How the West was won
HOW MANY times has it been said – if Ireland had taken to rugby as its primary football game, if the GAA had adopted hurling and nothing else, how strong might we be as a rugby nation now?
Kerry, the mighty Kingdom, is the home of gaelic football, home to some of the greatest players ever to field and kick a ball – what if those guys had been born to rugby instead? Well, it’s taken a long time, but if the men behind the Corca Dhuibhne rugby club in the Dingle peninsula have their way, then one of these days, the tide might start turning.
On Thursday evening, in their home pitch in Baile Loisce (The Burned Village), a bitter breeze sweeping in off the Atlantic, Corca Dhuibhne won the first adult trophy in its brief history, beating Tralee in the Galwey/Foley Cup final.
Well, they would have won it, if it was still around, but it appears the trophy has been ‘mislaid.’
“Killorglin won it three years ago and it hasn’t been seen since,” said Corca Dhuibhne coach Paddy Fenton; “What harm but they didn’t even win it on the field, it was won by default!”
No matter. For the celebrations later in Danno’s renowned hostelry in Dingle a replacement cup was unearthed, the West Munster U14 trophy won outright by Corca Dhuibhne a few years ago, and a mighty rendition of the club anthem, An Poc Ar Buile, filled the air.
It’s a club with a difference, Corca Dhuibhne, a team playing an alien code in the wild and wonderful land where gaelic football rules supreme. That difference was obvious too, in some of the sideline comments during a tight game in which the home side only just prevailed, 8-3, against a strong visiting side.
“He’ll never point it from there,!” as out-half Johnny Curran lined up a penalty kick from wide right into the teeth of the wind in the opening half (Johnny did ‘point’ it, put Corca Dhuibhne into an unlikely 3-0 lead).
“Yerra ref, why don’t you take it yourself!”, advice to strict but fair referee Bruce Hannah, after the award of yet another penalty against the home team. “Maybe they should have taped up his mouth instead of his knees!”, after Ciarán Slattery, with yet another cutting comment, had finally outworn the ref’s patience, saw yellow.
Tralee too made their nod to gaelic football. How often, for example, do you see a second-row taking the penalty kicks? Yet that was what towering Dan O’Connor was doing, nailed a beauty from 40m to tie the game in the first-half, also hit a few fine touch-finders.
Ultimately, however, and fittingly, the game was won with a bit of pure rugby magic, outside-centre Cathal Misteál bamboozling a series of defenders from about 40m out to eventually touch down.
Ghost of Gooch? Perhaps. “Typical Cathal,” said Paddy, “He has a habit of doing that, lethal in open play. Probably didn’t have his best year this year but he saved the best for last! He’s just a powerful runner.”
They had a number of powerful runners –not least wild-haired number eight Eoin ‘Pony’ Feirtéar – “The most westerly farmer in Europe,” said Paddy.
On this night, however, it was defence that won out, a succession of fierce tackles in the face of non-stop Tralee attacks in a display of team courage and spirit that would have done even Munster proud.
“Every time they go out they play for each other, to the end,” said Dan O’Keeffe, proprietor of Danno’s and one of the founding members of Corca Dhuibhne. “We have grown ourselves as a club, grown our identity which is very much based on west Kerry; we try to use the things that are unique to us, which is why all the calls are in Irish – not everyone on the team speaks Irish but everyone has bought into it, everyone understand the calls. They have that sense of identity, which is something Munster rugby always seemed to have.”
The challenge now for Corca Dhuibhne, however, is to build from here. Without question the raw material is available – you only have to look across the stone walls to Gallarus, home to An Ghaeltacht GAA club, where the O Sé brothers were weaned, where Dara O Cinnéide learned to spear that ball into the gale-force wind.
Where would rugby in the peninsula be now if they had played rugby? And why didn’t they, anyway?
O Cinnéide, for example, made for rugby, surely? “I suppose,” Dara agrees. “The build, the kicking skills – maybe in the centre. Darragh O Sé also, Michael Quirke, Tommy Walsh – Seamus Moynihan would definitely have made it in rugby. I’d loved to have tried it but it was never there as an option when I was growing up, we were just too committed to football. I’d do it now, if I was starting off, U12, U14, no problem.”
From Darragh O Sé, same sentiment. “I’d love to have played it as youngster but I went to such a level in my own game, I couldn’t. It’s a huge opportunity now for the younger lads – I look at the likes of Tommy Walsh, these fellas, they’d have made absolutely fantastic rugby players, big, powerful. If we were a nation of rugby players we’d be dangerous.
“It’s great now for the local lads, the opportunity is there, and they’re competitive, which is better again. And they do everything right; even on the bigger picture, the pro game, they move so fast. The GAA is too slow, too stubborn – we won’t adopt a good idea from elsewhere, it seems we have to have our own.
“The GAA needs to think outside the box. The problem with us, we don’t realise how much ground we’re losing to rugby; every decision taken in the GAA is monumental, takes time, then you’re in the two-thirds majority scenario.
“In tough times, the IRFU is way more alert than we are in the GAA, much faster to move – we’re losing ground mega-fast, and doing nothing about it.”
Making up that ground, perhaps not mega-fast but steadily enough, is Corca Dhuibhne RFC. What odds a few more internationals coming out of Kerry, but this time, from the deep within the heart? It’s happening already in north Tipp, a hurling bastion, why not in the Kingdom?
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