25/08/2026
A group of St Brendan's AC runners did a trial run over the Jerry Kiernan 5K route in Listowel last week. While we were running, a number of memories came into the mind.
The Jerry Kiernan 5K Trial Run
By David Kissane
So our St Brendan’s AC adult training group proposed to try out the Jerry Kiernan 5K route last Thursday. Ideal, I thought, as I couldn’t run the race last year due to photography and PR duties. And despite spending 5 years in St Michael’s College in Listowel from 1967 to 1972 (and running with, or rather behind Jerry), and being introduced to competitive athletics there, I had never ran through the streets of Listowel. Maybe once or twice if it was raining after we got off the school bus in the square on grizzly February mornings or rushing for the bus after a football match. No run around lovely Listowel per se.
Then seven of us started our trial run at St Michael’s College on Thursday evening, one of the warm evenings that the summer of 2026 has blessed us with. Outside the school where I first saw the iconic Kiernan, who was a year ahead of us who entered in 1967. He was just putting his head above the paraphet of success then, running races in the Cow’s Lawn and playing football with a skill that was never progressed beyond secondary school. Because running took over and led him to the Olympics in LA, and beyond.
Past the Sportsfield
Down past the Frank Sheehy Sportsfield on the left where we trained for football under Johnny O’Flaherty and the late John Molyneaux. My first memory of that field centres around a far-off Sunday when my father took me there to see my first ever inter-county game…Kerry V Meath. I remember Bernie O’Callaghan flying around the field with energy. I was told he was a distant relation of my family. Then I played my first game for St Michael’s in that field on a darkerning September evening. I was a sub for the first half and I was given a jersey that had a torn sleeve and which smelled highly of being at the bottom of a pile that had never seen Daz. I recall John B Keane was there that evening in the drizzle, and imagined that he was developing his play “The Man From Clare”, about a footballer. I got on the team in the second half and the jersey didn’t smell too badly. Little could I realize that tar-coloured evening that I was playing with future Kerry stars - Jimmy Deenihan and Tim Kennelly. And a future Olympian, Jerry Kiernan.
I also saw a Kerry Vocational School sports in that field with Sonny Fennell leading the long distance charge. And there were girls running too. The first time I ever saw girls running in an organized sports. The start of a life-long learning string.
The Windows of Wonder
On down we ran past the primary school where we had seen Bryan McMahon entrancing his pupils in the yard on fine April days. At lunchtime. Inviting them through windows of wonder. Continued down past what was the Vocational School where we had cast eyes at the girls as he headed up to school with our Latin verbs and Greek nouns in our homework copies. Then on to Church St where you would always meet someone you knew. Past Flavin’s Book Shop on the right where we bought our heavenly-scented school books each September. The Printing Works site on the left where you could also smell the power of books and posters.
McKenna’s Corner and Mammy Blue
Turned right at the Small Square where the statue of John B Keane waved a salute, as he does to all who emerge into the town from the south east. A thought for John Scully who hailed from the shop on the corner, who was in our class in St Michael’s and who was tragically killed in an accident as manhood beckoned. Up William St where another College pupil, Brendan Keane, put out the lights in the street one night in an electrical experiment. Past Jet Carroll’s from which the late classmate Eamonn Carroll emerged to lend me his spikes for a race in the Kerry Colleges track and field championships one time. The first spikes I ever wore and I thought I had wings on my feet when I tried them out. Turned left at McKenna’s Corner, the fulcrum of Listowel life on Market days and Race Days and barrel-rolling nights. Where you stood to draw a Listowel breath and see who was to be seen. Along Market Street where sweet memories of the Race nights, amusements, hopeful glances and youthful possibilities still haunt the air. Past Pierse and Fitzgibbon Solicitors outside which Neil Brosnan (now a successful author and musician) sang “Mammy Blue” on the evening we finished our last ever class in St Michael’s. Down to the Convent Cross where the brown-uniformed Convent girls boarded the bus on the halcyon end-of-days as we headed west to Scartlea and Dromerin and Gale Cross to share the school-bus experience.
Convent Memories
I glance at the Convent and I smile as I reach out to the Leaving Cert year of 1972 and our singing practice with a kindly nun. We were preparing for the chance of primary teaching and the singing test. The good hearted nun put her ear close to my voice as I attacked “The Harp That Once Through Tara’s Halls” with the gusto of a goat seeing a field of new cabbages. She smiled and suggested that I concentrate on athletics rather than singing. I did. I decided on secondary teaching also instead.
So out we ran towards Ballybunion for a short plod and then right turned at McKenna’s Builders' Stores and along the John B Keane Road with the re-made Lartigue Railway loco. On that site on the left was the grey building of the Listowel Railway Station which thrived for a hundred years until it ran out of track. I had to recall the September morning when my father transported me on the bar of his bike before daybreak the nine miles from Cnoc an Fhómhair to that railway station. Then the train to Kingsbridge en route to the All Ireland. Journey reversed at the end of a long day with the crepe green and gold cap and a lifetime of memories.
Then up past the recent Lidl and Aldi centres of everything and back down past St Michael’s again, the fall with us and feeling like Pegasuses as we traverse Church Street and longing for the finish in the Square where we rejoice in the gift of running free that our lost Kiernan thrived on.
And a hundred more memories of Listowel will be generated by all who run the fabulous course on this coming Sunday at 1pm. Good luck to all who traverse the 5K in the memory of Jerry Kiernan.
