I was very sorry indeed to hear this morning that John McMahon died yesterday.
We have been in regular contact over the past couple of years, mostly over the early history of the Glorney Cup. The history he compiled with his brother Frank, and Tom O’Neill, is available here, and later installments covered the years up to the most recently posted report, on John’s own début year of 1956, which was posted here on Sunday.
In addition to winning the Irish and Leinster Schoolboys’ championships, John finished joint 2nd-3rd behind John Reid in the Irish Championship proper in 1961, winning the formal silver medal that was awarded in those days to the runner-up on tie-break, according to most reports. He also played for Kevin Barry in the Armstrong Cup for twenty years, 1956-1976, and played for Lucan in later years.
Two recent photos are available on the Leinster Schools Chess Association web site, from a visit he paid to the Leinster Junior Championships in 2018.
Deepest sympathies to his family.
I soldiered with John on the O Connell ‘s School Chess team in the late 1950s when he and Art Coldrick were the senior players and I was the new kid on the block.
When Ireland won the Glorney Cup for the first time in 1958 John, Art and I were on the team. That was a proud moment for our school to supply 50% of the team which was selected on an all Ireland basis.
John was a very fine player who finished second in the Irish Championship and was to the forefront of Irish chess in the early to late 1960s. He was always a player to be reckoned with.
John was also a gentleman and a true sportsman in every sense of that word. My sincere sympathy to Frank whom I knew very well at school and afterwards and to his wife and family. In a very moving funeral mass on Wednesday it was very clear how much he meant to them and how much he was loved.
Paul Cassidy