On Friday, 4th November, the club organised a surprise presentation of the 2018 Clubperson of the Year Award to Billy Dineen. We had to entice the unsuspecting Billy to the 1997 Jubilee get-together under the ruse of requiring him to do a video recording of the event.

Peter Hogan outlined how the club has fallen behind with the presentation of the Clubperson of the Year Awards due to the Covid pandemic. He went on to explain how the very worthy recipient has been out in all kinds of weather over many years, doing something that is extremely important for match analysis. Billy Dineen has been video recording Carrigtwohill matches for close to 30 years and his video recordings are invaluable to the club, both for the aforementioned analysis of matches, but possibly even moreso for posterity. Despite many efforts, Billy has always politely refused any effort from the club to remunerate him in any way for his camera work over the decades.

Billy Dineen was born in Midleton. His grandfather, William Kennedy won an All-Ireland football championship with Cork in 1890; Midleton were the Cork representatives in the competition, which saw the Rebels win their first senior football title. Billy moved to Glendine, on the Waterford side of Youghal when he was eight years old. He played hurling and football with Shamrocks GAA Club, winning an intermediate hurling county medal in 1972. Billy played senior hurling with Waterford in 1976. He moved to Carrigtwohill in 1980 and played with Carrig until the early 1990s, retiring at 45 years of age.

It was when working for Chorus TV, the cable channel, that Billy honed his camera skills. He covered soccer, GAA and rugby matches, moving on to do camera work for RTÉ. When Carrig won the 2011 senior county championship, Billy had the matches in the latter stages edited and available for viewing in the local hostelries within hours of the games finishing.

Billy’s son, Stephen represented Irish Schools in international athletics. He was on the 2007 (intermediate hurling) and 2011 (senior hurling) county winning panels. Stephen has resided in Down in recent years and won a senior hurling county championship medal with Ballycran in 2015. He also played senior hurling league and championship with Down.

For his 70th birthday in 2018, Billy climbed to Mount Everest base camp, which he considers one of the greatest experiences of his lifetime. We are very fortunate that Billy decided to set up camp in Carrigtwohill all those years ago. He is an extremely worthy winner of the Club person of the Year Award.