‘Long life to the gallant old Blues’ as St Finbarr's reignite old glories

St. Finbarrs' Ian Maguire after the Munster final win. Picture: INPHO/Laszlo Geczo

For those in St Finbarr’s with long memories, last Sunday week in Thurles presented a challenge.

Where did their hard-fought win over Austin Stacks rate among the Blues’ biggest days?

Club President John Cremin immediately reached back to the mid-60s for comparisons, but at that he was just warming up.

“‘Long life to the gallant old Blues’ goes back to 1926, and they’ve reignited that old mantra,” says Cremin.

“If you look up synonyms for ‘gallant’ you find ‘brave’ and ‘courageous’ and ‘heroic’, and this team has been all of those.

“We’d be hoping for one more gallant performance this weekend to get us over the line, and Saturday will be another challenge, but the occasion of the Munster club final was as good as I can ever remember in the Barrs.

“I can go back to the 1965 county final between the Barrs and the College, and I’ve seen a lot of games and occasions since then, including the 1977 county final between the Barrs and the Glen, with the record attendance, or the 1979 county final between the Barrs and Castlehaven, when all of west Cork was in Páirc Uí Chaoimh to support Castlehaven.

“But definitely Thurles last Sunday week was special.”

Underdogs against the Kerry champions, the Barrs hit a fine opening goal and maintained their momentum for much of the game, holding their nerve in a tight finish. The jubilant reaction of their supporters, milling around the Simple Stadium turf afterwards, was a recognition the players’ efforts, says Cremin: “Every so often in a club a generation of players comes along and creates a special team and bring success and joy to the club.

“The current bunch of lads - they’ve generated an excitement within the club. There’s a team bond and also a bond within the club, and after the Austin Stacks game there was a visible outpouring of relief and joy. And that’s great for any club, to have that.

“For me, the current team brings me back to the late seventies and early eighties, when we had another group of players and mentors who came along and brought in a very successful era for the club.”

The term golden age hardly does justice to that particular time for the Barrs. Between 1976 and 1985 they won five Cork senior titles, four Munster club titles and three All-Ireland club titles

Cremin’s reference to mentors of that period is significant, however.

Many of those who had helped to establish the Barrs as a serious football force in the 50s were still involved in the later period - men like John O’Driscoll, Mick Keating, Pat Lougheed, Mick McCarthy and Donal Hurley.

All clubs aspire to that kind of through line between the generations, with experienced hands available to steer a newer generation: few of them have been able to put that theory into practice as the Barrs have.

Even now the range of former players on the sideline with senior manager Paul O’Keeffe underlines that sense of continuity; O’Keeffe himself underlined the importance of the Munster club win in motivating the next generation.

St. Finbarrs' Brian Hayes celebrates with fans. Picture: INPHO/Laszlo Geczo

“I’ve coached underage teams in the Barrs and you’re trying to get a message across to them that this is a big club with a great history, but they can end up looking at you and thinking, ‘that’s another lifetime’.

“But now I can see it in my own kids, in their friends, that the belief is back and that they’ll carry that on - they’ll be coaching kids themselves in twenty years’ time and talking about the Barrs winning Munster club titles in Thurles and so on.

“You’re showing them we can win, and that’s important. It means even if they haven’t won much at underage, they believe when they get to the senior team that they can win - that they can do it. And that’s intangible.”

In his own time that history was vivid, says O’Keeffe: “When I was in primary it was a time you’d get a half-day from school if the Barrs won the county or if Cork won the All-Ireland, and at the start of every year you’d be saying the Barrs could win the hurling or the football, and Cork could win the All-Ireland.

“I remember Gerald McCarthy passing me one time with the cup after the Barrs won the county and I wanted to touch the cup but I was too shy. But I remember thinking ‘I’ll touch it next year’, because that was how we thought at seven or eight years of age. We learned better since, of course.

“There were heroes, all of them. I can remember being down the Páirc and watching Deccie O’Mahony with the blond hair, picking out Christy Ryan and John Cremin. Later I played with John Kerins, Paddy Hayes, Mick Slocum - I was just out of minor and being in a dressing-room with fellas like that who’d won All-Ireland medals, I was in awe. Tony Leahy, Kieran McCarthy, all of them.

“One night we played Limerick in a challenge game - the Limerick seniors - and we beat them. And I was thinking ‘that’s an inter-county team and we’ve beaten them, this is unbelievable’.”

Arriving on the senior panel in 1989 meant O’Keeffe missed most of the 80s campaigns: “But those were still fresh in the memory then. Winning a Munster club or All-Ireland club wasn’t an alien concept.

“The current team’s big thing was to win the county in 2018, but now they believe they can win when they go onto the pitch, the belief is there. And that belief is ninety per cent of the battle - you don’t have to fake it until you make it if the players believe it.

“We’ve spoken a lot about the legacy this team will leave, whether they’ll leave the table as one of the great Barrs teams or as a good Barrs team. The standard is high. We’d like to win another couple of games obviously on this run, and the players are very motivated - there are a lot of leaders there and they’ve all bought into what they want to do. Any young fellas who come into the group learn very quickly what’s expected, messing isn’t tolerated because they’re so focused.”

They also saw what was expected on social media, when the club released a clip of the senior team getting a guard of honour after their last training session before the Munster final.

“I was late out of the dressing-room that evening,” O’Keeffe laughs. “Which the lads would probably say is typical of me, but it was a nice touch and was lovely for the kids, they have the senior players to look up to.

“And you’d hope it’ll help to draw kids in the gate. If you neglect the underage and the street leagues you’re in trouble, so we have to keep the focus on that as well as the senior team.”

The team. On Saturday the Barrs face Kilcoo in the All-Ireland semi-final, with all the chips on the table.

“It’s fantastic,” says O’Keeffe.

“We have to remember to enjoy it as well while it’s going on. Senior intercounty is obviously super serious, and we take it very seriously ourselves with our preparation, but we want to enjoy it too. Otherwise why are we doing it?

“I’d be aware these things are transient, too. We’re in the headlines at the moment, but in a couple of weeks’ time it’ll all be forgotten.”

True enough, but some things aren’t forgotten.

One of the Barrs’ pillars won’t be in Portlaoise for Saturday's game: Donal Hurley passed away last week after a lifetime’s service to the club, first as a classy player in the fifties and later, in their All-Ireland-winning pomp, as a selector and club secretary.

At the funeral last Monday John Cremin said that for him and his generation, Hurley “exuded all those virtues which we believe distinguish us in the Barrs club – honesty, integrity, humility in victory, dignity in defeat, discipline, determination coupled with an unrivalled will to win and always striving to do what is best for and acting in the best interests of the Barrs club.”

Cremin finished his oration with the line he began our chat with: Long life to the gallant old Blues. It’s served them well.