Up this way, Cork and Limerick look each other right in the eye ...

Allianz Hurling League Division 1 Group A, TUS Gaelic Grounds, Co. Limerick 27/2/2022 Limerick vs Cork Limerick's Tom Morrissey and Darragh Fitzgibbon of Cork Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Bryan Keane

Charleville, Rathluirc… So good they named it twice.

The trio with me must have heard this joke plenty of times but are kind enough to laugh. And why not? 

Charleville is many things in many ways. 

If anywhere can carry different names for itself, this place can. No burden creaks, unless laughter counts as burden.

“We actually changed the club name officially to Charleville for the 2008 season,” Mike Keane clarifies. “We just felt it needed tidying up, although I was happy enough to stay as we were. From the point of view of continuity, say. But I could see people’s claim about tidiness.” 

He points to the photograph on an adjacent wall: the sepia panel that won Cork’s Intermediate County Championships of 1946 and 1947, when the team was known as Rathluirc.

“We are actually Charleville Rovers on the wall of club names in Croke Park,” Aileen Browne adds. “I was surprised at that, but it’s definitely there. I saw it myself and even took a photograph of it.” 

Her clubmate offers a rationale: “I think a lot of clubs had separate names for the hurling and the football, in older years. That split was to do with suspensions for being sent off. Nowadays, it is separate. A suspension doesn’t carry across. But back then you could miss a hurling game for being sent off as a footballer, and vice versa.” 

Charleville, a cornerstone of North Cork, remains a criss cross of equilibriums. Identity here gathers into a mosaic. There is no smooth wash of colour. Charleville’s GAA club attests to a fascinating truth. Up this way, Cork and Limerick look each other right in the eye, mostly on a level, the twinkle intimate.

We are standing in front of Darragh Fitzgibbon’s framed 2018 All Star jersey, a clubhouse memento granted pride of place. Standing around and chatting, rounding off my first visit to this part of the world. I am being educated in an unusual rivalry.

My guiding trio? Warm and welcoming GAA people to the sinew. Aileen Browne is the club’s current Chairperson. Mike Keane is Development Officer, someone who has overseen terrific expansion in facilities. John O’Donnell is old stock, their groundsman and County Board delegate for numerous years.

Martin O’Connor, who had to leave to make a match, earlier made up a quartet. “Pure Charleville,” his companions summarized, with a laugh, after he left. This spot awaits another instalment of the Cork-Limerick jostle on the opening weekend of Munster Championship round robin. The town is Cork, obviously enough, but also more than a little Limerick, part of its hidden charm.

“We must be funny around here about names,” says Browne. “The train station is known as An Rath. That caused a nice bit of confusion at times. Over the years, there have been plenty of people well on their way to Limerick Junction, thinking Charleville was still to come!” 

No such mistake at lunchtime. She had me well prepped. Aileen Browne drives into the station forecourt, pleasant out, and spins us around the outskirts. “County Limerick comes right into the town,” she explains. “There is a little stream right beside the station where you just were. Across that stream is Rockhill, and County Limerick, and I was brought up across that stream. I wear the red of Charleville, but maybe I hold off on the red of Cork.” 

She continues, as we glide out to the church at Garrienderk: “Our father was Limerick, from Castlemahon, and our mother was Charleville. He worked for the railway. When I was born, we were living in the town. But we moved a little bit away, into Rockhill, part of Bruree, when I was young.

“There are nine of us and I suppose the younger ones went Limerick. I am one of the younger ones. But I had my sister Edel beside me at last year’s All-Ireland final, in a Cork jersey, and she roaring ‘Rebels! Rebels!’ before the throw in.” 

We head back for the clubhouse, where tea is made and the group gets settled. The first note struck issues from a long consensus. “The rivalry here isn’t bitter,” John O’Donnell emphasizes. “The rivalry is always there, of course, but we have never seen nastiness around it, and I have been looking at it, first as a young fella in Effin, since the mid 1950s.” 

Nods all round.

He continues: “When you look at the population of Charleville, you’re talking about 65% Cork base and about 30% Limerick, with about 5% others. Charleville was always a great bipartisan town when it came to hurling. Any day that Limerick and Cork played, that particular Sunday night in Charleville was a big event. Because they’d all come back, have a few jars, and have a bit of banter, take your beating or enjoy your winning.

“That’s the way it has been, and that’s the way it continues. And I think it’s even better now than ever before, due to the fact that we have one of our own players, Darragh Fitzgibbon, as one of the Cork stars. It’s even better, because we have more and more people interested in the GAA than ever before.” 

O’Donnell elaborates: “Charleville is a very easy town for a Limerick person to come into. A very easy club as well. For the last 40 years and maybe more, Limerick people have often been to the fore in the stewardship of Charleville GAA Club.” 

Martin O’Connor provides home-orientated perspective: “I suppose Cork more than held our own, over many decades, and sometimes Limerick were no great challenge to Cork. Things have changed, to say the least. We’re seeing the other side of the coin, the last three or four years. Limerick are having their time, and best of luck to them.

