Come Here To Me!

The unveiling of a plaque to Seán Treacy at the Republican Outfitters, Talbot Street (Irish Press, 1937)

While the focus of many people in Dublin is firmly on the coming challenge of Kerry in the All Ireland Football Final, tomorrow will see a showdown of a different kind, when Tipperary and Kilkenny take to the field of Croke Park.

Those in Dublin at noon should take a stroll down Talbot Street, where a tradition plays out every time Tipperary reach the final. Gathering in honour of Seán Treacy, hundreds will pay their respects at the spot where he was killed before making their way on to Croke Park.

Treacy, born in West Tipperary in 1895, had been a participant in the Soloheadbeg Ambush of January 1919, often considered to be the beginning of the War of Independence, though there had been fatalities on both sides in the years following the Easter Rising and before that ambush. Dan Breen recounted:

…we took the action deliberately, having thought over the matter and talked it over between us. [Seán] Treacy had stated to me that the only way of starting a war was to kill someone, and we wanted to start a war, so we intended to kill some of the police whom we looked upon as the foremost and most important branch of the enemy forces … The only regret that we had following the ambush was that there were only two policemen in it, instead of the six we had expected.

Living in a Dublin safehouse in October 1920, Treacy was caught in a firefight on Talbot Street with Gilbert Price, part of a British Secret Service surveillance team monitoring the Republican Outfitters and seeking wanted men in the capital. The bodies of both Price and Treacy were photographed lying in the street, and while the conflict was primarily being fought in rural terrain, it was a reminder that a war of espionage was being fought on the streets of the capital too. Treacy became one of the most commemorated figures in the aftermath of the conflict. Desmond Ryan, 1916 veteran and later historian of the revolution, wrote on his anniversary that:

Twenty years after his death, his very name is sufficient to dissipate many dark clouds of disappointment and disillusion among those who knew him, to bridge Civil War differences, to dispel the questionings and weariness with which many regard the aftermath of the recent wars of Ireland.

Memorial card for Seán Treacy

Gathering to honour Treacy at the spot where he died is a tradition now among Tipp fans, one of few commemorative rituals in Ireland which seems to grow with time rather than diminish. Where once flowers were quietly left, now the national anthem is sung, as well as a ballad in honour of Treacy and a decade of the rosary. In 2016, one participant told the Irish Independent that “I don’t think it makes a difference on the game but it represents us and where we come from.” For those of Tipperary blood in the capital too, it is an important celebration of identity.

Video of the 2014 ceremony: