Every sport has its share of grainy, black-and-white iconic images, pictures that evoke a time, a memory or a player writes An Fear Rua...

A Brylcreemed Stanley Mathews, knee-length football shorts billowing like sails, wearing heavy boots and thick woollen socks, scintillating his way along the touchline for Blackpool in the 1953 FA Cup Final. A solitary policeman on a white charger in the middle of Wembley, surrounded by two hundred thousand West Ham and Bolton fans, clearing the pitch to allow the Cup Final of 1923 to take place. Jackie Kylie – ‘festooned with Saxons’ - diving over the line at Twickenham against England in 1948 on the way to a ‘Grand Slam’ victory. These come to mind immediately.

For hurling fans, there can be only one. It is 1962. The place is Semple Stadium. The game is Waterford against Cork in the Munster hurling semi final. A determined Christy Ring of Cork is valiantly being held off by the Waterford back, Tom Cunningham, but the situation is under control, as Ned Power, the Waterford ‘Number One’, soars towards the sky, hurley in hand and right knee out to defend himself, clutches the sliothar confidently before effecting what the late Mícheál O’Hehir used to call ‘a long relieving clearance’. The photographer was Louis McMonagle of the then ’Cork Examiner’

It is entirely appropriate that this is the image that adorns the cover of a new book on Ned Power’s life, times and achievements. My Father: a hurling revolutionary is the story of an All-Ireland-winning hurling goalkeeper written from the very personal perspective of his son, Conor.

It is a humorous and often emotionally charged account of the life of an ordinary man who shared his gifts with as many people as possible – not least of which was the gift of living his life to the full. Ned Power’s passion for life and for hurling left a legacy that has lasted generations and it will continue to last for generations to come, not only in his home of Tallow but wherever hurling is played.

He was a teacher, a father, a brother, a son, a husband, a golfer, a comedian and last but not least, a hurling revolutionary. As the former GAA President and now MEP, Seán Kelly, said: ‘If you were to pick out people whose names transcended the hurling field and inspired people, Ned Power would be one of them.’

Clearly, this is a book every Déise hurling fan should have. But it will be of interest as well to hurling people of every county. For Ned Power was more than just a famous Waterford hurler. He was a thinker, a philosopher and innovator of the great old game and, even today, players, coaches and mentors can learn from his insights.

Power was one of the principal forces behind the innovative Gormanston training camps that lasted through the Sixties and Seventies. He once broke down and identified the individual skills of hurling but stopped counting when he had reached a hundred and twenty one. Ned Power strongly disagreed with the view that hurlers are born not made. He believed that coaching, learning and self-learning could make a huge difference to a player.

His track record with the teams he coached in his native Tallow speaks for itself. When he arrived in there in the early Fifties as a young National Teacher the local club didn’t even possess a football and there was no senior hurling team. Power systematically applied his coaching skills, beginning with the youngest age groups. Starting with an under 16 football title in 1966, Tallow went on to win every single county title in both hurling and football, except a senior football title. The club won senior hurling titles in 1980, ’84 and ’85.

It cannot always be easy for a son to walk in the footsteps of a great father. But Conor Power has done so, and the result is an exceptional book about an exceptional man.

My Father: a hurling revolutionary will be launched on November 26th, 2009 under the “Three Good Boys” label but it can be pre-ordered online here.

Linked article: Ned Power 1929 - 2007



An excerpt from My Father: a hurling revolutionary
STARTING WITH A PHOTOGRAPH
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been boasting about the fact that my father won an All-Ireland medal for Waterford in the 1959 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Final. It became such a running joke, in fact, that in introducing me, certain friends would get the business of imparting this background knowledge out of the way as soon as possible – by way of a joke, you see: “This is Conor… (Hellos & handshakes follow)… His father won an All-Ireland medal for Waterford in 1959. Yes… They beat Kilkenny in the replay.”

Even though it was all in good humour, the whole joke of me ensuring to tell everyone I met about my dad was actually a great and unembarrassing vehicle which actually allowed me to tell everyone about my father. Because I was always as proud as punch of him. Although I stopped playing hurling at about the age of 15-16, Waterford is a dyed-in-the-skin thoroughbred hurling county. I like to think, in fact, that our small county is to hurling what Holland is to soccer. Like Waterford and its hurling, soccer in Holland is of the highest skill level and they regularly punch above their weight with larger countries around them that have a much bigger pool of players – such as France, Germany, England and Italy. Yet despite all this, the Dutch have never won the World Cup, unlike all of their aforementioned neighbours. In a similar way, we the people of the Déise are what you might say mad into our hurling. We can play it skilfully and, for such a small county, we regularly produce a high number of good players. We regularly punch above our weight in this respect, but we don’t get much in the way of big trophies. I’m afraid we don’t – or at least, not as much as we feel we deserve to get.

All this is to explain why I was always so proud of the 1959 thing. It’s because we haven’t won it since and people with any knowledge of hurling are always surprised and amazed to meet someone with a physical connection to a Waterford team that actually won an All-Ireland – it’s that rare.

Although I’d seen this famous photograph before, it wasn’t until I was at least in my late teens that I realised that it was a famous photo. I’ve since discovered that it is definitely the most famous thing about my father. All those who know of him will be more than familiar with it, but equally many people who know or care nothing about hurling will have seen it. It was taken on June 8th, 1962 in a Munster semi-final match between Cork and Waterford. The photographer was a man named Louis McMonagle and it was entitled “Hell’s Kitchen”. It is a classic action photo and it has appeared in numerous locations around the world – for many who don’t know the first thing about hurling, it’s as good an introduction as any to its mixture of physical force, danger, speed and pure skill. All of that is encapsulated in this one famous shot.

But pictures can be deceiving: From looking at the heroic manner in which my dad appears to rise into the air and snatch the ball out of the sky, leaving the other players tangling on the earth, it all looks like an athlete at the top of his game going on to conquer all in an unstoppable team. But sport is not always a place for fairytales and, in truth, my father was fortunate, at that point, to be picked on the team and to subsequently make it into that photo.

In 1961, more than a year before this picture was taken, Waterford’s All-Ireland winning goalie – 31-year-old Ned Power – was sitting, deep in concentration, waiting patiently to line