Dromina deserving of the limelight
Time enough for them. Dromina have standards: they go all the way back to the start of the Association.
There were two men from the village in Hayes’ Hotel the day the GAA was formed, for instance, which is more than some counties can claim.
Since that day in 1884, they’ve seen both sides of the rainbow. The club dissolved in 1946 but they made it back to contest the North Cork Junior B final in 1954. Kildorrery won and they never let Dromina forget it.
It took Dromina another 24 years to win the Junior B title, but 25 years after that they won the county Junior A title and made it to intermediate.
They’ve never let Kildorrery forget that. Why would they? Now they’re opening a new complex — with a landscaped walking route around it, a stand and a top-class playing surface.
Back in 1995 when the pitch was bought it cost £45,000 for about 16 acres, and £28,000 of that was raised by the people of the locality, an interest-free loan. It was repaid to them over five years.
Not bad going for a community of maybe 600 people at the outside.
Dromina have never lacked initiative. When they considered what to do to help fund the last stages of the pitch development, they sold some land, on which five houses were built.
Their club lottery keeps them afloat now, says chairman Jim Brennan, who personifies their drive.
He did his stint in Britain in the seventies, when he and another dozen Dromina natives backboned the all-conquering Thomas McCurtains team.
Most, if not all, lived in the same place — Seven Kings, between Romford and Ilford.
The way Brennan tells it, if you walked into The Joker pub on a Friday or Saturday, night, you might as well have been in Dromina.
The recent boom was a godsend to the small north Cork club, because full employment meant they had a full pick. Now that the wheel has turned again, turning out fifteen for a team is a challenge. It’s a situation many other clubs around the country can identify with.
“We’re struggling for players at the moment,” says Brennan.
“The present team are on their last run, in reality. Some of them are 38, 39, but my God, they’ve given everything, you couldn’t ask for anything more.
“In three or four years we should have a nice group coming through again, so we’ll try to squeeze another couple of years out of those lads, the likes of Liam Hayes, Andrew and Donal O’Shaughnessy, James Hamilton, Johnny Deele, Donal Morrissey — they’re well into their thirties but they’re still our best players.
“Last Sunday we played Milford and Liam Hayes was like a young fella at centre-back. Best man on the field.”
They’ll keep going, though. Dromina have seen off hard times before.
The likes of Jack Morrissey, Bill Collins, and Batt O’Donovan helped keep the show on the road. So did Dan Barrett and Paddy Joe Keane.
“Great men,” says Brennan.
“There should be monuments put up to them because they kept the club going.
“There’s a plaque on the wall of the clubhouse commemorating a game played here between Ballyhea and Dromina in 1888. Club secretary then was William Hayes — grandfather of Bill Collins. It carries on.”
It does. The money raised paid for the material for the clubhouse, but voluntary work by local tradesmen, like Donal Douglas, built it.
And yesterday is their day. Before the game the Dromina men point out they’ve got three roads leading out of the village, so there’ll be no delay getting away afterwards; the girls selling programmes are chatty and helpful; and the game itself provides the right result.
A neighbour’s child, Jamie Coughlan of Newtown, helps himself to two goals.
Still, the Dromina men aren’t blinkered.
They thought Willie Hyland of Laois was the best man on the field, so he took home the man of the match trophy.
That’s Dromina. They have standards.
* Contact: michael.moynihan@examiner.ie; Twitter: MikeMoynihanEx
