Duke, Philip James (‘P. J.’) (1925–50), Gaelic footballer, was born 22 April 1925 in Stradone, Co. Cavan, one of four sons and two daughters of Andrew Duke, farmer and shopkeeper, and Rose Anne Duke (née Donoghue). He was educated at Laragh national school, St Patrick's College, Cavan, and UCD. His footballing ability was apparent from an early age and while at St Patrick's he was picked on the Ulster Colleges team in 1942; he played on the St Patrick's team that won the McRory Cup (Ulster Colleges) the following year. In 1945 he went to UCD to study dentistry and played on a UCD team that dominated university football during this period, playing in five Sigerson Cup finals and winning three: 1945, 1947 (as captain), and 1949. Duke was one of the lynchpins of the great Cavan teams of the 1940s, making his senior debut for the county in 1945 and playing in four All-Ireland finals in five years; winning the title in 1947 (against Kerry) and 1948 (against Mayo); and losing to Cork (1945) and to Meath (1949). He won four Ulster SFC medals in that period, and a National League winners medal in 1949; played for the Combined Universities against Ireland that same year, and won a Railway Cup medal with Ulster in 1950, his last major football game. The famous 1947 final against Kerry, which was played in the Polo Grounds in New York, was probably his most important performance for the county. He was originally selected in midfield with Phil ‘Gunner’ Brady; Cavan were six points behind after fifteen minutes when Duke was moved into the half-back line to counteract Kerry's rampaging half-forward Bat Garvey, and this move was crucial in allowing Cavan to assert their superiority and win by four points, 2–11 to 2–7. The following year Duke won his second All-Ireland medal when Cavan weathered a three-goal comeback to beat Mayo 4–5 to 4–4, in a scrappy game played in a gale-force wind.
An intelligent and committed player, with safe hands, a hard but fair tackle, and a long, accurate kick, Duke had an all-action style and red hair that made him a prominent figure on the pitch. His energetic playing style provided a sharp contrast to his modest, quiet, and studious manner off the field. A versatile performer, he lined out at right corner-forward in the 1945 final and was selected initially at midfield in 1947. Duke's 1947 performance established him in the right half-back position for Cavan for the rest of his short career, and together with the great John Joe Reilly (qv) and Simon Deignan (d. 2006) he formed one of the greatest half-back lines in the history of Gaelic football, and the platform on which much of Cavan's success in the late 1940s was built. He was named in the right half-back position on the Cavan team of the century in December 1999. His premature death, and the early death of John Joe O'Reilly two years later, were blows from which Cavan football never really recovered, and his full potential as a footballer was probably never realised. Due to sit his final dentistry exams later that month, he died of pneumonia on 1 May 1950 in St Vincent's Hospital, Dublin. His death was greeted with much shock and grief in Cavan and was so sudden and unexpected that he had been named in the Cavan team to play Kerry in the National League semi-final that weekend. A massive funeral procession down O'Connell St. in Dublin was, in the view of one garda on duty, more like a state funeral than a private one (Anglo-Celt, 6 May 1950), and Jack Mahon writes that ‘the photograph of his funeral through O'Connell Street flanked by his team-mates, led by the captain, John Joe O'Reilly, still hangs in many a Co. Cavan home’ (Mahon, 85). He was unmarried.
Duke was buried in Laragh, Co. Cavan; the GAA ground there has been named in his memory, and a well-known ballad, attributed to the journalist and author Patrick Purcell (qv), pays tribute to ‘Our peerless champion from sweet Stradone’.