Fr Liam Kelleher is a significant figure in the annals of Irish sport – having coached countless national running champions, not to mention a number of Olympic heroes. Robert Carry meets the Cork-based priest to discuss his sporting successes, and his current work with women’s GAA
“I’ve been involved in athletics for 30 years,” says Fr Liam Kelleher. “I’ve trained three Olympic athletes. Among them is Peter Maher. He was 17-and-a-half stone when I met him.”
Canadian-born Maher went on to become a world-class long-distance runner who competed in two Olympic Games for Canada and broke the world half-marathon record. He is also believed to be the originator of the quote many runners live by: “Running is a big question mark that’s there each and every day. It asks you, ‘Are you going to be a wimp or are you going to be strong today?’”
As a youngster, well before he entered the priesthood, Liam Kelleher played Gaelic football for Dunaghmore, a parish team in Middleton, Co Cork, but a broken hand cut short his playing career. However, the GAA’s loss was athletics’ gain and he soon got involved with long-distance running.
Kelleher began coaching in the national set-up and met with some stunning successes. As well as his achievements coaching Peter Maher in his early years, he also coached two other Olympians: Liam O’Brien and Barbara Johnson. His successes as a trainer on the international scene, though, were dwarfed by the success on the national circuit. The Corkman recalls: “The people I have trained won over 500 national medals in total.”
The priest has also used his skills as an endurance athlete to raise money for a variety of charities. “I’ve run a lot of charity marathons. I once ran three marathons in one day during Live Aid; in Cork, London and New York,” says Kelleher. “I also ran 37 miles around a track in a snow storm in order to raise money for charity.”
But Fr Kelleher didn’t restrict himself to running fundraising endurance races – he also brought the endurance factor into sports which would generally be associated with relaxation. “I played 252 holes for a charity in 1983,” he says. “We went around Charleville [Golf Club] in Cork over and over until we cleared 252.”
So what is the secret to such a high level of endurance Fr Kelleher both commands of himself and has managed to instil in many of those he has trained? “Nutrition is key. A lot of runners are fit but they’re not all healthy,” he says. “I read an article on nutrition in the 1970s in a US magazine called Runners’ World and I’ve been interested in it since then. The mental approach to any sport is extremely important, as is skill, but nutrition is another big part of it. It’s about striking the right balance.”
Despite his busy training schedule over recent years, Fr Kelleher has found the time to launch a number of periodicals, including Peile, a women’s Gaelic football magazine, and Marathon Athletics magazine, a publication which ran for 17 years.
Unfortunately, circumstances led to the latter being put to bed when a trip to the Sydney Olympics almost led to disaster.
Fr Kelleher recalls: “I edited Marathon Athletics from 1983 to 2000. In the end I had to pack it up when I went to Australia for the Olympics; I was in a serious car accident in Perth and I ended up staying there for a few months recovering. The magazine wasn’t being produced during that time and when I came back I decided to leave it that way.”
Kelleher now holds the relatively low-key post of public relations officer for Cork’s women’s team, and is involved with training the ‘rebel’ county’s female under-14s, under-16s and minor women’s teams. But although he got involved in women’s football by accident rather than design, he has applied himself to the sport with as much vigour and enthusiasm as he has with his other endeavours.
“I was working in a school and I was asked if I would be interested in training a girls’ football team,” he explains. “I initially said no, but eventually I decided to do it because although the boys had teams already up-and-running, the girls had nothing.”
Fr Kelleher continues: “We put together a team and entered it in a primary school tournament. They won that tournament more than six times over the next 10 years. Two of those girls went on to play at inter-county level for Cork.”
The success of the schools teams prompted the priest to set up a ladies football club in the area, which proved just as adept at winning titles: “We called [the club] Rockban. It won the Cork under-12s in its first year. It went on to win the county under-12s, the county junior B title and both the Munster and all-Ireland finals.”
Fr Kelleher, who currently resides in Grenagh – the parish where Cork legend Seán Óg Ó hAilpín – lives, now contents himself with his position in the Cork set-up and by occasionally helping out with an athletics club established by one of his former trainees in Kinsale.
The public relations role for the women’s team is one he’s more than qualified for, having also been both national and Munster PRO, but the reduced workload is something he is enjoying so far. “I enjoy the freedom I have now,” he says. “I’m responsible for certain aspects of the set up but not them all. And I’m only answerable to myself.”
Although Fr Kelleher is happy with his current role within the GAA, there is one thing creeping into the association that he is angered by.
“I dislike the selfishness that is going around at the moment, especially with some of the bigger clubs,” Fr Kelleher explains. “If a player wants to move clubs, I would be of the opinion that they should be allowed to go, after, say, a six-month cooling off period.
“Unfortunately, red tape means that clubs can leave players on the sidelines for two years because they want to leave. It’s the worst aspect of the sport. Two years on the sidelines is just cruel, especially for a young player.”
