Comer brothers glad they didn’t spend their millions buying Aston Villa — now they go back to their roots: to Kilkerrin-Clonberne

By JIM CARNEY â€Å“HOME is where one starts fromâ€Â wrote the great poet T.S. Eliot in the East Coker section of his renowned Four Quartets. Itâ€â„¢s a most profound, noble thought; it could apply to anybody anywhere in the world, and for the purposes of this article it appears right and fitting to apply it to a new sponsorship partnership forged between one of Britainâ€â„¢s biggest and wealthiest construction companies and a rural North Galway GAA club. No ordinary club, as far as the building company Comer Group International are concerned. Brothers Luke, Brian, Billy and Johnny Comer grew up playing Gaelic football for Kilkerrin-Clonberne, for which they have retained a passion and the company name is now proudly associated with the club of their happy boyhood years, and its red and white jerseys.[private] This deal will surprise many people but itâ€â„¢s the real thing: Comer Group International are big in business all over the world but the Comer brothers from Shannagh, near Glenamaddy but in the Kilkerrin-Clonberne GAA catchment area, have lived their lives with a love of Gaelic football in their blood. In many ways itâ€â„¢s their badge of identity. Brian, especially, was a very good player; he was a Galway county minor in the mid-1970s and won a Connacht Minor Championship medal in â€â„¢76 but injury cost him an All-Ireland Minor medal that year. Billy, too, spent his young days looking forward to football in the evenings and it wasnâ€â„¢t only to get away from hard work at home! Like Brian, Billy got a county minor trial; he was a forward but the team management tried to make a defender out of him and it wasnâ€â„¢t natural. Years later, working as a Customs officer in Rosslare and other parts of the country, Billy ended up playing in an All-Ireland inter-firms football final â€Â¦ at Croke Park. They won it. For Billy it was a dream come true, to win an All-Ireland final in the Theatre of Dreams. Life at home wasnâ€â„¢t easy when the Comers, boys and girls, were growing up, for their mother died a young woman. Their Dad managed as best he could, mainly with the great help of his daughters looking after everything at home, and the lads working as soon as they left school, mostly in Glenamaddy. Everybody in North Galway and many, many people all over Ireland will remember Billy and Carmel Comer becoming millionaires by winning the National Lottery. It was shortly before England got its National Lottery and Billy was flown over to London and to Scotland to be a guest on TV talk shows. These days, when pressed, he best remembers meeting Anne Diamond and Kirsty Young. It was more exciting than actually winning the Lotto, Billy thought at the time! For the rest of the brothers, it was plastering and building, a way of life that eventually made Luke and Brian very wealthy men. Luke also became a racehorse trainer; he had runners in the Epsom Derby, but at a time in their lives when their wealth was rated in the British Rich List at £1.4 billion (sterling), they became even better known for trying to buy Aston Villa. Ultimately, they didnâ€â„¢t go ahead with it. That, too, was good business. Itâ€â„¢s only a few years since Aston Villa were £110 million in debt. Today, 30 years after they started out in international construction, the Comer International Group, headed by Luke and Brian, is rated one of Britainâ€â„¢s leading property development companies with massive projects in London, in the south-east of England, Belgium, Germany, New York and Uganda. It looks a full schedule for the Comers to be thinking about, but the weekend after next theyâ€â„¢ll be ringing home â€â€ and itâ€â„¢ll always be home â€â€ to find out if All-Ireland U-21 medal winners Shane Walsh, Conor Rabbitte and Martin Shaughnessy and their clubmates have got Kilkerrin-Clonberne over the first hurdle in the Galway Senior Football Championship. The day they win the Frank Fox Cup, itâ€â„¢ll first be filled with champagne in The Glenview Bar & Lounge.[/private]