Gabriel Rangers: Only when you’ve been to the deepest valley...
IF 2016 has been classed as the year of the underdog, then Gabriel Rangers’ story has been a fairytale of sorts. To get to the stage of winning a Cork Junior ‘A’ football championship and reaching a Munster club final are incredible achievements in themselves after years of tears and toil.
THE HISTORY
The journey to provincial club football championship has been long and oft-times heartbreaking for Gabriels. In 1978, they were elevated to the Junior A grade in West Cork and, after years of disappointment [they lost West Cork finals in 1979, 1983 and 2005], finally claimed divisional honours against Clann na nGael in 2010 and again this year against St. Colum’s.
And it was a young curate, Fr. George O’Mahony, who opened the door to success by founding one club for the villages of Ballydehob and Schull in 1973. Both were finding it difficult going it alone , but Fr. O’Mahony saw that Mount Gabriel was common to both villages so Gabriel Rangers was founded.
If a club is defined not just by its success on and off the pitch but by how tight its parish boundary is, consider the distinctive case of Gabriels. The location of the club’s grounds in Knockroe is unique as the pitch is in Schull parish and the Diocese of Cork while the dressing rooms are in Aughadown parish - Ilen Rovers’ country - and the Diocese of Ross.
According to club president, Noel Coakley, Gabriel Rangers can claim to be one of the youngest clubs in the Carbery division, having been founded in 1973. “There has, however, been a long tradition of Gaelic games and clubs in Schull parish and the surrounding townlands.
“For over a century a variety of comparatively successful clubs were established, often different ones being based in the parishs’ two villages of Ballydehob and Schull, but all suffered similar fates by going out of existence after a short time. Looking back the consensus and indeed records would indicate that the Schull based clubs were more football orientated while hurling was the stronger game in Ballydehob.”
Football, it appears, has won out.
THE MANAGER
Mike O’Brien: “At my first training session, we played a game across the pitch and they were running through six inches of mud but the effort was outstanding from them all. I saw something special in this group of players.”
Last February when Castlehaven native, O’Brien, took a phone call from Rangers’ chairman, Aidan Corcoran, he didn’t immediately accept the job of football coach. Like many former Castlehaven players, he was ploughing all his spare time into ‘Haven’s underage system, a boot-room system that has served the club so well down through the years. But O’Brien saw something in Rangers. A kindred spirit of sorts. He took two weeks to make up his mind and on March 1, drove to Gabriel Rangers’ club grounds to take his first training session.
“When I drove in there the first time, I’ll never forget it,” said O’Brien. “The conditions were bad. We played a game across the pitch and they were running through six inches of mud but the effort was outstanding from them all. They had speed and skill; there was something about them. But I never thought at that point we would get to where we are today.” Getting to where they are today took planning, preparation and patience. And it seems such management has paid off handsomely.
“When I arrived it’s fair to say they were all over the shop….all they wanted to do was attack. There was no system. They would leave their fullback line wide open. Their downfall was that they had so system at all. We needed to put a shape to them. We needed to protect our defence because we had good forwards and give them room and space to play.
“I’d have hoped to instil belief in them, but I think there’s a great balance there as well. We’re very solid now defensively, midfield is settled and some great forwards. I think we’re a match for anybody. These guys should have no trouble adapting to intermediate level in 2017.”
There came a turning point in the season. In Bantry against Clann na nGael in the West Cork JAFC.
“They got a goal after a half time and went a point ahead. We needed a response and the response was excellent: we came back and won my 15 points in the end. That was the first night really there was a sign there was something about them. They played to a system and from then on we started playing really good football.”
If O’Brien has brought his footballing nous from Castlehaven, he has also instilled into them the small parish winning mentality that served him extremely well as a senior player with ‘Haven for over 20 years. Playing alongside the likes of Larry Tompkins and Niall Cahalane can have that effect on a player, he feels.
“Momentum is everything really,” adds O’Brien. “If you are playing games week in week out and winning everybody in the club is going well at training. It creates a phenomenal buzz. That’s what is happening in Schull/Ballydehob now. When I played with Castlehaven that was the thing. Even though we definitely should have won more. That mentality has come to Gabriel Rangers now.
