"Weeshie" Fogarty was born in
Cork in March 1941 to parents Richard and Kathleen Fogarty. He joined the
Killarney Legion GAA club in February 1955 at the age of fourteen and went on to win several
divisional senior championship medals with the club. Fogarty made his debut on the inter-county scene at the age of seventeen when he was selected for the Kerry minor team in 1959. He enjoyed one championship season with the minor team, however, he was a
Munster runner-up. Fogarty subsequently joined the Kerry under-21 team, winning a
Munster medal in 1962. In 1965, Fogarty qualified as a psychiatric nurse and found employment in
St. Finan's Psychiatric Hospital, working there for 38 years until 2003. The death of his father Richard at the age of 62 following a
heart attack,
stroke and
prostate cancer deeply affected Fogarty, who stated in his
autobiography that "the memory of his suffering remains vivid to me". He also won one
Munster medal. Fogarty played his last game for Kerry in October 1970 after a serious eye injury ended his inter-county career. With the divisional
East Kerry team he won an
All-Ireland medal as a non-playing substitute in 1971. Fogarty also won two
Munster medals and four
county senior championship medals. Following his retirement from football, Fogarty served as a referee. He oversaw All-Ireland football semi-finals from 1981 to 1983, and was the first referee in the history of the
GAA to deploy a
yellow card. From 1998, Fogarty worked as a sports broadcaster. He worked for
Radio Kerry where he hosted his own show called
Terrace Talk on Monday evenings, while he also wrote for
The Kerryman newspaper. Fogarty's autobiography,
My Beautiful Obession: Chasing the Kerry Dream, was published in November 2012. In 2015, he was involved in the documentary
All Ireland Day. On 18 November 2018, Fogarty died at the age of 77. On 28 April 2022, a roundabout at the junction between Dalton's Avenue and Marian Terrace in Killarney was named after Fogarty. ==References==