White’s Cross GAA, are deeply saddened by the passing of Con Delaney, our Club President. We have lost a giant of a man. Con Delaney was there in our Club from the beginning – he is included in the earliest picture we have of a White’s Cross team back in the late 1950s. It was most fitting that when we undertook the biggest development project in the history of the Club that Con turned the first sod. In his capacity as Club President Con, with shovel in hand, ceremoniously tossed the first sod of grass into the air to commence work on the astro-turf development in August 2021.
However it wasn’t in the pomp and ceremony where Con Delaney was most comfortable – the man could work a shovel better than any of the rest of us. And so when we went about preparing the ground-work for our hurling-wall back in 2013 and our initial astro-turf in 2014, Con Delaney made an invaluable contribution in terms of know-how and graft allowing us bring those two projects to fruition on shoe-string budgets. It was the minimum spend there that in turn allowed us dream big, and develop the state-of-the-art, flood-lit astro-turf that we did in the past year. We didn’t lean on Con to deliver on that project, other than to turn that first sod, but he did inspect the works upon completion, and we were happy it got his vote of approval.
We will miss Con Delaney most on the side-lines – his booming ‘Come on the Cross’ will not be easily replaced. It wasn’t just on match-day that Con was on the side-lines – until that cursed Covid struck, Con would frequently visit the pitch of a Tuesday or a Thursday evening, simply to watch the Junior team train He took particular pleasure and pride in watching his grandson Seanie play, both football and hurling, for White’s Cross and more recently for St. Colmcille’s – the two of them were truly best friends. It was also a source of great pride to him, not that he would be a man to boast, that his daughter Marion was the first female secretary in the history of White’s Cross GAA.
Con was the best of company – you were always in the better for meeting and chatting with the man. We will miss him greatly above in the Club.
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