Almost There

In Dunloy, they speak of the teams who almost made it — and vow not to be one of them.Mark Gallagher visited the Antrim village where hurling is king.

IN THE Village Inn, talk has turned to Clan na Gael. Until the people of Dunloy travel down, en masse, to their fourth All-Ireland final, this is where the final will be analysed and dissected, the community's only pub. And they know their history here.

Clan na Gael ruled Roscommon and Connacht football in the '80s, but failed five times at the final hurdle. No one team is chosen by the gods to win an All-Ireland. As Malachy Molloy, the man who will lift the Tommy Moore Cup later this afternoon if Dunloy finally secure it, says: "Newtown aren't going to give us the title on mere sentiment."

This year's club finals are in danger of drowning in a sea of sentiment and cliche. In football, a group of native speakers take on a Galway village side made up of a handful of families.

In hurling, two villages of similar size, where there is a camán behind every front door, meet. To use a phrase, this afternoon in Croke Park is the personification of the GAA's heart and soul.

Certainly, a Thursday night in Dunloy illustrates the depth of feeling for the games in this place, the way an identity is expressed in a sport. Hurling consumes the life of the village. It is grim up north tonight, but that doesn't matter. The community has converged on the local primary school, to watch children receive awards for drawing their heroes. There is a buzz around the place. The All-Ireland final is only days away and, surely, Dunloy can't come back disappointed again.

Gary O'Kane arrives in the clubhouse, Celtic shirt on his back. Martin O'Neill's side are playing Barcelona tonight, and O'Kane keeps one eye on the proceedings throughout the interview. More than anyone else on this Dunloy team, O'Kane defines the success of the past 14 years.

Down the stairs from the clubhouse, the No 2 shirt O'Kane wore in the 1989 All-Ireland final hangs on the wall. He was just 18, but already considered one of the best defenders in the county. This week, the state of O'Kane's hand is dominating conversations in the village. Unless he defies medicine, it is likely Pappy, the spiritual leader of this side, will start on the bench.

"That can work both ways. Obviously, if he doesn't play, we are going to miss Gary's influence and the way he can steady nerves, but it might also spur the boys into doing it for Pappy, the way they did it for Liam [Richmond, Dunloy's talented wing-forward] in the semi-final. And we can always bring Gary on if we need him," is manager Sean McLean's take on the hand injury that is robbing his side of their most important, and famous, player.

O'Kane is one of five survivors from what is termed "the 90 team," the first Dunloy side to capture the Antrim senior hurling title. It took the club 82 years to win their first hurling title, and now O'Kane has nine senior county medals. The story is astonishing. Dunloy won three football titles in the '20s, three more in the '30s. But that was it. For most of their existence they were starved of success. Club president Jim McLean recalls the club producing good hurling sides in the '60s, but there was always someone better. Loughgiel, for example, the nearest neighbouring nationalist village to Dunloy.

Like all the other clubs that will run onto Croke Park this afternoon, Dunloy's success is based on a juvenile programme. "We were blessed with a few people who were determined to create good young teams, guys like Seamus Elliot and Willie Richmond, the wise men of the '80s," Sean McLean says.

"Before they came along, there was no real structure at under-age level. Young fellas were always playing hurling, but there was no development of their stick-work or ball skills. That started to change around 1980 or so."

Within four years, the fruits were already evident. In 1984, Dunloy won every under-age title in the county. Six years later, they won their first county senior title.

Martin Corrigan, the club secretary, laughs wistfully at the memory. Despite the under-age success of the '80s, Dunloy were finding it difficult to make the breakthrough in the senior ranks. At the club convention in 1989, Corrigan noted: "The club are still a long way from winning their first senior title." There was widespread agreement on the floor. A year isn't a long time in the history of a GAA club.

Since then, things have just got betterr. O'Kane was 19 when the team arrived back to the Village Inn with their first county trophy. That was a night and a half. It took them three years to get back there. After the second title, they couldn't stop winning. Pappy was one of five players to create a record of nine county senior medals last year (his brother Gregory, Nigel and Alistair Elliot and Sean Richmond are the others). Winning inside of the county and province has become second nature to them; they want to win the big one.

"In the past, we have always played well in the semi-finals and failed to play in the final," O'Kane accepts. "People have said that our semi-finals were our finals. We were really disappointed with our performance against Birr last year, we had ran them to a couple of points in the semi-final the year before and we thought we could take them. To go down to Croke Park and not perform in an All-Ireland final, there isn't a worse feeling."

Measures have been taken to ensure doesn't happen this year. They staggered their training, ensuring the peak wouldn't be reached until this afternoon. They did enough and just that to defeat Portumna. In the Village Inn, away from the mild chaos of watching Celtic in the UEFA Cup, people will admit it has to be this year for Dunloy.

