WALSH ISLAND - The Magic of a Name
For a club that hasn't won a senior title for more than thirty years, it is remarkable how the name of Walsh Island has remained in the consciousness of Offaly football followers for so long.
It might be suggested that the fact of providing the captain of Offaly's first All-Ireland winning team helped to focus attention on a club whose honours, at any level, had been almost non-existent for decades, and though there may be something in that suggestion, it most certainly is not the complete answer to the riddle of Walsh Island's enduring captivation of the imagination of the sporting public.
It may be that Walsh Island's successes in the Thirties was the most compelling 'rags to riches' story ever to unfold in Offaly-a story of a team scaling the heights from the most obscure beginnings. And that is what the 'Island' did some forty years ago.
Not that football was a 'late growth' in East Offaly. Ninety years ago-almost a decade before the establishment of official champion- ships in the county-there was a football team in Clonbullogue parish and what is not generally known, the Walsh Island made a substantial contribution to the rise of the great Geashill team that contested eight successive finals in the early years of the century. And it is significant that the introduction of the parish rule in 1909, which deprived Geashill of Walsh Island support, coincided with the decline of that great combination.
The following decades were bleak indeed for football in this part of 'Offaly and only one solitary title-Bracknagh's 1912 junior title- came to the region and up to 1930 the name of Walsh Island meant nothing in Offaly Gaeldom. But two years later due notice was taken of the band of strapping young men who came to Ballyduff Park to lift the junior title at the first attempt.
A year later they were in the senior final and Offaly followers for so long accustomed to a Rhode/Tullamore final, hailed a new force. From that September day in 1933 when they took their first title and long after their sixth triumph 10 years later, Walsh Island was a name with a tremendous appeal, an appeal that has survived three barren decades.
Today, the appearance of Walsh Island in the final is proof not alone of the prowess of the present wearers of the green and white hoops, but of a magnificent and enduring tradition.
- taken from 1978 County Final Match Program