“But we’re kind of at the stage now where we need to come back to the normal way, of Cork being on top! Losing the [2021] All-Ireland final, where it was over after ten minutes… We got decimated by the local people, as such. They had a right hop off us.” 

This man acknowledges wild justice: “Look, it was coming our way for years and years. So to win that league game recently was fantastic, to turn back the table so quick, and in the Gaelic Grounds, into the bargain. This meeting for the round robin, even though there are no absolute consequences to the loser, would be a lovely win. But no one will be out altogether if they lose. Coming out of Munster is the aim.

“But there’ll be a lot of us avoiding the town for three or four days if Cork fall down. We won’t be going for our pint, because the pubs will be hopping green!” 

Aileen Browne augments: “The publicans would always have said, on the Cork-Limerick rivalry, they do better when Limerick win. Because the Limerick people make the effort of coming out on the Sunday night, to celebrate. Winning is still fresh to them. To us!” 

O’Connor gives me local heat, local beat: “One of the pubs above [JR O’Connor’s] is owned by Clem Smith, who’s an ex Limerick hurler. He’d have a good mixture of Cork and Limerick going in there. Pakie O’Brien’s would be the Cork pub. His two sons, James and Maurice, are with the Charleville panel.

“The banter in Clem’s is always mighty, building up. There are fellas we went to school with, all of us, on both sides. There’s nothing more pressurized than this game, Cork and Limerick. You look at the football side. It’s gone. Because Cork and Kerry are too far out in front now. It’s Cork and Limerick in hurling where you’ve always had the bite, the be all and end all.” 

Mike Keane specifies: “I think the whole thing really does change when you have one of your own clubmen involved, as John mentioned. Darragh is massive for our club. Truly massive. Has that All Star. Our young lads are mad about him. And he is so good with them.

“Before Darragh came along, we often discussed how to improve hurling in Charleville. The club never had too many senior intercountry men. One answer was to bring in Cork hurlers for various functions, to get them to give a talk. Now we don’t have to import anyone, because we have Darragh.” 

O’Connor picks up on this facet: “The gas thing is that they always slag us about Darragh’s home house being in County Limerick. But he went to school here, primary and secondary, and played all his hurling from knee high with Charleville. Thankfully…” 

Keane drops nuance: “Our main sponsor, Cavanagh’s, a car dealership, has been wonderful to the club for decades. But they give to the Limerick side as well. The same is true of our juvenile sponsor, Lee’s Centra, who are also wonderful. There would be no commercial sense in being strictly Cork or strictly Limerick. Life is just not like that around here.” 

This stretch of ground means a difference rather than a divide. Here, opposites meet and blend, transferring more often than not into a general good. John O’Donnell glosses: “The hub of hurling in North Cork, and into Limerick, is our school here, Charleville CBS. The catchment area is Ballyhea, Churchtown, Newtownshandrum, Dromina, Colemanswell. And Charleville itself, obviously. Then into Limerick: Ballyagran, Bruree, Banogue, Croom, Effin, Athlacca, Kilfinane, Blackrock. And Kilmallock, when I was a young fella, was part of the catchment.

“If you look at the hurling skill roundabout, it’s quite good. It’s a high level, in fact. And it goes back and forth across the county bounds. We’re fortunate to be part of that, in Charleville. It’s a major reason why we have gone from junior to top senior in just eight to ten years.” 

Not everything, GAA wise, centres on this rivalry. These people see various bigger pictures. Aileen Browne instances one: “We want to attract everyone into our club. We absolutely do. Including the new Irish, as the phrase goes. Charleville is predominantly hurling, but we feel we need to develop football far more in the juvenile club.

“The local industries mean Charleville has a lot of new people from outside Ireland and even from outside Europe. Hurling is so foreign to them, understandably. A football, because of soccer, isn’t so much. We hope if we got them to football that we might get them to go on to hurling.” 

Munster Championship awaits. Martin O’Connor has gone but departed with a summary that urged Cork’s management to rethink central defence. Browne, other way round, is equally nervous: “I don’t think Limerick’s league performances can be brushed away. They weren’t too good, even when they had a strong team out. We’ll be able to tell a lot more about Limerick’s chances of three in a row by how they get on at the weekend against Cork.” 

O’Donnell runs more sanguine: “I don’t think Limerick can improve on how they played in last year’s All-Ireland final, but they are still in a tremendous position. They have excellent coaching and brilliant management, a great back up team and a great sponsor in JP McManus. All of that has certainly improved Limerick hurling, and has improved, I would say, hurling in general. What we are seeing now from Waterford is something like the style of Limerick.” 

Mike Keane saves best for last: “I am a Feenagh-Kilmeedy clubman originally. I hurled for them. So, a Limerick man. But I am living and working in Charleville now longer than I care I remember. Sometimes too much is made of the county scene. The club is equally, if not more, important. Darragh being with Cork means I have no hope other than for a Cork win.” Then he smiles, like a card player laying a small decisive trump: “But I am going to stick with the general tone of our chat. This time, I reckon Cork and Limerick will be a draw.”