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Leitrim mourn ‘indomitable, irrepressible’ Packie McGarty 

Tributes have poured in for former Leitrim footballer Packie McGarty, who has died aged 88. Expand

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Tributes have poured in for former Leitrim footballer Packie McGarty, who has died aged 88.

Tributes have poured in for former Leitrim footballer Packie McGarty, who has died aged 88.

Tributes have poured in for former Leitrim footballer Packie McGarty, who has died aged 88.

Colm Keys Twitter Email

Packie McGarty, widely acknowledged as Leitrim’s greatest footballer and one of the best ever from Connacht, has died aged 88.

The Mohill man was renowned for his forward play and featured on the greatest team of footballers never to have won an All-Ireland medal when it was selected in conjunction with the Sunday Independent in 1984, the GAA’s centenary year. He was the only Leitrim player to be selected on the Connacht ‘Team of the Millennium’.

McGarty (right) made his debut for Leitrim as a 16-year-old, scoring 1-1 in a league game against Offaly before he had even played for the county minors.

He inspired Leitrim to four successive Connacht final appearances between 1957 and ‘60. But on each occasion, they lost to a powerful Galway team that had won the 1956 All-Ireland title.

In all, McGarty played and lost six Connacht finals in a 23-year inter-county career that spanned four decades, 1949 to 1971.

McGarty did get to showcase his talents on a national stage despite not progressing past a Connacht final. He represented Connacht with distinction and won three Railway Cup medals, 1957, 1958 and as a substitute in 1967.

Leitrim GAA paid tribute to their greatest servant and highlighted some of his finest performances, noting the 1954 Railway Cup game against Munster in Tralee when he scored 1-4, prompting Mayo great Pádraig Carney to commend him after his first point with a simple “well done, junior”.

The Railway Cup semi-final against Leinster in 1958, the Connacht final against Galway the same year and the JF Kennedy games in New York in 1964, when two players were selected from each province to play in a Memorial Game, where he scored eight points, were other notable highlights.

Former Galway player Jack Mahon, who was McGarty’s direct opponent in three of the four Connacht finals against Leitrim, once said of him that he had “the elasticity of a rubber ball, could turn on a sixpence, was an impeccable sportsman, kept coming at you toe to hand and was indomitable, irrepressible. A born footballer”.

Mahon acknowledged the 1958 Connacht final as “his greatest hour”, adding that he was at the “zenith of his career” in those years. “I remember being delighted to see the rain fall before the end (’58), feeling I would have a fielding advantage, which I had.”

McGarty worked in London, where he played with the Tara club, and regularly came home at weekends to play for Leitrim in the 1950s and ’60s.

He returned to live in Dublin and had associations with Seán McDermotts and Round Tower, Clondalkin.

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