'The afternoon they were relegated was the day Miltown-Malbay decided there’d be no more excuses'

Six years ago Miltown-Malbay, who contest tomorrow’s Munster Club SFC final against Dr Crokes, were relegated to the intermediate ranks in Clare.

It was a low-scoring grind on that October day in Cooraclare with Lissycasey preserving their place at the top-table on a scoreline of 1-7 to 0-8. Gordon Kelly, a member of the Miltown-Malbay defence then and now, is absolutely certain the West Clare club would never have come within touching distance of a provincial senior final but for that defeat on a cold Saturday afternoon in 2012.

Thirty-five-year-old Kelly, a software engineer with Intel in Shannon, has 17 seasons of service with the club’s flagship team.

The vast majority of those can be stashed away under the heading, ‘didn’t do enough’.

Looking back, Kelly can see how too many of those campaigns followed the same regressive pattern; grand promises made in early spring not followed through on, giving way to a fight for survival at the latter end of the year.

Eviction from the senior championship was the wake-up call they so desperately needed.

David O’Brien, a Miltown-Malbay man who’d play a key role in the club’s subsequent revival, remembers the day, or rather the night, of their relegation final loss on October 13.

“The night they were relegated, the players didn’t come back to Miltown-Malbay. They actually went to Ennis for a drink, instead. It was more of a shame thing, they were the team that had been relegated,” O’Brien, a former Clare selector under Colm Collins, recalls.

“They probably thought they’d be executed if they did come back to town - maybe they would have been. That was probably the first time they realised we represent something and we hadn’t been representing it well.”

Having defeated Kilmihil in the 2011 relegation play-off the signs were there. 2012 began promisingly, but following a heavy opening round championship defeat, matters quickly disintegrated. The management team, which included basketball coach and former Dr Crokes footballer James Fleming, resigned and although a group was cobbled together to oversee matters until the end of the season, the damage had been done.

“We had been fighting relegation more times than not over the years. When we went down, it was the shake-up the club needed. It led to a lot of soul-searching,” says Gordon Kelly.

“The turnover in management [mid-season in 2012] showed that as a group of players, we weren’t putting in what was required. We realised after 2012 that what we had been doing as a group, up to then, wasn’t good enough. We wanted to do things better. We wanted to show a bit more respect for our club and parish.”

The work and drive evident in all other facets of the club - the underage section was motoring along nicely, the dressing-rooms had been refurbished and a new stand had been built - was not being matched by the senior team, or intermediate as they now found themselves.

“The afternoon they were relegated was the day they decided there’d be no more excuses,” O’Brien continues.

“They decided that day they were going to work. They stopped expecting things to happen just because the club had been successful in the past.”

Having managed the Kilmihil intermediates in 2012, O’Brien informed the club he could not train a team to beat his own.

Upon vacating that post, he was contacted by a handful of Miltown-Malbay players and agreed to take on the rebuilding job at home.

A return ticket to the senior ranks was promptly secured and although they fell to Clyda Rovers in the 2013 Munster intermediate final, their semi-final win over Currow is the only time in the past 13 years that a Kerry club has been beaten in that particular competition.

“It was very easy for us coming in for 2013. There were no issues that you’d expect from a team that was relegated. You expect drink culture. There was none of that.”

Along with the changed mindset, another key factor in the club’s resurgence was the influx of youth. Conor and Eoin Cleary were still teenagers at the time of the 2013 county intermediate final win, Kieran Malone and Aidan McGuane were minors, while Darragh McDonagh was 20. The last eight of the senior championship was reached a year later, O’Brien’s second and final season at the helm. Michael Neylon succeeded him, the Jack Daly Cup, in October of 2015, returning to the hometown of Willie Clancy for the first time in 25 years.

“We didn’t perform in Munster in 2015 and so that is something we really wanted to correct when we went down to the Nire,” Kelly, a member of the Clare panel since 2006, explains.

“As a club, we’re enjoying the run we are on and just really looking forward to the final. When you come from a position where you are fighting relegation on a regular basis and not competing to a position where you have achieved a bit of success, you appreciate it more.

“It would be fantastic to win a Munster final. Look at the clubs beside us, Kilmurry/Ibrickane and Doonbeg, they have been successful at this level. We have admired them for their success. It would be great to be able to reproduce what they did.”

Irrespective of how they fare at the Gaelic Grounds, they’ll drink in Miltown-Malbay tomorrow night, them and their people proud of the road they’ve travelled.