St Eunan's and Donegal great Seamus Hoare sadly passes away

Letterkenny and indeed Donegal are tinged with sadness this evening with the news of the passing of Seamus Hoare - perhaps best known for being a goalkeeping great.

Seamus passed away on Monday at Parke House Nursing Home, Kilcock, Co Kildare, and his remains will repose in Eternal Light Chapel of Rest, Mountain Top, Letterkenny, on Sunday, May 22, from 6pm to 8pm. Funeral mass in St Eunan's Cathedral, Letterkenny, will take place at 11am on Monday, May 23, followed by interment in New Leck Cemetery.

The Donegal team of 1967, with Seamus Hoare bottom right

Quite simply, Hoare was one of the greats of Gaelic football. Having played county minor in 1953 then junior a year later, Seamus made his first senior appearance for Donegal in May 1955 against Tyrone in the Féis Cup in Omagh, when he was still a student at St Eunan’s College. He first played championship a month later.

In an inter-county career in which he played 107 times in all competitions, Seamus earned 25 championship appearances and kept goal for the county until 1969. The only championship outing Seamus missed in that timeframe came in 1961, when he his honeymoon, as Packie Boyle from Dungloe deputised against Derry.

Seamus appeared in Donegal’s first two Ulster final appearances, both of which ended in defeat to Down, 2-11 to 1-4 in 1963 and then 1-7 to 0-8 three years later, either side of a semi-final appearance in the 1965 National League against Kerry. 

Seamus Hoare

He won three McKenna Cups and three Lagan Cups and in 1999 was named in goal on Donegal’s Team of the Millennium. For Ulster, Seamus was a five-time Railway Cup winner, winning his first medal as a substitute in 1963 before four more as a player - 1964, 1965, 1966 and 1968. Hoare also won the Donegal SFC four times with his native St Eunan’s, part of the winning teams of 1956, 1960, 1967 and 1969. 

"My first memory of goalkeepers in Donegal would have been Seamus Hoare of St Eunan's, who would have played for Donegal," Donegal's All-Ireland winning manager of 1992, Brian McEniff, recalled in 2020. "He was a top class 'keeper who also played for Ulster."

Born in Rosemount and raised in the heart of Letterkenny on Church Lane, Seamus later played for St Mary’s in Leixlip when he moved, although never made a secret of his love for St Eunan's and Letterkenny. Only last year, he was a tour guide for the ‘Walking History Tour’ organised in Letterkenny by the town’s Cathedral Quarter Experience.

Seamus is predeceased by wife Patricia (Patsy) née Gallagher. Deeply regretted by son Derek (Galway), Anne-Marie Hesselden, (Wexford), Patricia Falino (North Carolina USA). Sheila Hoare, (Cork) 14 grandchildren and three great-grandsons. Sadly missed by brother in law Eugene O'Boyle (Letterkenny), nieces, nephews, good neighbours and many friends in Leixlip and Letterkenny.