Defying Logic

Killinan End column

Of all Kilkenny’s forty odd GAA clubs, few would have bet on the one which gained national fame some forty years ago.

St Martin’s did not even exist as a club until two years earlier when the teams of Coon and Muckalee/Ballyfoyle amalgamated to create a new united club in that parish. Geographically, the club is located in North Kilkenny on the border with Carlow, Kilkenny’s newest rivals, and has a grand football tradition as maybe befits a team wearing Green and Red.

It is an area which has had limited involvement in successful Kilkenny teams down the years – Mick Lalor of Coon won an All-Ireland in 1969 for Kilkenny and is an uncle of Tom McCormack of James Stephens who won All-Ireland medals at wingback in 1974/75. Éamon Morrissey who was successful with Kilkenny in the early 1990s as a forward before throwing in his lot with Dublin, also hailed from this parish. But this was very much off-Broadway Kilkenny. In every sense. Muckalee has won all a dozen Kilkenny Senior Football titles since 1968 so even its hurling tradition is not absolute.

Hurling success has been scant but impressive. Coon went Senior after winning the 1967 Junior championship and won the inaugural Intermediate championship in 1973. Two years later, their parish neighbours Muckalee/Ballyfoyle became Intermediate champions. Kilkenny club hurling, or at least its roll of honour, had a very different landscape in those days. No mention of Shamrocks Ballyhale. Tullaroan and Mooncoin stood at the top as Kilkenny hurling royalty since the days of Sim Walton and Lory Meagher. Even the fourth placed team, Carrickshock, hadn’t won a title in almost a quarter of a century. Bennettsbridge were the new kids on the block with eleven titles won in the previous 23 years. But change was coming, and it would be comprehensive. The rise of Shamrocks Ballyhale has been the central theme in the half century since.

When Muckalee/Ballyfoyle reached a Senior final in 1980 they ran into peak Ballyhale. The team that would bring the All-Ireland club title to that South Kilkenny parish for the first time a few months later won the Kilkenny County Final convincingly in a replay. For their opponents just being there was a high watermark in the parish’s history. Given the modesty of the parish through the years there were no guarantees when they amalgamated with Coon in 1982 but hindsight would suggest that it came at the ideal time.

When the newly-minted St Martin’s team lined out in the Kilkenny County Final of 1984 they were underdogs against a Ballyhale team which had won the previous two finals, and five of the last six. The manner in which it was won was as extraordinary as the winning of it. If either team was going to hit the final 1-4 of the game it would surely be Ballyhale, the team with all the pedigree. On this day, however, St Martin’s were the ones who finished powerfully for a convincing seven-point win and were never led during the game.

The team which wins a County title for the first time and fails to raise a gallop in the province afterwards is almost a cliché. No such fears in this case. A win away to the Dublin champions O’Toole’s got the Leinster campaign underway. Next up was Buffer’s Alley of Wexford whose full-forward Tony Doran had laid waste to Kilkenny’s Centenary year All-Ireland ambitions. On this day in Athy the Wexford team could not lay a glove on St Martin’s, losing by ten points. The Leinster Final featured Kinnitty a team which was then in its golden years, but the Offaly champions gave up an early lead and were beaten by another strong finish.

The All-Ireland Final was reached by beating Antrim’s Ballycastle in the unlikely setting of Callan in the semi-final. The final was against the winners of the 1980 title, Castlegar, of Galway and the Connolly family. This was won in a replay with the drawn game at Croke Park. The replay in Thurles was a gritty tight affair with the Kilkenny champions prevailing in the end.

When you reflect on this Centenary year Kilkenny title, and the broader success it spawned it is remarkable indeed. The most impressive angle is when you look at the teams a St Martin’s outfit - without recognisable star names in the starting fifteen – beat along the way. The 1985 All-Ireland champions beat the winners of 1980, ’81, 82, & ‘84. The club which that year was coached by former Wexford defender Tom Neville has not won a Kilkenny championship since.

Their single final appearance since was in 2008 when losing to Shamrocks Ballyhale and they have plied their trade at Intermediate level since 2017. A brief day in the sun, but what a remarkable story for first time championship winners to defy all logic and write a golden chapter.