Cill na Martra and Knocknagree show power of community and culture

As Cill na Martra and Knocknagree meet with both on the cusp of top tier Cork football, their rise is about than trophies. It's about a shared culture of community, volunteerism, and pride.

Cill na Martra face Knocknagree in Sunday's Cork Senior A Football Championship final. Pic: Larry Cummins

Both Cill na Martra and Knocknagree opted against a press event ahead of Sunday's collision.

No harm in that. And certainly no criticism is intended in pointing out such. Outside of the Premier Senior finalists in Cork, where there is a long-standing tradition of inviting the media inside your front gate ahead of the showpiece event, it is at the discretion of all lower-tier finalists whether they choose to throw open their doors and present players for conversation.

These events, mind, are about much more than just access. It is the opportunity they provide for a close-up look at how the respective finalist conducts themselves locally.

In the case of Cill na Martra and Knocknagree, I was fortunate enough to enjoy such a close-up view when paying a visit to both in recent years.

Let’s start with the more recent of the visits. On the June Bank Holiday weekend last year, I spun down to Cill na Martra for their hosting of Comórtas Peile Na Gaeltachta.

Chairman Niall Ó Cróinín, greeting us at the gate, described the weekend as “a station in the house”. And so in advance of neighbours near and far arriving, every man, woman, and child under the local GAA roof came together to ensure the Cill na Martra house was in pristine condition.

They finished and floodlit their second field so that Cill na Martra teams can now train unhindered through the winter. They renovated dressing-rooms. Installed a new boiler. Erected an electronic scoreboard.

A village with neither a shop nor pub successfully fed, watered, and slept hundreds upon hundreds of Gaeltacht guests.

“The volunteerism - the meitheal - has been incredible. When the Comortas finishes, the marquee will be dismantled and taken away, and all the television trucks will roll slowly out of the village, but we will be left with an amazing facility that we are and will continue to be extremely proud of,” Ó Cróinín told this newspaper at full-time last June.

That sense of community and culture was reinforced following their recent county semi-final win over Éire Óg. Manager Morgan O’Sullivan spoke of how his players currently coach many of the younger teams in the club to ensure connection through the grades and generations.

Over to Knocknagree. Ahead of their All-Ireland junior club final appearance in January 2018, the media were invited to the edge of the Cork-Kerry border. Knocknagree, at the time, didn’t have a suitable or sizable clubhouse to invite the media into, and so the Sunday morning event took place in the nearby Community Hall.

The same hall had just been used for a video analysis session. The same hall would be used for an Up for the Match event later that evening.

“Someone once said we are half a parish. We're not, we’re only a third of a parish. The river split us from two-thirds of our parish. This team, they are like the miracle of the loaves and fishes,” Knocknagree manager John Fintan Daly remarked this week.

The Community Hall is no longer leant on for video analysis sessions or the likes. In May of this year, Knocknagree completed the development of a new €900,000 clubhouse. Included is a gym, a referee’s room, kitchen, dining room, meeting room, and two new dressing-rooms, alongside the retrofitted existing ones. The floodlights have also been upgraded.

Inside the main door of the clubhouse is a left wall of inscribed bricks, each one acknowledging those who made a financial contribution of whatever size.

Sunday’s main event down the Páirc brings together two city institutions of size and stature. The curtain-raiser brings together two small communities squeezing every last drop out of the collective.

Knocknagree wore junior clothes only eight years ago. In their first year at intermediate level in 2018, it was Cill na Martra who were last standing.

Both clubs are not to be condescendingly patted on the back for the meitheal that has brought them to the doorstep of topflight Cork football, they are to be held up as an example to everyone else.

Community and culture is every bit as important as the chalking of green, white, and orange flags.

“We are a tiny unit. We shouldn't, on the law of averages, be here at all. And we certainly shouldn't have been here as long as this. And our opposition, which is the interesting thing about Sunday, they must be the nearest thing to us that's in Cork. Both clubs are very similar in lots of ways,” the Knocknagree manager continued.

“Castlehaven have been the standard-bearers of the rural unit in Cork. Having Cill na Martra and Knocknagree there on Sunday is a tribute in some ways to Castlehaven because of the leadership they have given on this front. I suppose the thing that ties us together and has given us such success is culture and respect.”