Glorney Cup: Early Years 1948-1963

I mentioned last month that the brothers Michael, John, and Frank McMahon had each represented Ireland on Glorney Cup teams: Michael played in 1955 and ’56, John 1956, ’57, and ’58, and Frank 1960, ’62, and ’63.

John and Frank, together with Tom O’Neill, 1953, ’54, and ’55, have recently put together The Glorney Cup: Early Years 1948 – 1963, a beautifully produced history of the early Irish teams in the competition, with an emphasis on team personnel, photographs, and anecdotes, as well as the basic results, which I have the great privilege of publishing here for the first time, for which many thanks.

On the cover page (see above), John laments that there is little record that his experience ever happened. It’s true that there is no one source that gives the full history of the event. The OlimpBase Glorney/Faber page has a complete list of final places and tables from 1948 to 1998, with places listed up to 2012. The page on Scottish Teams in the Glorney Cup in the Chess Scotland history archives cover the period up to 1970, with many photos. The Glorney Gilbert web pages have a page with a partial list of previous players and a partial archive of previous years.

The authors stress that they welcome additions and corrections, and I would like to add to this appeal. Here are some additional details on the inaugural event.

The first Glorney Cup was contested by Ireland and England, at the School of Domestic Economy, 11 Cathal Brugha Street, Dublin, on August 26-27, 1948.

Though England has generally had the better of these matches down the years, Ireland has usually not had quite as tough a time as this!

No games are available.

The Irish team was Geoffrey Hand (Blackrock College, Dublin), the 1948 Irish and Leinster Schoolboys’ champion, Michael Fagan (Westland Row C.B.S., Dublin), –2015, 1948 Irish runner-up, Ken O’Riordan (Rockwell College, Co. Tipperary), the 1948 Munster Schoolboys’ champion and later Olympiad team member (1956, 1968), Fintan Doyle (Terenure College, Dublin), J. W. A. Mills (Methodist College Belfast), the 1948 Ulster Schoolboys’ champion, and J. Kinsella (James’s Street C.B.S., Dublin).

Doyle was relatively young: he was Irish Schoolboys’ champion in 1951.

We have previously had a photo here, courtesy of Oliver Dunne, showing Michael Fagan (playing Black on the nearest board and facing camera) and Geoffrey Hand (same side of table, two boards along), which J. J. Walsh thinks might be from the Leinster Schoolboys’ championship 1948.

The ICU website has an excellent photo of Ken O’Riordan, taken some years later at the Dublin Zonal in 1957.

The English team was Derek Geoffrey Horseman (Coventry), 1931-2010, British U18 champion 1948; Jonathan Penrose (London), 1933-2021, ex-British U18 champion and later ten-time British champion, honorary GM, and correspondence chess GM; Peter Harris (West Bromwich), N. Marshall (Blackburn), John Alexander (Birmingham), and Neil Robert Desmond Griffith, 1933-1999 (Wallasey Grammar School, Cheshire). Horseman, Penrose, Harris, and Alexander later played in Oxford-Cambridge Varsity matches.

[Update, April 15, 2021: The BCM report gives the final score as 9½–½, without scorecard, and lists the “Boys of England” team in board order. Board 4 is given as “W. Marshall” instead of N. Marshall, and board 6 is given as “N. R. D. Griffith”.]

[Update, April 16, 2022: Jonathan Penrose died on November 30, 2021. Corrected initials (from N. D.) have been added for N. R. D. Griffith in the scorecard, along with his full name, years of birth and death, and school.]