IT never rains, but now pours Kodak Moments when it comes to finding photographs of Eddie Macken and Boomerang on the famous Hickstead Bank. The first was already discovered in the former Boomerang Bar premises, run by Fiona Macken, and now a second framed photo is spotted high on a shelf in Macken’s filling station in Granard.

Fiona, her father Johnny and mother Mona are gathered in the adjoining house on the Cavan road. Johnny, 12 years older than Eddie, recounts the story of his famous young brother, saying: “He was born in 1949 and Eddie was Daddy’s, Grandad’s and Mammy’s pet!”

“Brian Gormley and Iris Kellett had a great friendship; Iris had seen Eddie jumping at a gymkhana and he went as a stable boy to Kellett’s. My mother wanted him to continue school, my father wanted him to carry on the butcher’s shop, but Eddie was mad about horses. And the next thing, he’s riding Iris’s Morning Light, Oatfield Hills and Easter Parade.

“Then he went to work at Paul Schockemöhle’s for Dr Schnapka, who gave Boomerang to Eddie as a present later on.”

Concise brushstrokes about one of Ireland’s greatest sporting legends, whose career was closely followed by his family. And a nation.

Eddie’s brother Johnny with his wife Mona, their daughter Fiona and her husband Michael and Gerry \ Susan Finnerty

“When Eddie was jumping anywhere in the 1970s – and many will have had the same experience – we sat watching him on the television in the kitchen, us children not saying a word and Daddy jumped every single fence with him,” Fiona said.

“Eddie was home about six months ago, his wife Kathi is great in encouraging him to travel home for visits,” she added.

Different travel arrangements from the era of Jimmy Macken’s “bright yellow Fiat car” and alternative show day transportation, as recalled by his son Johnny.

“We had an old working pony and a big trap. So, when Eddie went off to a show in Longford or some place, he got a fellow to drive the pony and trap, Granard Boy trotting behind and a collie dog running under the trap!”

One poignant souvenir is a boomerang on the wall, just like in the kitchen of Pat Murphy, son of Boomerang’s late breeder, Jimmy Murphy.

“My brother Jimmy brought that. He passed in 1992 from leukemia, but he was very interested in horses,” Fiona said.

Pictured at the tribute to the late Anne Gormley in her former antique jewellery shop site are Hazel McVeigh,Granard Show secretary, Eddie’s niece Lizzie Donohue and Gerry Tully with Longford Show’s Bernie Whyte and Charlie Murphy \ Susan Finnerty

Good deed

Another sad loss is Anne Gormley, who, together with husband Brian, was part of a famous show jumping judge/course designer duo, ran a riding school (which became Eddie Macken’s go-to) and antique jewellery shop in the town.

At home, there are photographs galore of Anne with her favourite hunters and greyhounds and an aerial view of her native Carrickfergus with its distinctive seashore castle.

“Anne lived there during the Second World War, she remembered the German bombers coming in over Belfast,” Brian said.

“She went to a posh Catholic convent in Ballycastle, right on the very northern top of Ireland, close enough to the Giant’s Causeway. There was riding lessons at that school and then her parents bought her a horse.

“Anne went to Queen’s, did a degree in English Literature and then did nursing.”

The couple first met when Brian, a young veterinary student, helped out at Bill McGee’s shared yard near the Infirmary Road in Dublin.

“Bill had polo ponies and hired out horses for people to go riding in Phoenix Park. He used to get me to ride the bad ones - well, I was a horse dealer’s son and was reared with horses.”

Brian came to the rescue after Anne and “a nervous pupil” were exercising horses too. “Her pupil’s horse put its head up to catch the branches overhead, the lady panicked and started to scream.”

After both riders were decanted on the Phoenix Park turf, Brian caught their horses and, through that good deed, met his future wife.

The couple settled back in Granard, buying a house and 23 acres in 1960 in Carragh, a stone’s throw from Johnny Macken’s filling station. There, they raised their four daughters - Eileen, Maeve, Grainne and the late Suzanne - while combining Brian’s vet practice and Anne’s riding school business.

Eddie and Kathi on a visit to Dublin Horse Show in 2017 \ Susan Finnerty

A different vocation

Brian, born in 1935, grew up during the bleak Emergency era. “I was 90 a week ago. I started riding a pony when I was four years old and this is during the war, when nobody had any transport and a bicycle with new tyres on it was the equivalent of a BMW now.

