Product Description
Paperback, published March 2023, our copies are signed by the author, Mark Townsend - BRAND NEW
Between 2000 and 2015, Kilkenny won 11 All Ireland senior hurling titles. It was an unprecedented period of success for any GAA
side, and across the land, people came to laud the players and management for their outstanding achievement.
But there was another man, working unofficially in the background, who also played a crucial role.
Brother Damien Brennan was a Christian Brother from Laois, who came to Kilkenny in the 1990s to work in the secondary
school in Callan and assist with the local hurling teams. In the last number of years, the likes of Henry Shefflin, Jackie Tyrrell and
JJ Delaney have gone on record to say he was a key figure in their careers. But who was this mysterious man behind the scenes?
What was the secret of his success? Who was the real Brother Damien Brennan?
Mark Townsend is from Callan, Co. Kilkenny. He was a student of
Brother Damien Brennan from 1997 to 2001.
Here’s a selection of quotes from Mark Townsend’s new biography of Brother Damien Brennan, off-site counsellor to many of Brian Cody’s players. A native of Wolfhill in Laois, but based in Callan for many years, Brother Damien (“the silent man behind the Kilkenny success story”) died in 2019 at the age of 59.
Richie Hogan: “You’ll never come across anyone like him again in terms of the amount he does for people for nothing in return.”
JJ Delaney: “Only for him I probably wouldn’t have done what I did in the second half of my career.”
Jackie Tyrrell: “I think about him every day and I miss him every day.”
Eoin Murphy: “The one regret I have is that I didn’t avail of him sooner.”
Henry Shefflin: “He was someone you could be 100 per cent yourself with. In life it can be difficult to find those people.”
Eoin Cadogan (yes, that one): “My intercounty career would have definitely been finished five or six years earlier if I hadn’t met him.” Two questions arise.
First off, what was missing in Cody’s set-up that so many of his made men felt the need to go outside for spiritual succour?
Secondly, Mark Townsend is a random punter, an ordinary fan, a former student of Brother Damien’s and an author who undertook the venture because he reckoned someone ought to. ( from the review by Enda McEvoy in The Irish Examiner)