OL Sheehy-Skeffington by Edward Liddle

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Player:

OL Sheehy-Skeffington

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DateLine: 27th February 2021

 

Owen Sheehy Skeffington was a good cricketer and a remarkable man. When he was just short of his seventh birthday, he suffered the death of his father Frank Skeffington. A well known figure in Dublin, and a pacifist his father was shot during the Easter Rising on the orders of Captain John Bowen-Colthurst, an Anglo-Irish British Army officer who was later found guilty but insane by court martial.

 

After attending several schools and spending some time in the USA, Owen entered Sandford Park School in 1924. He proved to be an outstanding cricketer, captaining the 1st XI and playing on the Leinster Schools in 1926 and 1927. Unfortunately both their matches against Ulster were lost.

 

He studied French and English at university, emerging with a First Class degree in 1931. He also gained his cricket colours playing for the 1st XI from 1928-31, his highest score in competitive cricket being 75. He was Treasurer of the Cricket Club in 1930 and Secretary in 1931.He also found time to be involved in several other student societies notably the College Historical Society - not a faculty society but the major debating one - of which he was Librarian and won a gold medal in oratory.

 

He spent most of the next three years in France, working for his PHD though as he spent time with Samuel Beckett and unlikely cricket fan James Joyce, cricket may not have been entirely forgotten. Back in Dublin to complete his thesis, he captained the University 2nd XI in 1934, his subsequent cricket being played for Pembroke. However he then had to give up the game as he contracted TB which led to a collapsed lung. He was appointed to the University's French Department in 1935 where, apart from an enforced absence because of his illness, he remained until shortly before his death.

 

From 1954 to 1961 and 1965-70, he was one of the two of the University's members of the Senate, the Irish Upper House. Fiercely independent, he pursued a number of issues that the major parties would not touch such as the influence of the Church, women's rights and corporal punishment in schools.