“I played with ‘Haven seniors for 20 years. The first county in 1989 was the best memory. The win over Nemo in Bandon in ‘94 was another. We had so many big days and occasions and in Munster we had some brilliant days out.
“’Haven are proof of what a small parish can achieve. In Castlehaven it is a religion. The teams that won the junior and intermediate brought us on, drove us on. I came onto the senior team in ‘81, and it took us eight years to win the county senior title. They were hard years. The Barr’s and Nemo were very strong, but we were unlucky too before winning the county in ‘89. Beaten by a point here and there.
“The special ingredient too is the small club mentality. Everyone pulls together. Everyone trained hard. Out on the pitch everyone would die for each other. That’s the Castlehaven mentality, a never say-die mentality. That was bred into me as a player and that’s what I’m trying to breed into this Gabriel Rangers team.
“We had the talent; there was some savage players there like Larry (Tompkins) and Niall (Cahalane). That whole team is built around the fierce proud community from where you come.”
Since coming on board O’Brien has been impressed by the players’ attitude, many of whom study or work in Cork city, Dublin, England and France. Despite Rangers’ geography, players never complain about coming home to train. All but four of the 26-man panel are living or working outside Schull/Ballydehob. “They want to come back and play,” adds O’Brien. “We have players up in Cork city, in Dublin, in England, in France but they will come back and play. They are in a place they’ve never been before and in a way it might make it easier for them to make the long journey, the sacrifice. Our journey has given everybody a lift.
“I’m delighted for these lads. I saw it the first night I went down there training. They always had the talent but it was getting a system together, instilling belief and creating a togetherness and the small parish syndrome can create that togetherness. Winning follows that. Momentum can follow and we reached a Munster final I think because of all those factors.”
As for 2017 and breathing the new oxygen of intermediate football, O’Brien envisages them thriving in this new atmosphere.
“Intermediate football will suit them. You’re playing in a higher grade there is more room to express yourself, there’s some great talent in the club, minors coming through.”
THE PLAYER
“This is the medal I always wanted to win, so all past disappointments don’t really matter now, because to be involved in a county title success with the club makes up for everything.” – Pat Nolan after the JAFC final success against Shamrocks.
Charlie Haughey was Taoiseach, Ronald Reagan was still President of the free world, and Snickers was just a plain old Marathon bar. The year was 1989. And a 17-year-old Pat Nolan made his junior football debut for Gabriel Rangers.
Today, in the Donald Trump-era, a 45-year-old Nolan is already looking forward to Rangers’ first tilt for the club at intermediate level in 2017. “I don’t remember the first game and there have been coaches from inside the club and outside and club…how many…I’m not certain.
“In ’89 we had a good team. At the time there were a lot of good teams in west Cork.
“If you think back Dohenys, Rosscarbery, Newcestown and Ilen Rovers were all junior and Tadhg MacCarthaigh were very strong at that time. Many of those clubs went on to senior.
“If you talk to anyone from west Cork they would say it’s the hardest divisional title to win. The fact is there are so many teams at the same level. Even at the start of 2016 you could pick six teams who would have a reasonable chance of winning the championship.”
Over 27 years playing for the club’s first team, Nolan experienced few low points. Despite emigration and its geographical challenge, Rangers never struggled to get 15 on the field for championship. As for any hidings, he cannot remember many.
“We were always reasonably competitive. We never got thrashed. There was one occasion when Ilen Rovers were particularly strong and we played them inside in Bantry and lost by maybe 12, 13 points. Take that game out of it and we would never have lost a championship match by more than three, four points max.
“We are always reasonably competitive but never quite good enough to put four or five good performances together and beat two or three of the top teams to get there. We could always beat a team on any particular day but to go out and beat strong teams on consecutive occasions, we weren’t able to do that or have the personnel and go on to win the next game.
“(But) there was never a time that we struggled to field a team. A couple of years ago alright we were struggling to get teams out for league matches but that was owing to injury and people going away but there was never a case that we would never be able to field a team for championship games anyway.”
He could have taken the easy option and retire years back.
Living near Mallow in north Cork hasn’t dimmed his enthusiasm for the GAA. Or taking the long road home for training and matches three times a week. As he says himself, GAA is his only hobby and what better way to enjoy than to be still expressing yourself on the field.
