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Seamus Bonner

Irish Gaelic football player (1948-2012)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 2, 2026
Entity authorityQ7440734
Source-derived summary

Seamus Bonner (6 November 1948 – 11 October 2012) was an Irish Gaelic footballer who played for various clubs, as well as for the Donegal county team.

Bonner played 129 games for his county between 1972 and 1985, initially in midfield and later at full forward. He made his championship debut against Down at Ballybofey in 1972 and played his last Championship game against Monaghan in 1985. In 1974 he scored seven goals in four games, including one against Galway in that year's All-Ireland semi-final. With Michael McLoone (1966), Bonner (1974) jointly holds the record for Donegal player with the highest score in the same match. In 1983, he became the first Donegal player to win three Ulster Senior Football Championships.

He played his club football for Drumbar, then Four Masters, then Civil Service, captaining the last team to the 1980 Dublin Senior Football Championship.

He later won two more Ulster SFCs as a selector under the managerial reign of Brian McEniff, and was there in 1992 when Donegal won the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship. He was at the time a selector with the Civil Service club, as was one of the Dublin selectors Pat O'Neill. He later managed Leitrim for a short while.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Seamus Bonner” is irish Gaelic football player (1948-2012). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Seamus, Bonner and Irish, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1948, 2012, 1972, 1985—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1948-11-06. For this dossier, Seamus, Bonner and Irish is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “irish Gaelic football player (1948-2012)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7440734. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1948, 2012, 1972 and 1985.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Seamus Bonner”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Seamus Bonner primary sources, Seamus Bonner archive and Seamus research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Seamus Bonner”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Seamus Bonner” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.