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It’s not an easy task to adequately sum up the impact of Har Ramsbottom on Park-Ratheniska GAA club, or indeed the wider community, but the person who came closest was probably his granddaughter Amy.

In a school essay she submitted not so long ago, she said of him that he was on every committee in Ratheniska, except the ICA!

It is for this willingness to put his shoulder to the wheel which saw him recently chosen for a GAA President’s Award for his service to the Association, which he collected in Croke Park on February 6.

The award was a recognition for his work in keeping a small rural club like Park-Ratheniska on the front foot, as they have navigated the choppy waters all small clubs are exposed to and continued to thrive.

He has thrilled in all of Park-Ratheniska’s success over the years, but this recent award has been different. If anything, he has been a little embarrassed by the fuss which has surrounded it, as he knows the award is not just a recognition for his work alone, but for the efforts of an entire club he was happy to be a member of. “It is nice to get recognised, but the people are very good, it is a great community and I got a lot of help.

“I remember when we were putting the roof on the clubhouse, we ended up with five different carpenters working on it, everyone helped out and that’s always the way it was.”

His time with the club stretches back to the 1950s, when he started to play with the Park footballers in 1957 as a 17 year old. He also hurled with the Ratheniska club, winning a number of titles in both codes, from an IHC with Ratheniska in 1961 to a JFC with Park in 1972.

His career in administration began in 1975 when, along with Liam Wall, Paddy Casey, Sean Conroy, Aidan Downey, Tom Bowe and Har Fingleton they formed a juvenile club, with Har as chairman.

The club was a success from the outset, with a relationship formed with The Heath in the early 1980s keeping both clubs on an upward curve at juvenile level.

Har then moved on to Chairman of the senior club, and he was involved in purchasing the club’s first permanent home, in Park, in the mid 1980s.

That was to be their home for roughly a decade, before an opportunity which was too good to pass up arrived in 1995. With land available opposite Ratheniska primary school, the club, with Ramsbottom as chairman once again, moved to purchase what was prime real estate.

The Park-Ratheniska club grounds are now, what for many, is a kind of GAA utopia, situated across the road from the primary school and the church, keeping it at the heart of the local community. It was for this vision that Liam O’Neill has always been so impressed with Har and the people of Park-Ratheniska. “He knows what we did up there, and he was very proud of it” admits Har.

While the club’s facilities have long been admired, they have been the scene of some great days for their teams too, with the Leinster Junior Football final of 2006 a stand out. “Winning that was the highlight, there is no doubt about that” admitted Har as he looked back on the ups and downs of his time with the club. They have also contested two Leinster hurling finals on home soil, in 2007 against Killurin and 2011 against Parnells, which they won.

Har has had a stint as Chairman in every decade since the 1980s, stepping down three years ago from his most recent spell. That’s not to say he’s off the radar, but it does give him a little bit more time to spend with his wife Betty, who he feels deserves as much credit as he has gotten, and his 17 grandchildren.

He has enjoyed his time involved with the club immensely, more for the friendships and camaraderie than the awards which have come more recently. It is an Association that he loves, and he phrased it aptly himself when he reflected on what the GAA means to him. “It’s a mighty organisation, the GAA. There’s nothing like it.”

There certainly isn’t. Nor, indeed, is there anything like the people who help to make it mighty.

 

 

Article kindly reproduced from The Leinster Express, written by Rory Delaney