“It’s hard to know exactly what makes me go back season after season. Outside of the GAA I don’t have any other sport that I’m into. I played soccer a couple of years down home. Hurling and football were the two games that I had any interest in. Every young fellow wanted to play in the Premiership or the First Division when I was growing up but when I came to 15 or 16 the GAA took over and that was it. I’m coming from a family that is very GAA-orientated.
“I’m not living down home, I’m travelling from near Mallow to Ballydehob, 84 miles each way. You’re travelling home and you’re meeting fellows from home and you’re keeping the connection.
“I’m a homebird, I enjoy going back to Schull. If it’s for football or hurling or going home I enjoy going back there. If you’re the type who hasn’t the same ‘grá’ for the place you wouldn’t keep going as long as I have.
“Then on the other side I’ve been lucky with injury…..I’ve had a few that haven’t kept me out of the game for too long. I had hip surgery a couple of years ago that kept me out for two or three months but I was fine again.” He’s old enough too to have played with the fathers of some of his current team-mates.
“One or two of the younger fellows. Jerry O’Brien’s son Eric is playing today. I played with Jerry when I started playing.”
He speaks highly of their coach Mike O’Brien who has done so much to inculcate the values and attitudes of Castlehaven into Rangers. “Even before Mike arrived we have had a nice set of forwards. Our strength was in our forward line. Our backs just needed to be tweaked a little. Mike is extremely good at man-management. He’s a gentleman in a way……you actually like to perform for Mike.
“He’s not like your typical outside coach, comes in and does a job.
“With Mike, you’d nearly think he was a Gabriel Rangers man himself and that has rubbed off us as well the fact that he’s so passionate about it: he’s well able to read the game. At senior level with Castlehaven he has done it. He saw that we were leaking scores at the back up to this year and put in a system where we’ve tightened up in the back and get a ball to the forwards pretty quickly.”
The journey to even better days seems to be only beginning for Rangers.
Creating a history and with characters like Mike O’Brien and PatNolan driving the agenda, this fairy tale may include many more chapters.
‘I was very close to being paralysed’
Giant Gabriel Rangers midfielder, Stephen O’Mahony, has admitted he was “close to being paralysed” from the waist down before emergency surgery saved his football career.
The former Cork minor and U21 footballer had surgery on an L4 spinal disc in April 2014, with his surgeon describing O’Mahony’s case as one of the worst he had come across in his medical career.
O’Mahony missed two years of football and became so frustrated being sidelined, that this staunch clubman even forgot that an important club championship fixture was taking place.
Today O’Mahony’s L4 spinal disc rests inside a small tub, wrapped in plastic bags at the bottom of his mother’s fridge in Ballydehob.
“Not many people can say their L4 disc is at the bottom of their fridge,” O’Mahony, 23, told the Southern Star newspaper.
“If you squashed some mince meat from a supermarket, that’s what it looks like.
“After my surgery in 2014, the surgeon put it in a little tub and gave it to me, and unless oxygen gets to it, it will live forever in this tub. I kept it as a keepsake.” He added: “I must have got a belt in my back but I neglected it and kept playing through the pain barrier, thinking it would be okay.
“I had a slipped disc into my spinal cord which was one seventh of its natural size so I was very close to being paralysed from the waist down.
“I was very lucky. I had emergency surgery back in April 2014. The surgeon said it was one of the worst cases that he had seen.
“When I was away, I genuinely fell out of love with the GAA. I had 15 months of rehab and I missed two years with Gabriels so that was frustrating.”
GABRIEL RANGERS: ROUND BY ROUND
Gabriel Rangers 2-14 Castlehaven 0-9
Gabriel Rangers 2-15 Clann na nGael 1-6
Gabriel Rangers 2-7 Kilmacabea 0-9
Gabriel Rangers 2-9 St. Colum’s 1-8
Gabriel Rangers 1-10 Ballyclough 1-8
Gabriel Rangers 2-9 Knocknagree 0-14
Gabriel Rangers 2-13 Shamrocks 2-7
Gabriel Rangers 2-11 Meelick (Limerick) 0-2
Gabriel Rangers 1-13 Clonoulty-Rossmore (Tipperary) 1-4
Gabriel Rangers 0-10 Glenbeigh-Glencar (Kerry) 2-16
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