“You’ve no idea of what life was like in a rural Ireland then. I never ate an orange until I was five years old. No such thing as television, no radio or electricity for many families.

“We had a small farm in north Longford. My father would buy horses in Mullingar or Tullamore and sell them in Cavan and Ballybay. Off they would go with 30 horses, tied nose-to-tail, once you got them on the move there was no problem. You just didn’t meet a car anywhere.

“The really big fair was ‘Monaghan Day’ in Mohill and I presume it was called that because all the dealers from Monaghan came. One year, it started to snow in the morning and, within 24 hours, four feet of snow had fallen on level ground and there were drifts 20 foot high.

“All the lorries went into the ditches and couldn’t be got out. Jimmy Macken, Eddie’s father, would never miss Mohill, but it took them four days to get home that year with the blocked roads.

“My father wanted me to be a priest when I was young and then I changed to wanting to be a vet,” said the former St Mel’s College boarder. “No Leaving Cert points or anything like that, not one lady on the course. Now, it’s two-thirds female and one-third male.

“It was a mixed practice around here, cattle, sheep and a certain amount of horses. I was just by myself, which was stupid!” said the man, who succeeded the late Jack ‘Ginger’ Powell as Ireland’s longest-serving vet, about his one-man practice.

Natural talent

The hard-working couple are synonymous with the growth of the then-fledgling Show Jumping Association of Ireland – Brian served on the Leinster region for over 40 years and as chairman of the executive on three occasions.

Perched on the shelves in Macken’s filling station in Granard are more photos of the town’s famous son \ Susan Finnerty

He show jumped too, a natural progression for him from the Longford Harriers hunting field. “I would have grown up hunting, a part of country life. There were no cars and certainly no horse boxes and trailers. You thought nothing of it if you rode 15, 20 miles to hunt and rode back. That was common enough.”

Transport to the Spring and Horse Show in the RDS was often by train. “CIE had special horse boxes on their trains and they went right up to the RDS. The show jumpers were stabled where Goffs sales later was and the horses were led across the road to the main arena, but there were always the Gardai there to stop the traffic.

“The Spring Show actually was nearly a better show for the ordinary Irish competitior,” he said, recalling the era of Jack Bamber, “who would arrive down from the north with a trainload of horses”, Monkey McGovern, single and double banks in the main arena and pairs competitions.

“It’s different now. Some won’t jump on grass, most have never hunted, whereas every child hunted when I was young.

“Now, I was thrown up on a pony like everybody else and off you went, feet stuck into stirrups out in front of you, cowboy-style. After I qualified as a vet, I went to several people for lessons. Best of all was a Major Joe Lynch, who had been the chief instructor at the Weedon cavalry school.

“He was used to teaching soldiers and he used soldier’s language! I then taught Eddie properly and, when he went on further to Iris and other places, he had no bad habits to forget. And, of course, he had the natural talent and the perfect anatomical build for a show jumper.”

To be ‘too right’

“Every Sunday, all over wintertime, Eddie would come down with his pony after Mass and we’d go into open country with big walls. He was afraid of the walls, but he was more afraid of me! That riding across country basically made Eddie, but he always had an eye for a stride.

“I could be accurate to a foot nine times out of 10. Sometimes we could miss out totally on a stride. If Eddie was at 90, I would rate myself about 65 or maybe 60.”

Was there any other rider that Brian would rank alongside Eddie in the style stakes? “Style is an integral part of equestrianism, but it doesn’t get you money, what gets you money is the clear rounds. And then there’s the ‘Too right’ syndrome that Eddie talks about in show jumping.

“You know, you’re jumping along, everything is perfect and the horse stops. It happens umpteen times. It’s nearly a sort of miscommunication between the rider and the horse, but how does it happen? I’ve never quite worked out the pathogenesis of this ‘too right’ syndrome that Eddie first told me about, but I think what is important is your ability to communicate with your horse.”

Eddie and Granard Boy got a travel upgrade for shows once Brian took the pair under his wing. “I had only one horse and a double horsebox that was actually for Anne’s hunter, so I would bring Eddie and his pony along to shows. There were very few Sunday shows then, our Bishop frowned upon them.

