KILMACUD'S "AULD SEGOTIA" HAS A TALE TO TELL!
First published in 2009 but well worth another outing ...... !
We always welcome contributions from Kilmacud club people to this site, something that the Submit Content link on the menu makes so easy. This well-conceived article by stalwart member, Matt Cahill, is a prime example of how a member can contribute to and enrich our understanding of club history: his is a very personal and well-informed perspective. Matt grew up with the club, playing his part as a player during the formative years and he continues to be active, with his young sons, in the underage sections. I hope you enjoy his reflections on what Kilmacud Crokes second All Ireland Club Championship means to him, following the struggle to progress and reach the top over the past few decades. Well worth a read by all Crokers!!
P.S. if anyone has a photo or two to complement this article wed love to include - please email (a scanned version?) to kccrokes@gmail.comOur evergreen and stately Sequoia tree stands tall and placidly as ever amidst the noise and haste. Her bark is getting a little crumblier by the year but the old sentinel will outlive us all. Many the comings and goings has it seen but none quite like the homecoming for the All-Ireland Club Football Champions of 2009 on St Patricks Day. What a fitting jubilee year present for the founding fathers!
Little did they think that the tiny acorn would grow so tall. I thought of the pair of opposition begrudgers who sat beside me at one game and said "sure ye are a League of Nations, how many country players do you have?" Later that evening, that intangible village feeling, that sense of community which resonated in the night air as the team arrived to the cheers of delighted supporters was the perfect answer to those curmudgeons. In creating that spirit, the victory was enlarged and will forge the next generation of footballers.
Young Robert Shaw, whom we lost recently, came to mind. How he would have loved to have been there - at the Dublin and Tyrone game just a short while ago he was so full of life and enthusiasm for playing the game. May God rest him! In the boardroom, commandeered for the evening as a sweetshop for the melee of kids, the portrait of one of those founding fathers, Michael De Burca smiled benignly on the scene.
The memories coursed through the brain. More recently they are of my children in the Nursery on Saturday mornings and the radiant and simple joy of participation in their weekly "All-Ireland" finals under the superb organisation of Liam Coughlan and Donie Dowling in hurling and the dynamic duo of Daphne Lamb and Laura Thornton in football. All too soon they graduate! Other stand-out events have been the yearly Mini-All-Irelands orchestrated by maestro Paraic McDonald - indelible and fun memories for thousands of kids since incepted and September Saturdays since the early seventies full of seven-a-sides which endowed adult players with countless joys and unforgettable experiences.
A PITCH IS BORN BY THE POOLSIDE
Our tree is mistress of all she surveys. In the mid-sixties she oversaw the creation of the club pitch which in 1985 was named Páirc De Burca. The chasm - once a quarry - in front of the tree was filled in with the rubble from the newly-built Stillorgan Shopping centre - a first in Ireland - and thanks to the pain-staking work of many our home pitch was fashioned. Legend has it that the builders paid one shilling per lorry load to the club for the privilege. Stones and rocks were picked from the pitch for a long time afterwards. For many years underneath the trees friendly branches nestled quaint and futuristically designed dressing rooms. When fire claimed the dressing-rooms our resilient tree was relatively unsinged. Like many, it heaved a mournful sigh at the passing of the grand portico at the entrance to the old house.
The tree glances over a shoulder and there is the swimming pool - another remarkable achievement of the sixties in Stillorgan. An evergreen Glenalbynite and Galwegian John Mitchell still manages the pool after all these years. For many a year he ran the show in the big house. In the old hall, long gone, at one time blossomed some of the best table-tennis players in Ireland. Outside many an epic tennis game and tournament have taken place. Close by is another great initiative of the sixties in Stillorgan i.e the centre of excellence for Ten Pin bowling, Stillorgan Bowling Alley. One of our own, Danny Ryan, represented Ireland in International competition before Hurling and Football took over completely. Yes, this place has been very busy and creative over the past half-century alright!
MAKING THE SENIOR BREAK-THROUGH
So much has happened at Páirc De Burca. I recall very well the triumphs in the senior hurling championships in 1974 and 1976. Much hard work was done on the home pitch under trainer/coach Frank Power who left no stone unturned in producing super-fit hurlers including dual-playing greats Danny Ryan and P.J Hough. Cork in time would boast the rock, Diarmuid OSullivan, but Kilmacud had the original of the species, Hough, P.J - a rock in both codes!
There the first tentative steps were made towards Senior football under the guidance of Kilmacud Cavan Mafia member John Sheridan and the wisdom of mastermind full-forward and ex-monaghan great Paddy Forde. We endured the countless punishing training sessions under Jerry Parr, who also cajoled us from mid-field on match days, from 1977 onwards as we strove at first to be a serious team and then cruised to Senior football playing an exciting and carefree brand of football.
