St Mary's College RFC Yearbook 2020-21

TIMES PAST & PRESENT
From the Archives
Extract from Fred Cogley centenary book
THE CLUB REVIVAL – 1932-40
Gerry Cox was one of the new wave of St.
Mary’s past students to go to UCD in the late
’20s and early ’30s. Since the College in
Rathmines had reopened in 1926 there had
been a trickle of keen rugby players
beginning to look around for clubs to join on
leaving school. Some enjoyed membership
of the university clubs but there were many
who weren’t eligible or who had left school
early and it was Cox who began to wonder
whether it was a realistic possibility that the
old St. Mary’s club could be re-established.
There were certainly plenty of the pre-1916
gang about but now 16 years later, Cox knew
that their playing days were long since over
and there might not be the appetite to get
involved in the administrative hurly burly of
setting up a football club and all that that
would entail. However, even as a freshman,
Gerry Cox was to show the drive and in
intiative that was to mark his subsequent
career which earned him the rank of
Commandant. He rounded up potential
players and having collected 25 who would
be willing to turn out if..., he sought out the
inspirational captain of St. Mary’s in the
heady pre-war days of 1911-12 , Ernest Farrell.
Fr. Ernest Farrell, who had founded the
Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland, was a curate
in Aughrim St., Dublin, at the time, and his
regard for anything associated with St.
Kimmage Grove Pavilion and ‘Tea Room’ (1932-54)
97