'There’s no more worrying about Stacks, Rahillys or Mitchels. We’re Na Gaeil'
Na Gaeil joint captains Diarmuid O’Connor and Kieran Dineen celebrate victory over Beaufort in the Kerry IFC final at Fitzgerald Stadium, Killarney. The club has made huge strides and will go into Sunday’s Munster IFC final against Corofin at Mallow in confident mood.
he line could have been plucked from this week’s edition of as senior champions Austin Stacks and their intermediate counterparts Na Gaeil head to Thurles and Mallow respectively in the hope of bringing Munster titles back to Tralee.
However, it belongs to a very different football era in the county town — a time when bragging rights had a definite pecking order. You had princes and paupers, aristocrats and artisans. And as much as the storied Stacks knew where they stood in Tralee’s football story, so did a fledgling Na Gaeil club valiantly trying to make a mark.
It was a 1986 cutting just after Kerry’s latest three-in-a-row and when Stacks stalwarts Ger Power and Mikey Sheehy followed up winning their eighth All-Ireland medals by helping their club win a landmark 10th county senior title.
These successes captured the headlines, but of greater significance to football folk in the Oakpark area of town, just north of Stacks’ Rock Street heartland, was the Novice championship claimed by Na Gaeil as they edged Renard after a replay in Killorglin.
“It was huge,” remembers club trustee Dónal Lucey, who has been involved in Na Gaeil since its formation in late 1978. “Huge, because we finally won something. We weren’t competing with the likes of Stacks, Rahillys or Mitchels in Tralee then, but this was the start,” he adds.
It’s been a long journey for a club that emerged out of a Community Games team in 1978, but for those involved since, it’s been a lesson in perseverance, hard work, and always believing they could eventually get there.
“When the club was growing there was no tradition of getting places playing for Na Gaeil,” admits Dónal Rooney, who managed the club to All-Ireland junior honours in 2020. “There was no tradition of playing with the county 21s or seniors — the limit the club was setting itself was getting lads on the Kerry minors.”
“We didn’t have huge ambitions,” admits Lucey, “You could say the majority of the first 10 years was about fundraising, but the very first Na Gaeil team did have the great and now late Kerry footballer Séamus Murphy as captain.”
Murphy was amongst a very select group of Kerry footballers — along with Mick O’Dwyer, Mick O’Connell, and Johnny Culloty, he won senior All-Irelands on the field in three decades from the 1950s to the ‘70s.
“It was huge to have someone of Séamus’ stature,” says chairman Tim Lynch, “because at a public meeting it was Séamus who put forward the motion to form the club and his brother Pádraig, the club’s first president, came up with the Na Gaeil name. Séamus was also vice-chairman and played, so we had an All-Ireland footballer from the start”.
Much has changed since that initial link to Kerry teams provided by the four-time All-Ireland winner — Séamus Murphy’s son Colm became the club’s first county minor in 1984, while the team contesting Sunday’s Munster final against Clare champions Corofin is top-heavy with county seniors, U20s, and former All-Ireland minor winners.
“When we were young, it was a case if you wanted to progress and were a good young underage footballer there were knocks on the door from the Stacks and Strand Road to come down to them,” reveals Rooney.
“William Kirby won a minor county league with Na Gaeil in 1991. Stacks manager Wayne Quillinan was on that panel too. They went to Stacks. That’s what you did to get on.
“That’s long and truly gone now. Anyone who starts with Na Gaeil finishes with Na Gaeil. There’s tradition there now and nobody has to go anywhere to achieve their goals of going on to play with the county,” he adds.
“That tradition,” says Lynch, “has grown over many years as everyone built on what was done behind them. It’s looking to the future with an eye to the past. Winning a second novice title in 1994 was important, but we realised we could do a lot better than novice football.
“In the last 15 years the big drive in the juvenile section has been very important. We made sure that all our coaches had their foundation level and Level 1 courses done.”
The big push to join their illustrious neighbours at senior level came after 2016 as Na Gaeil moved from Division 4 to Division 1 of the County League in successive years; they narrowly lost out in junior county finals in ’16 and ’18 to Glenbeigh-Glencar and Beaufort respectively, before finally making the breakthrough with victory over St Senan’s in ’19.
“We’ve never looked back since then,’ says Rooney, “and I really saw what was coming two years ago as we prepared for the All-Ireland final in Croke Park. Five lads from the county minors came in and trained with us — Devin Burns, Enda O’Connor, Óisín Maunsell, Tomás Hanafin, and Jack Sheehan. They weren’t able to play because they were too young, but they all started the 2021 intermediate final against Beaufort. That’s a huge influx from two years ago”.
“Going from novice, to junior, to intermediate and finally to senior was the goal and the dream,” says Lynch, “and the fact it has happened now changes everything. It’s a level playing field in town and that changes mentalities.
“We are Na Gaeil now and people buy into it — that happens when you have lads like the Barrys, Diarmuid O’Connor, and Stefan Okunbor in with Kerry. When fellas are proud to wear the gear around town, you know we’ve arrived. There would have been that thing, ‘oh ye’re not a senior club’ but now we were. We’re up there now and there’s no more worrying about Stacks, Rahillys or Mitchels. We’re Na Gaeil and that’s all we think about.”
It’s why they’ll leave Tralee for Mallow on Sunday in expectation. And confidence.
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