Andy Cooney

Andrew Cooney (died in 1968) was an Irish republican.

From Nenagh, County Tipperary, Cooney began studying medicine at University College Dublin just as the Irish War of Independence was getting underway, and he played for a brief spell with the College's hurling club. As surrounding events intensified, he joined the Third Battalion of the Dublin Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). As a Tipperary native in Dublin, Cooney would have been certain, in normal circumstances, to have attended the challenge football match between these two counties on 21 November 1920.

It has been suggested, however, that Cooney was one of (or associated with) Michael Collins' "Twelve Apostles", who eliminated the members of the British Cairo Gang early that morning. Specifically, it is alleged that Cooney was part of an eight-man IRA team which killed British Army Captain Leonard Price, a Major Dowling, a Captain Keenlyside and two British Army Colonels, Woodcock and Montgomery, who were staying in premises at 28 Pembroke Street, Dublin.

Later that day, in retaliation, the Auxiliaries killed about a dozen or so attendees at a football match between Tipperary and Dublin at Croke Park. The day's violence became known as Bloody Sunday. After the Anglo-Irish truce of July 1921, Cooney was appointed Officer Commanding (O/C) of the 1st Kerry Brigade, IRA, and reorganised it. He opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and in March 1922, and was appointed Commandant of the 1st Eastern Division of the anti-Treaty IRA in the Irish Civil War.

The same year he was captured by Free State forces and interned in Mountjoy Prison, where he became O/C of the prisoners in C Wing. He accepted responsibility for an attempted escape bid on 10 October, 1923 in which a fellow prisoner Peadar Breslin was killed and another man was wounded. He was released in 1924. Cooney replaced Frank Aiken as Chief of Staff of the IRA in 1925, but after eight months in the role, he departed on a fund-raising trip to the United States. He soon returned, however, and won his only Fitzgibbon medal with UCD in 1927. An on-off decade of service for the UCD team ended when he qualified as a doctor in 1928.

In 1933, he unveiled the Terence Bellew McManus Memorial in the old Republican Plot in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. Thenceforth, semi-retired from the republican movement, Cooney continued to be a regular orator at gatherings, and he was a founder of the short-lived Cumann Poblachta na hÉireann party in 1936. He emigrated to the USA in the 1940s and was assisted by veteran Irish republican Michael Flannery. Dr. Andrew Cooney died in the USA in 1968.

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* "Student Radicals", in: High Ball, February 2002 ( [http://cao.gaa.ie/archive.html] )