The death has occurred of well-known Athy publican Ger Clancy and one of the town’s most decorated sports stars. He was aged in his late 60s.
Ger was the proprietor of the iconic and very popular Clancy’s bar in the centre of the town, an establishment that was also run by his parents going back decades.
Ger was a fantastic sportsman in his younger years and achieved great success with Athy in both rugby and Gaelic football.
He was a hugely talented outhalf on Athy’s Towns Cup winning sides in 1978, 1981 and 1984.
His promise as a rugby player was evident from his days boarding in Rockwell College in south Tipperary where he had the rare distinction of playing both Junior Cup and Senior Cup rugby in the same year.
He also played in an All Ireland minor football final for Kildare in 1973, where they lost to Tyrone, and was part of the Athy team that won the Kildare senior football championship in 1987 for the first time in 45 years. In more recent times he was a selector when Athy won the senior title in 2011, their first since the 1987 success.
His late father James was a Timahoe man and indeed there was a constant Timahoe presence behind the bar in Clancy’s for years in the guise of the always-welcoming and engaging Tom Joe Bradley, a man who captained Timahoe to their sole Laois senior football success in 1969.
And there was a great Timahoe link to Athy’s 1987 senior football triumph too where the late Bobby Miller was player-manager.
Ger passed away peacefully, surrounded by his loving family at St.Brigid’s Hospice, The Curragh on March 22nd, 2024.
Predeceased by his parents James & Maureen, his brother Walter and his sister Betty.
Ger will be sadly missed by his loving wife Breda, his daughters Louise, Emma, Rachel & Aoife and their partners, his beautiful grandchildren Dylan, Erin, Dara and Livie, his brother John, sister Catherine, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews, the Maher family, colleagues at Clancy’s and many good friends.
Ger’s funeral mass will arrive at St. Michael’s Parish Church, Athy, for Requiem Mass at 11am. See livestream link http://www.parishofathy.ie/ Burial afterwards in St. Michael’s New Cemetery, Athy.
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