Doyen of the game with a rare vantage

All-Ireland SHC Final / A Kilkenny man remembers: Ian O'Riordan finds the sole survivor of the 1931 final eager to talk about games past and present.

So the modern hurler thinks he's got it so good. Fancy training methods and all that pampering. Staying in big hotels before the All-Ireland and All Star trips to America. Well, they've got nothing on Martin White.

He tells the story of this day 72 years ago, the eve of the 1931 All-Ireland hurling final. On the Sunday he'd play for Kilkenny against Cork, a game that went to two replays before Cork won, and started not only the enduring rivalry between the two counties but also the great interest in the game across the country.

Now Martin White is the only surviving member of those 1931 teams. And at the age of 94 he recalls the details of that year with the same clarity and insight as when talking about tomorrow's final. A lifetime of hurling and still nothing else runs thicker in his blood.

"I'll be very tense going up to Croke Park tomorrow," he says. "I think the older I get the more tense I get. This might sound biased but if Kilkenny play to their potential I fancy them to win. They have more scoring power."

That's the first thing you notice about Martin White, how he wants to talk as much about modern hurling as about hurling in the 1930s, when he collected three All-Ireland medals after the defeat of 1931. Yet when he does recall those moments from the past it doesn't all sound nostalgic. Times haven't all changed.

"Well we wouldn't have done much training then. Nothing like today. We'd have started before the Leinster final, meet about a fortnight before the game, in the evenings. It wasn't tough training either but it was different then. Lads were very fit anyway. There was nothing to do in the evenings at that time only play games of some description. Either that or go the pictures. So you could say we were training every night in the summer time. We just did a bit of extra training coming up to the final. But we always finished on a Wednesday night before the All-Ireland final. And were told to rest then."

Just like the Kilkenny and Cork teams of today, they travelled to Dublin on the Saturday, staying in a fine hotel next to Barry's on Gardiner Street.

"It was run by a Castlecomer man, and he ran a very good hotel. Good food and a clean bedroom. The night before, the greyhound derby would always be on, and lads interested in the dogs, like Peter O'Reilly and Jimmy O'Connell, would always go to that. But very few of us took a drink then. The majority of us didn't. So we'd go to the pictures, usually down to the Savoy."

The routine of All-Ireland Sunday also sounds familiar. After Mass on Gardiner Street they'd return to the hotel for a good breakfast.

"It was good plain food. And after that we'd only have a cup of tea. But I remember it being a bit tiring, with the game coming up, and that extra bit of tension. And at that time all the people coming to the match arrived by train, and came down from Kingsbridge (Heuston station), past the hotel. So we'd be out talking to them, and I suppose that wouldn't be allowed today at all. And then we'd walk down to Croke Park - and walk back again afterwards."

His first final was a game he admits they should have won: "The extraordinary thing about it was we had Lory Meagher, captain that day, as our free-taker. And he was deadly accurate. So we got a free on the 21-yard line, with the sides level and time up. But whatever way the ball came up for him he missed it."

In the first replay Cork lived dangerously again, a Eugene Coughlan point saving them at the death. The second replay was played on November 1st and Cork won 5-8 to 3-4.

White, however, missed both replays. At 22, he was deemed not strong enough at centre forward to match the burly Jim Regan, and so Kilkenny brought in Jerry Leahy for both replays.

"Looking back on it now I don't think he did any better. And I'd have loved to get the second chance at it. But we had a way of thinking then, to get the ball into the full forwards and leave the scoring to them. That was the instruction. But if I was back there again now I would have gone for scores myself."

The following year, 1932, White was back in Croke Park helping Kilkenny beat Clare in the final. By defending the title in 1933 Kilkenny then earned a trip to New York, and one of the first All-Ireland champions' tours.

"We went out on the boat, which was a bit rough. But it was a great trip. We played in the Polo Grounds against a good New York side, all former inter-county players from back home."

It started as a three-week trip but White stayed a week longer, tracking down an uncle on Staten Island he hadn't heard from in 33 years. And family was always important, with eight boys and six girls all raised on the family farm near Tullaroan.

Three years after winning his third All-Ireland in 1936, White moved to Cork through his work with Clover Meats and became a driving force behind the revival of the Blackrock club. In 1948 he moved to Dublin, running the Boston Bakery in Drumcondra for 30 years with his wife, Peig, with whom he shares a comfortable home in Glasnevin. And he is still involved with Kilmacud Crokes, the club he helped redesign in 1966.

Last May the Lory Meagher Museum of Hurling in Tullaroan put on an event to commemorate White's achievements, and he drove down, "taking in the launch of the DJ Carey video along the way". They presented him with a splendid Waterford glass vase, and he gave them his entire medal collection, from Leinster Colleges titles with St Kieran's to his All-Ireland honours with Kilkenny.

Tomorrow's final, he admits, will be faster and more furious than the finals of yore: "Scoring was low in our time. But the ball was so much heavier. It had a horse-skin cover, and if it got wet it was even heavier. So every puck-out landed in the middle of the field. You'll see tomorrow the ball landing between the full backs and the half backs.

"But I like today's hurling. It's very fast, and you have to be very fit to play it. . . But that new ball is a bit too fast. And it's not fair on the goalkeeper."

And he goes on talking about the game, still learning, and waiting for every puck-out like he's about to collect it himself.