“I remember bringing Eddie to Ballinamore Show one year. Seamus Hayes was at the show, which just shows that one week you can be in Hickstead and the next in a rushy field on the side of a hill in Ballinamore. Eddie was delighted when he got to hold Goodbye. Then, Seamus said to get up and there’s Eddie riding around on the Hickstead Derby-winning horse.

“Then he jumped his own pony and he had a fence down. Eddie was annoyed and tore up his number. Seamus came over, ‘Pick up that number,’ he said.”

A treat and tough love in equal parts that day from the two-time Hickstead Derby hero.

Up one week, down the next

Hayes and the Renwood-sired Goodbye won the inaugural Hickstead Derby in 1961 and again three years later. Who could have predicted in that rushy field that young Macken would later win the Derby four years in a row with the peerless Boomerang or when Brian Gormley first brought him to the Spring Show, where Con Power’s father bought Granard Boy, that the young boys were future Dream Team members?

It must be an often-asked question for his first mentor, but what is Brian’s proudest moment looking back on Eddie’s career?

“He took it as it came, I mean that’s show jumping for you: up one week, down the next. My most enduring memory was Eddie riding Morning Light at Dublin with two fences to go for a clear round. I was sitting in the stand, just over from next to the pocket, with Eddie’s father and mother and, to this day, I still remember the tension.”

Another memorable occasion was when a “busload from Granard” were flown over to surprise Eddie who appeared in the BBC’s This Is Your Life TV programme in March 1984. “The one thing was you were sworn to secrecy and to such an extent that when Con [Power], Paul [Darragh] and James [Kernan] were at the airport, Eamon Andrews took another flight, so they wouldn’t all be seen together.”

Brian had a special prop to carry on stage – a wooden statue that Eddie had brought back from South Africa as a gift for Anne. “All the guests were given a book with This Is Your Life on the back. I got the autographs of Harvey Smith, Pat Smythe, all the ancient ones which are now forgotten. You have your hour of glorious life and then they’re gone, forgotten.”

Although not entirely, nor has the Gormley’s guidance of the local lad been forgotten either, as Eddie still keeps in touch. “He was on the phone the other day after Anne died and was going to come over for the funeral and I said no.”

The Gormley home was the setting for parties during Eddie’s previous visits. “There were certainly late-night parties held here, Eddie has a great singing voice and there’s actually tapes of him singing!”

Unsung hero

Carragh was often the ‘base camp’ for show jumpers on the road. “Billy McAuley, he rode for the Garlands, the first professional touring team, Brian Hughes, Brian Henry... they’d camp on the lawn here for the last week of August and first week of September.”

The Midland Cub Hunters’ shows in Granard, spearheaded by the Gormleys, Westport, “that used to be a huge show held in the grounds of Westport House” and Ballina are just some of the big midland and western fixtures recalled by Brian.

The show’s name is a fitting name for a hunting household. “Anne would have hunted four or five days a week,” Brian said proudly, displaying the fox head memento he won as leading rider at the big Midland Cub Hunters’ show one year.

Another integral part of the local show is the Tully family. “If ever anything went wrong, you rang Tom Tully and Tom was there within 10 minutes. I’ll say actually the show jumping, all that, totally wouldn’t have happened but for this unsung hero.

“We had a couple of amateur shows, an amateur Derby, pony shows, three-year-old shows – people came and they enjoyed themselves. If I wanted any sort of jump made, you went to Tom... no problem.

“So, while it’s Anne and I have the credit, it totally depended on Tom,” he added about the late former chairman of Granard Show.

His son Gerry has taken up the challenge for their upcoming two-day show in Granard – showing classes on Saturday, July 19th and the show jumping tradition continues the following day, when Pat Murphy, whose father bred Boomerang, will be one of their special guests.

And, of course, Brian Gormley himself. The innovative, straight-talking member of the Irish Horse Board and SJI, a mentor to Eddie Macken and a host of next generation vets and the breeder of the Touchdown stallion Cara Touche, brought up to Grand Prix level by Conor Swail.

Right there, is yet another ‘six degrees of separation’ story, as Cara Touche’s First Consul dam was a full-sister to an Army Equitation School recruit from the midlands, bred by the Gormley family: John Ledingham’s Hickstead winner Castlepollard.

An endless supply of stories and historical nuggets from a glorious, unforgettable era. “He is a man of magnificent knowledge and talent and a lifelong family friend,” said Gerry, summing up the life of Brian Gormley.