There was little coverage of club football then but in the build up to the semi-final of the Senior Championship in June of 1979, there in our Senior Championship debut season, our friend and erstwhile team-mate Declan Downs of the Sunday Independent labelled the team "Jerrys Flyers." Alas an ageing Civil Service team, well marshalled by Pat ONeill mugged us by a point in as clear a case of "evening-light robbery" you ever saw. That balmy June Friday night in Croke Park remains etched in the memory. A painful one-point defeat but a very high standard had been set and a clear agenda to be the very best.
On another fine Friday evening in July of that same halcyon year of 1979 Glenalbyn hosted a marvellous Senior league-deciding game. A young Ballymun Kickhams team bristling with talent and led by the brilliant Barney Rock barn-stormed to a seven point half time lead. Within ten dream-like minutes in a trademark and devastating barrage of points and goals Kilmacud were seven points ahead - another trophy clinched in what was a bittersweet but memorable year. Unforgettable stuff from great forwards such as Brian Bonner, Declan Carr, Padraig Hogan, Paddy Ryan and Co. (The team also won the unofficial All Ireland Club Championship that year i.e the Garda-Guinness Invitational Tournament - ach sin scéal eile!) The sing-song afterwards in the rambling old house involving both teams led by meistersinger Jerry Parr was just as memorable.....
REACHING FOR THE SUMMIT
The seemingly inevitable Senior Championship win(s) did not follow for that team and only full-back, and former Dublin player, Dermot Maher played on to win a Senior Championship medal in 1992. Over the years since the watershed year of 1979 there have been many triumphs and disappointments too. Six senior Football Championships have been won, three Leinster and two All-Ireland club championships - not forgetting a great Junior Football championship win under John Sheridans tutelage in 1985 (Johns work did not finish there as he has been a driving force in the development of Ladies Football in the club which has gone from strength to strength.) In much the same way that Manchester United have supplanted Liverpool as top dogs in the Premiership, Kilmacud have overtaken St Vincents as the perennial championship favourites. Add in the fine triumphs in the All-Ireland Football Féile competitions of 2003 and 2008 and the cup runneth over.....
Meanwhile the hurling revolution is gathering pace. Last year the senior hurling team reached the County Final and in 2005 there was a seminal victory in the All-Ireland Hurling Féile competition. The finer skills are being honed with due diligence at the impressive hurling arena and wall. Niall Corcoran, Ross and Rory OCarroll amongst others are excelling in the resurgence of the County teams. It wont be long before Kilmacud Crokes will be climbing the Senior Hurling Championship winning rostrum again.......
The stories of the great journeys to win both All-Irelands have been well told in the reams of press coverage which club games are now given. Each side and generation puts their own stamp on the story and enhances it but is influenced by the preceding ones in many ways. The 1979 side supplied Jerry Parr as trainer, Dom Twomey (player and coach on earlier teams) as selector and Tommy Lyons as manager to the 1995 All-Ireland winning management team. As back up to manager Paddy Carr, the current edition have Gerry Walsh, a wonderful right-half back on the 1979 team, and Mark Duncan, who played on the 1995 team, as selectors.
Our latest All-Ireland success received the celebration it deserved. So much the better that the achievement was hewn from the unforgiving rock of adversity and then capped by a sublime final performance that brooked no argument as to its merit. Children played in happy bedlam inside the clubhouse and outside on the pitch until way past bed-time but what of it! The adults dissected the days events and whole teams from previous eras remembered their own triumphs and losses. The party went on till 5.a.m at least and the sing-song rivalled the epics of other times although the bar has been set very high in that department as well. For this ex-St Laurences BNS pupil there was an added bonus in meeting five classmates from the class 68:- Martin Johnston, Gabriel Duffy, Jed and Vinny Frawley and Denis McSweeney - all local lads drawn to the village of Glenalbyn to celebrate this great event.
So much has happened over the fifty years the club has been in existence and nearly as many summers have passed since our own glory days in the street leagues of the mid-sixties. Still we all look forward with great expectation to the sound of boot on leather and the clash of the ash around Glenalbyn and to the games yet to be played, the chapters yet to be written and the songs to be sung - all watched over maternalistically by our tree for many a long day yet - le cunamh Dé. Perhaps she re-transmits magically the knowledge and history so silently absorbed to all in her shadow. Shes not a protected species for no reason ..... long may our noble landmark endure and listen to the music of our lives and times!