Presumed retired more than once, was this Tom Cheasty’s last time to line out with Ballyduff — or any team — on Sunday, 23rd June 1985?

At the age of 50, the Knockaderry man had played in the intermediate hurling championship the previous year, after helping Ballyduff to the county junior title in ’83.

I’m surmising* that this photo was taken at a challenge match at Kildermody, played as part of a programme of events marking the occasion of Tom Nolan’s homecoming to Ballyduff as Mayor of the London Borough of Newham.

Accompanied by his wife Eileen (née Halley, also a native of Kilmeaden), Tom was special guest at a gala supper and dance in his honour that night, organised by John Hanley and GAA club chairman Jack Laffan, among others.

The second-eldest son of Hanora and Matt Nolan, captain of the famous Ballyduff hurlers of the early 1900s, Tommy played both codes for Ballyduff in his youth, and subsequently hurled with Mount Sion, where he also went to secondary school.

In 1937 he won both a county minor hurling championship with Ballyduff/Portlaw and a senior title with Portlaw, being an employee of Irish Tanners Ltd. He returned to play junior with Ballyduff and was a stand-out talent; described by Pat Fanning as “a brainy, polished hurler” and “an ideal forward.”

With war sirens still sounding around him, Tom emigrated to the English capital in 1943, but remained a fluent Irish speaker. He had been living in East Ham for more than four decades by the time he became “first citizen” of his local borough council: a big area of almost quarter-of-a-million people.

A Labour representative since the early ’70s and a prominent railway trade union activist, Tom (then 66) had only recently retired after 38 years as an underground signal technician with London Transport; all but five of them spent on the night shift. He made the annual return trip to Waterford to catch up with some of his — yes — 194 cousins.

Father of Maureen and Peter, his siblings were Matty, Dick, Ted (Kilmeaden), Paddy (Kilkenny), John (London), Peter (California, who predeceased him), Kitty Whelan, Kilmeaden, and Judy Walsh and Peggy Dalton, Waterford.

Tom died just three years after being honoured in Ballyduff; his funeral taking place in London in August 1988. Today, beside a greenway in Newham, there’s a place called Tom Nolan Close.

TEAM PHOTO (courtesy of Tony Walsh) — Back from left: A. Whelan, Tommy Nolan – guest of honour, P. Nolan, A. Whelan, M. Power, P. O’Shea, E. Walsh, E. O’Leary, B. Power, L. MacCarthy, L. Dunne. Front: J. Nolan, T. Cheasty, D. Ryan, M. O’Leary, J. Power, M. Power, T. Whelan, T. Larkin.