Ballinderry and Terryglass, are the most famous hurling club in the world.

And those who think haven't heard of them, think again; they are the club referred to in MacGowan's classic track The Broad Majestic Shannon.

For it's stupid to laugh and it's useless to brawl, 'bout a rusty tin can and an old hurley ball' and 'So I walked as the day was dawning, where small birds sang and the leaves were falling'.

For Shane's sister Siobhan and all of those associated with the club, the song is highly biographical.

The Shannon Rovers shirt that features Shane, John Lynch and the song lyric remains sought after worldwide.

This, be assured, was no marketing trick but the result of the coverage of the singer's funeral and his asking for the jersey to be placed on the coffin; it led to the club's telephone burning red with enquiries about how to buy one.

"At the time we just had the one set of jerseys for each team and now the senior side had one less so we had no idea what to say to these fans," admits chairman Paul Tiernan.

Siobhan MacGowan, author of the successful historical novels The Trial of Lotta Rae (Welbeck, 2022) and The Graces (Welbeck, 2023) was in no doubt about what to say: