Personal information | |||
---|---|---|---|
Sport | Gaelic football | ||
Born | 15 September 1938 | ||
Occupation |
Garda
[1] Solicitor [1] | ||
Club(s) | |||
Years | Club | ||
19??–? | St Eunan's | ||
Club titles | |||
Donegal titles | 3 | ||
Inter-county(ies) | |||
Years | County | ||
1957–19?? | Donegal |
Sean Ferriter (born 15 September 1938) [2] is an Irish former Gaelic footballer who played for St Eunan's and the Donegal county team. [3] His position was in midfield (though he did play as a goalkeeper for his school). [2]
Born in Milford, County Donegal, his parents were Garda Morgan (from West Kerry) and Tess (from Baltray in County Louth). [2] He was one of six children: four sons and two daughters. [2] He attended Dunfanaghy National School for his primary education. [2] For his secondary education, Ferriter attended St Eunan's College as a boarder, playing for the school team (as a goalkeeper) and being greatly influenced by John Wilson, the Gaelic footballer and future Tánaiste who was teaching there at that time. [2] [4]
Ferriter played for the Donegal team that won the 1956 Ulster Minor Football Championship. [2] He made his senior debut for Donegal in 1957 against Tyrone at the age of 18. [2]
He captained the Donegal team that overcame Cavan in the 1963 Ulster Senior Football Championship semi-final, thus earning his team a place in the final for the first time. [2]
He played for Donegal in the 1964–65 National Football League semi-final against Kerry. [5]
He won three Donegal Senior Football Championships with his club St Eunan's. [2] He also played for Ulster in the Railway Cup, [6] with whom he won two titles. [2]
A former Garda, Ferriter served for a time in Dublin. [1] His experience of Dublin proved invaluable to Brian McEniff when Donegal qualified for the 1992 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final — against Dublin. [2]
Ferriter later studied law and qualified as a solicitor, practising in the Dublin suburb of Blanchardstown. [1]
He met his wife Mary, originally from Thurles, while she was working as a civil servant in Dublin (where Ferriter was at the time based as a Garda); she predeceased him. [2] He has eight children. [2] One of his sons, Paul, is a sculptor. [1]
In 2001, the Donegal Democrat included Ferriter in a Millennium Team. [2]
In May 2012, the Irish Independent named him in its selection of Donegal's "greatest team" spanning the previous 50 years. [7]
In 2020, he was announced as the 44th inductee into the Donegal Sports Star Awards Hall of Fame Award. [2]
In an earlier life, I reported on Sean Ferriter playing Gaelic football for Donegal. His son's early sporting memories, however, were all about golf... Born in Letterkenny in December 1967, Paul Ferriter moved as a boy to Dublin where his father was transferred as a member of An Garda Siochana. Now the father is a solicitor in Blanchardstown, having gone back to college to study law.