Colm O'Rourke

Colm O'Rourke (Irish: Colm Ó Ruairc) is a retired inter-county Irish Gaelic footballer for County Meath in Ireland, a columnist with the Sunday Independent and a panellist on The Sunday Game on RTÉ Television.

Despite becoming famous for playing for Meath, O'Rourke is not a Meathman by birth, he was born in the small parish of Aughavas within County Leitrim.^[1] He moved with his family as a youngster from Leitrim to County Meath due to the Land Commission granting land to westerners in Meath and Kildare. O'Rourke is a descendant of the great Uí Ruairc royal house of Breffni. He has, however, been accepted by the people of Skryne in Meath as one of their own forty years after arriving from Aughavas. He is the secondary school principal in St. Patrick's Classical School in Navan where he has trained the Gaelic football to numerous successes at provincial and national level throughout the past two decades. He has also managed his own sports shop in Navan Shopping Centre, Colm O'Rourke Sports, during this period. He started working on The Sunday Game with RTÉ in 1991, and has simultaneously been a regular contributor of sports columns in national newspapers.

He is continuously being linked with the Meath GAA manager's job, previously held by another man with strong Leitrim connections, Sean Boylan. O'Rourke's son Shane O'Rourke is a current senior footballer with Meath while his nephew Paddy O'Rourke is the new goalkeeper for Meath.

Playing career

O'Rourke is now retired from his footballing career. He won two All-Ireland medals with Meath, in 1987 and 1988. He also won five Leinster Championship medals and three National Football League wins. He managed the Irish team for the Compromise Rules competition for two successful outings. O'Rourke received three All-Star for Meath in 1983, 1988 and 1991. His performance, playing with a bandaged knee, in the legendary Dublin-Meath matches of the summer of 1991 are still recounted in Meath and drew admiration from GAA fans throughout Ireland. When playing for Meath he was part of a Full Forward line of himself, Brian Stafford & Bernard Flynn, widely regarded as one of the best Full forward lines of all time. It should also be noted that O'Rourke in the past few years has managed Simonstown Gaels GFC in Navan guiding them to two Meath Senior Football Finals in 2003 and 2004 losing on both occasions. However he did guide the club to its first adult title in 2005 winning the Meath Football League Division 1.

References

External links

• Official Meath Website
• Colm O'Rourke at the Sunday Independent

Teams