‘The Unconquerable Keane’, written by David Smith and just published by Original Writing Ltd, is one of the greatest books ever written about the game of hurling or about an individual hurler, writes An Fear Rua...

This is as it should be. John Keane of Mount Sion, Waterford and Munster was one of the greatest hurlers ever.

Through the hurling ages, three names recur and persist – Ring, Mackey and Keane. This remains true even today when there are few, if any, eye witnesses to their greatness still living. A tribute to the depth and persistence of the respect and affection in which they are held by hurling men and women of every county.

However, as a Waterford local historian, Jack O’Neill, has said, Keane would have been noted as a remarkable man even if he had never held a hurley in his hand. He was a quiet, courageous patriot. He was a mathematical genius. He was startlingly handsome. At only eighteen or nineteen years of age he was leading, and was being looked up to, on the hurling and football field, by men much older than him.

In a quite astonishing feat of research, David Smith has chronicled every known game of Keane’s from his precocious debut, at the age thirteen, on the 11th of January 1931, until his last outing on the 25th of September 1955. In a fascinating Appendix to the book, all these games are documented as to date, grade, Keane’s age, the team he played for, their opponents and the score. This prodigious research is the bedrock of Smith’s analysis of Keane’s career as well as his conclusions.

The book includes a fascinating account of Keane’s earliest days as a boy playing hurling on the little streets of Waterford, off his native Barrack Street. The children made do with the broken ends of hurleys salvaged from the sidelines while watching adult games in the nearby Gaelic Field (now Walsh Park). The man who spotted his talent and put the first proper hurley in his hand was Maurice Lucas, a gardener in one of the local convents. For such perspicacity, Lucas should be canonised to sainthood by the hurling tribe of the Déise.

The book recounts the decisive influence of the celebrated hurling nursery, Mount Sion Christian Brothers’ School, and Brother Malone. The first mention of Keane appears to be in the old Waterford News of 11th November 1932 in a preview of a game between Mount Sion CBS and Callan CBS. The perceptive scribe wrote: ’We will all be watching out for the wizardry of Mount Sion’s star full-back – John Keane – a boy scarcely sixteen years of age.'

In 1932, John Keane made his inter-county debut as a Minor at the age of fifteen in a game where Waterford defeated a Cork side that included Jack Lynch. At seventeen, Keane was on Waterford’s senior team. The rest is not merely history. It is the story of a county and its proud hurling people and Smith tells it exceedingly well.

Keane was a sporting prodigy. As well as hurling, he excelled at handball, badminton, gymnastics and Gaelic football. Indeed, he loved the extra physicality of football and because he was always selected to play in the forwards where he scored many trade mark fisted goals from high dropping balls. On page 27, Smith refers to a bewildering list of codes and levels that Keane quickly became engaged in: schools and colleges hurling for Mount Sion and Munster, minor hurling and football for his club, minor and junior hurling for Waterford.

The book recalls the perverse decisions of the Waterford County Board that almost certainly cost them the All Ireland final of 1938 and the National Hurling League finals of 1939, both – coincidentally – against Dublin. In the first instance, having made the breakthrough to a senior final for the first time, the County Board called on the services of Kerry football star Paul Russell, the holder of six All Ireland senior medals. Russell’s long distance running treks were not suitable training for hurlers. In the final, an over-trained Waterford side never got going until towards the end of the game, when a late rally could not prevent Dublin from winning.

When Waterford qualified the following year for the National Hurling League final, the County Board decided to break the panel into two separate camps for training – East and West – and they did not come together as a team until shortly before the final. The result was another defeat. Clearly, the wise maxim ‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ had few adherents among the delegates to the Board. For the record, let it be said that Keane played brilliantly in each game but his heroic efforts were not enough to secure victory.

The test that places Keane incontrovertibly in the pantheon of the greatest hurlers were his tussles in the Thirties and early Forties with the great Mick Mackey of Ahane, Limerick and Munster. Today, it is difficult to imagine the pre-eminent place Limerick enjoyed in the hurling psyche of the 1930s. In a word, when he encountered Keane for the first time, the twenty-five years old Mick Mackey was the man. Many credit the foundation of ’The Irish Press newspaper – and the circulation war that ensued – as the factor that brought hurling and the GAA into the mainstream of national consciousness. However, even the best of journalists requires good ‘copy’ and Mackey’s exploits provided that in abundance. Perhaps, it might be more accurate to assert that Mackey as well as The Irish Press made the modern GAA.

It is no diminution of Mackey's memory to say that the only opponent whoever bested him – and consistently, too – was Keane. It is all recorded comprehensively in Chapter Four of the book. The content is not just old timers’ hazy ramblings or idle, boisterous pub talk. Each game is carefully documented from cited, contemporaneous newspaper reports by acknowledged experts in the game like John D Hickey of The Irish Independent and PD Mehigan of The Irish Times.

Rather like Moses in Chapter 14 of Exodus who singlehandedly led his people out of exile in the land of Egypt, Keane’s career is – as they say in Irish - fite fuaite with Waterford’s march out of hurling obscurity. His first All Ireland medal – a Junior in 1934 – the senior final of ’38, the first, historic title in ’48, trainer and selector with senior finalists in ’57, ’59 (when they added their second title) and ’63. As a trainer and selector, Keane was a philosopher and a man manager who was light years ahead of his time and it shows in the results obtained during that golden era of Waterford hurling from 1957 to 1963.

Between its beautifully designed front and back covers The Unconquerable Keane is an unalloyed pleasure. As publishers, Original Writing have served the author and his readers well. As you might expect from an alumnus of Mount Sion CBS in its halcyon days, the book is written in beautifully expressed pellucid prose. Once you begin reading it, you will find it difficult to stop.

Times are hard. Money is not freely available. But is must be said: every Waterford hurling man and woman worthy of the name simply must possess a copy of this book. You will re-read and treasure it throughout your life and you will pass it on, like a beloved heirloom, to your family. However, it is more than just a Waterford book. It is a hurling book. Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Kilkenny – even Laois and Antrim - play central roles and their exploits are chronicled.

For the present writer, what makes this work important above all else is that it is diligently and accurately sourced from contemporaneous records. Greats of the current era, the likes of Carey, Shefflin and Whelahan, are fortunate that their exploits are recorded objectively for posterity on video, DVD and even on the likes of YouTube. What this book does is, that it puts the du