Murder at a Football Hatch

Feilding Star, Volume XV, Issue 96, 20 October 1893, Page 2

Murder at a Football Hatch

A terrible affair has occurred at New Pallas, county Limerick. In the coarse of a Gaelic football tournament, William O'Connell, aged 21, one of the players, was assaulted and fatally stabbed. O'Conuell was playing lor the Down team against the Cappamore club. There was about 2,000 people present, and when play bad been in progress a quarter of an hour, a dispute arose. A player named Anderson, of the Oola team, had his head cut open by a member of the Gartha Walla club, and finding his head was bleeding, he ran to his friends, who rushed into the ground and attacked the opposing team. A rush was made into the ground, sideß were 'taken, knives drawn, and sticks displayed in all directions. Amid shouts from both parties a a general encounter took place, and after a few minutes O'Connell was seen to run across the field and fell. As he ran a man struck him on the head with a stick, but the cause of his. fall was the wound he had received. It is said that O'Connell , knocked down his first two assailants; but the others closed on him, and he was stabbed over the heart. At the inquest the jury found that "Death was caused by a puncturatcd wound in the heart maliciously inflicted . by some person unknown." The police bad then made eight arrests. The prisoners were brought up : at New Pallas the same day, and remanded for eight days. Owing to a disturbance in the morning the Rev. Patrick O'Donnel), the parish priest of Doon, at mass on Sunday advised the abandonment of the sport which had such an unhappy termination. A murderous outrage, supposed to have had its origin in the fatal match, was committed at the village of Doon, near Limerick, on the following Tuesday night, the victim being a process«server named Matthew Kennedy, 50 years of age. Kennedy's son was one of those charged with being concerned in the death of O'Connell. and presumably it was for motives of revenge that the father was waylaid at night and savagely beaten until rendered unconscious, for one of his alleged assailants has been arrested, and it is stated to be a relative of the deceased O'Connell.