By any standards in modern GAA, Dunloy's success story stands out. Although they are frequently referred to as men from the glens, Dunloy is nowhere near the Glens. Cushendall and Ballycastle, they are the clubs from the Glens; the people of Dunloy find themselves bang in the middle of the Northern Bible belt, stronghold of the Orange Order and DUP. It is surrounded by Protestant towns like Ballymena, Ballymoney and Harryville, places where Big Ian is revered and the GAA is considered the sporting wing of the Provisional IRA.

Given its location, the village hardly emerged unscathed by the Troubles. While only a few Protestants live on the outskirts of the village, Dunloy does have an Orange lodge, where for years the order marched from the Orange Hall to the Presbyterian Church in Dunloy via Main Street. In 1996, things blew up. Dunloy were arriving home after winning another county title. The parade was delayed. By the time, the buses brought supporters back from Casement Park, there was going to be a stand-off.

The RUC, misreading the situation, deployed 12 police in Dunloy, nowhere enough. The situation calmed, but the undercurrent of violence swept through the town for days. A resident's association was set up, with crossover from those involved in the club. Two years after the stand-off, the Parades Commission decreed there would be no more parades in Dunloy until the Orangemen sat down and talked with the residents.

It has always been so. Gary O'Kane remembers in the late '80s, how the senior team would have to train in Ballymoney community centre. One evening, after training, a group of young hardline loyalists were waiting for the hurling team to emerge. A mass brawl ensued.

In Dunloy, hurling means identity. "That is one of the great things about this success, it sticks in their throats to see us doing so well." O'Kane says. That's if they notice at all.

Ballymoney is only six miles away, famous for Joey Dunlop, a man equally respected on either side of the teardown Northern society. But, as Jimmy Gaston says, you could spend a day talking to everyone in that town and not one person would know Dunloy are contesting their fourth All-Ireland final today.

The village has had to survive on its own, dancing to their own beat and playing their own game. The situation is improving, Malachy Molloy reckons, but you would still need to be a very brave man to walk around Ballymoney holding a hurley. Funny thing is the development of hurling in the area can be traced back to the Ulster-Scots Protestant tradition. Partly, at any rate. At the turn of the last century, a form of shinty was played in the area. Hurling developed in part from that, according to Jim McLean.

In the Village Inn, there is a sense that this is finally Dunloy's year. Guys like the O'Kanes and Elliots would be around forever. Some of this team has been on the go for 14 years, others for 10 years. The club won their first minor title in 15 years last summer, so there is new talent climbing the ladder.

What makes a team stick together for so long? Croke Park should send shudders down the spines of Dunloy players, such has been their performances there in the past, but each is itching to get back.

"There was no big plan this year," Conor Canning says. "I don't think any club team can set out at the start of the year and say we are going all the way to an All-Ireland final. First you have to think about getting out of your county, and that is often the hardest thing of all. We had five players, players like Pappy, who were going for nine county senior medals, and we had to win the county title for them. After that, it was just a case of taking each game as it came."

They almost fell at the final hurdle in Antrim. Loughgiel, the only Antrim team to have won the All-Ireland in 1983, were the opponents. Dunloy had never beaten Loughgiel in any final and with 15 minutes to go, it looked like the game would rail against current form and conform to history.

In the final 15 minutes, Dunloy who had hurled badly all through the county championship switched on. "We didn't give Loughgiel a touch in the final quarter," Sean McLean recalls proudly. "We only hurled for 15 minutes the entire game and that was enough to beat them."

That is what Dunloy are capable of. Doing enough in small spurts to kill off teams. When they have come to Croke Park, they realised that is not enough. Newtown's unorthodox style offers a new challenge, but one they are confident of overcoming, even if some of the players will be using Ben O'Connor's hurls to do so.

THERE isn't much in Dunloy: one pub, a church, a primary school. "It's often said if you could take a ruler and draw a line from the church to the hurling pitch and the school, that would be Dunloy," Molloy smiles. "That is all there is. The pitch and school are beside each other, so we would just get off school and head to the pitch."

The Village Inn is the only pub, there's a shop that sells everything, and a local Sinn Féin office. Yet, everyone lives around here. Conor Canning and Sean McMullan live in Belfast, because of work commitments, but the other players are bunched together in the village. Hurling has kept them here.

"That is all there is in Dunloy, hurling, hurling, hurling," O'Kane says. "Maybe people in the south don't understand that, but come in here on a championship Sunday and everyone is crowded around the television, watching the Sunday Game. That is all anyone talks about."

Most of the team are tradesmen, painters, joiners, builders. Get up early enough during the week in Dunloy and you will see this afternoon's players waiting for the lines of white vans that take them to jobs in Belfast and beyond. One of the big local contractors, Dixon, employs over 100 men, many of whom will line out for Dunloy today.

Night is closing in at the Village Inn. There are wizened evocations of clubs from Roscommon and Carlow, teams that kept coming back to Croke Park and never winning. They know Newtown are the story this year, not Dunloy and that suits them fine. For years, they kept the game alive, kept the flag flying in an area where they were always outsiders.

As the collection of old programmes and scrapbooks in Jimmy Gaston's house shows, this is a story 14 years in the making.