Éire Óg’s dream double crowns decade of change in Ennis
David Reidy and Shane O'Donnell of Éire Óg celebrate after their Munster SFC semi-final victory over Loughmore-Castleiney. Pic: Ray McManus/Sportsfile
Rory Hickey couldn’t resist.
He had often been out on the field on county final day upon the final whistle sounding, usually because he was the one that had blown it.
Although he was known primarily for being one of the top football referees in the country, within Clare he was also regularly entrusted with officiating the biggest club game in the county’s hurling calendar. When Kilmaley in 2004 edged Doora-Barefield to win only their second Canon Hamilton, he was the one throwing in the ball. Same when Cratloe made their breakthrough in 2009. A conflict of interest never arose in those whistling years because in the small ball at least his own club Éire Óg weren’t in the business of contesting county finals.
But now the club’s footballers for whom he was serving as an assistant kitman had just won their fourth county title in five seasons. Seven days earlier 15 of the same panel had delivered the club its first county senior hurling title in 35 years. Éire Óg had pulled off its first-ever double, and only the third in Clare GAA history. With Aaron Fitzgerald about to go up to receive the Jack Daly, Hickey got out his phone and called Niall O’Connor, a selector and son to Gerry, the manager of the hurlers. Have you still got the Canon in the boot of the car?
They bolted to the Cloister end car park where O’Connor suddenly hesitated. Is this a good idea? Might it seem a bit cheeky?
Hickey laughingly dispelled any doubt. Jesus, Niall, when will we ever have a chance to do something like this again?
“So Niall gave it to me,” recalls Hickey, “I legged it back towards the stand and then slipped it to the bouldest man on the team, Ciarán Russell, who knew what to do.”
Moments later Fitzgerald, a man who played centre-back with the county for both Colm Collins and Brian Lohan, was simultaneously raising two cups, providing the definitive image of their year.
It reaffirmed a sense of a club and a town operating close to its optimum in Gaelic Games; this past month has seen the other club in the town, The Banner, featuring county hurler Shane Meehan, win promotion to the intermediate hurling ranks. For a long time that wasn’t the case. For decades the right structures weren’t in place.
Up to as recently as 2012 the earliest you could play for an Éire Óg or indeed the Banner was when you moved beyond the U12 age-group. Under the old Ennis urban board, you played for one of four district teams within the town: Dal gCais, Naomh Fhlannáin, Na Fianna and An Boithrín. By playing against each other as well as surrounding clubs like Doora-Barefield and Clarecastle, the rationale was it would provide more playing time and players from the town. It might have been well-intentioned but it wasn’t working.
“You had a lack of identity with the club and as a club,” says current club chairman Brian Howard. “And it was an Éire Óg clubman Bob O’Brien who recognised that and the need to align players at a younger age with a club. It took a fair effort from him and others to convince the powers-that-be [to discard the old urban board] but it’s definitely been for the better.
“A kid now who comes into the club at five or six or seven, they immediately identify with Éire Óg. Red and white are their colours for life. Before the establishment of our Academy, you didn’t have that.”
Everything now stems from the academy. Not just the journey but the craic.
“In an urban area where there are so many other sports and activities and distractions you have to be the best show in town,” notes Hickey. “You’re dealing with parents who might never have kicked a ball in their life or be from the town or country and are bringing their kids to everything. But you want them to go, ‘God, we’re bringing him or her back to Éire – that was great craic they had last week.’
“And often that’s just letting them put cones on their heads, or pick daisies with their friends. Or do cartwheels. Just providing somewhere they feel is a safe, fun, friendly environment. Because to get them back that’s what you’ve to do. It isn’t what was happening years ago but it is now because it’s what keeps them coming back.”
Do that long enough and they find the daisypicker eventually becomes a goalkeeper, the cartwheeler a goalscorer, or at least try to be one. Some of them have even turned out to be dual county champions.
Are they more a hurling club or a football club? Neither, both Hickey and Howard reply. They’re a GAA club, and at that a female as well as male club. On top of being the club’s county board delegate at the start of this decade that saw much change in the workings of Clare GAA, Hickey has also served as the club’s camogie chairperson. Last week he agreed to become the chair of its LGFA subcommittee. The One Club model is one Éire Óg adopted five years ago and which Hickey strongly endorses.
“It might take a year to work out but it’s been brilliant, the people and ideas it brings into the wider club that wouldn’t have been there before.”
Right now the club has 1200 members in total. Larger than any other in Clare which is why they have just completed a new gym and new dressing rooms and acquired a third club field in conjunction with the local community college and Gaelcholáiste. But still they’re not as big as you might think. Because, as Howard points out, their catchment area isn’t as big as you think.
“You go up to Rockmount and Ballyea takes over. The Maxol garage and Clarecastle takes over. Tierney’s and you’ve Doora-Barefield taking over. Go onto the Lahinch Road roundabout and you’re into Banner territory. Forty years ago you might have had a lot of families residing in the town but that’s changed now. More people are living outside the centre of town.”
Hickey himself is a pure Townie out and out. He was even born in the local county hospital just months before maternity services were all transferred out of there and into Limerick. The past month or two has seemed like a dream, winning county finals and now rubbing shoulders in Munster with other stellar dual clubs like Loughmore-Castleiney and St Finbarr’s.
“The Monday night after the county hurling final, I was in the clubhouse and met members of the 1990 team. And in completely different conversations, two of them said to me they were so delighted and relieved we’d won, that they didn’t want to die and be known as having been members of the last Éire Óg team to have won a Canon Hamilton. Now they might have had a few drinks in them but it was a serious statement and it just showed how much it meant to people.
“But that same Monday evening the football setup met upstairs in the clubhouse and every dual player to a man was there. They had already parked winning the hurling that morning. They knew another amazing thing was on. The Double.”
A different kind of Double is still on now.
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