Club pays tribute to late Barney Eastwood

Mr Eastwood, who was born in Cookstown, passed away last week.

In a statement on their Facebook page Cookstown FR Rocks revealed he had donated £32,000 to the club in 2007.

The club said: “Cookstown like large swaths of Ireland in 1932 was on its knees. The future for most people was bleak and emigration rates were high. Some one hundred thousand people would go on to leave the country over the course of the next decade.

“In the same year Barney Eastwood was born into a small town crippled with unemployment and world was in the grip of the Great Depression.

“All the more remarkable then that he would go on to become one of the most successful entrepreneurs that the North has ever produced. Gaelic Football was his passion in his formative years and he was blessed with pace and a brilliant left foot.

“Back in mid 1940s the GAA street leagues were in full flow in Cookstown and it was in these games that he rubbed shoulders with men like Owen Mulligan’s granda Eugene. The competition in those games led BJ to the Tyrone minor panel in 1948 at just 16 years of age.

“He smashed home two goals and three points in a 5-7 to 2-3 win over Monaghan in that years Ulster final. An All Ireland semi-final win over Galway led to a final against Dublin. BJ’s four points made the difference at Croke Park as the Red Hands beat the Dubs 0-11 to 1-5 to become the first county to win back-to-back minor titles.

“The next day, The Irish News reported: ‘Tyrone excelled in all features to retain their title deservedly against a brilliant Dublin team’. BJ’s performance was described as ‘splendid’.

“The vast majority of his life would be filled with remarkable growth of his business and his love of boxing.

“A Cookstown man made good. A man who’s remarkable journey included the donation to the Cookstown Fr Rock’s club in 2007 of some £32,000 for the boots that Owen Mulligan scored ‘that goal’ in Croke Park in 2005.

“He can be summed up in his owns word in an Irish News report from earlier this year. ’I’m a Tyrone man, I was born a Tyrone man and I’ll always be a Tyrone man, I love Tyrone people and I always loved the football’.”