KILLINAN END - Blue day at club level

Na Fianna is as novel a winner of the All-Ireland club hurling championship as can be imagined.

Vast numbers of people are familiar with Croke Park and its environs in Drumcondra. But local geography is local geography, a different challenge altogether, and the question of which club is nearest to Croke Park might baffle many from outside the capital. The famed St Vincent’s club would be in the frame for this, based in Marino, just a couple of miles from GAA headquarters. Another storied Dublin club, O’Toole’s, was founded in the inner city just a stone’s throw from Croke Park but, like much of the city, has now joined the suburban sprawl operating from Donaghmede, a classic blue-collar area of north Dublin.

Na Fianna edges out clubs like Erin’s Isle in Finglas (Keith Barr, Charlie Redmond), and Whitehall Colmcille (Eoghan O’Donnell, Cormac Costello) as the club most readily equipped to walk to Croke Park to play in an All-Ireland Final. Proximity to the church, however, did not necessarily confer excessive holiness on the Na Fianna club. Since the club’s founding in 1955 it has been a long slow uphill battle to develop the kind of potential that might seem obvious in hindsight. Wedged between working-class areas such as Phibsborough, Finglas, and Ballymun, the suburb of Glasnevin is relatively affluent but at the time of the club’s foundation on St Mobhi Road it was still a blank canvas.

The possibility for those founders of matching a club like St Vincent's, who back in the mid-1950s were setting extraordinary standards, must have looked like Everest. People will talk about population and the possibilities associated with big numbers but capturing, developing, and fostering that potential in an urban environment with countless counter-attractions and alternative possibilities is quite a different matter. Like many an Irish organisation, it began as Brendan Behan said, with “the split”. A group broke away from a club in the locality called CJ Kickhams and decided to form a new club. The original Kickhams club lives on under the brand name of Ballymun Kickhams. The new club became Na Fianna. One of those Kickhams’ members who decided to plough a new furrow was Jimmy Gray who played in goal for Dublin in the 1961 All-Ireland hurling final and changed the world by being Chairman of the County Board that appointed Kevin Heffernan as Dublin Senior football manager in 1973.

Na Fianna caters for players in Phibsborough, Glasnevin, and Drumcondra, though parish rule is, naturally, quite fluid within the city of Dublin, with old loyalties often trumping geographical realities. Not far from Mobhi Road, one of St Vincent’s current forwards, Séan Lowry, grew up across the road from the Whitehall Colmcille grounds, went to school in Whitehall, but comes from a Vincent’s family. No debate over his club. Michael Carton, who played on Dublin’s Leinster championship winning team in 2013 was born and reared in Blanchardstown in the west of the city – the catchment area of St Brigid’s, but spent his club career with O’Toole’s, the club of his father.

Na Fianna has had relatively modest achievements down the decades especially compared with St Vincent’s and Kilmacud Crokes. Pound for pound though maybe their finest hour was managing to win a Dublin Minor A title as early as 1960, in an era when Dublin had won four of the previous five All-Ireland Minor titles, while St Vincent’s had won four of the previous five Dublin titles. With that strength in depth in the county and a club around the corner as strong as was in Ireland, a fledgling club winning that championship was extraordinary.

Just nine years later a first Senior football championship came to Na Fianna and if it was a title which suffered from loneliness in the end, it was worth two in that it was a one-point win over St Vincents who were good enough to win the next three County titles. Further County football titles were added in 1979 and in 1999 which started a three-in-a row in Dublin, though an All-Ireland title proved elusive in a final where Kieran McGeeney lined out for Na Fianna against his own Armagh champions, Crossmaglen Rangers.

The surge in hurling in Na Fianna reflects a recent concentration on the sport which garnered four County Minor titles and a couple of Under-21s in the last decade. This achievement has been bubbling under, yet it’s worth remembering that the Dublin County final was won only with a last-minute goal. Whatever chaos afflicts the county’s hurlers the local championship is very good indeed.

As Cuala showed the football one is not bad either. This is a team which won the All-Ireland title at the first attempt which says something of the strength of the local competition that it makes a team so robust when playing outside the county despite relative inexperience. It also shows the chance nature of the achievement of Con O’Callaghan who joined an elite group of a dozen other players who have won hurling and football club All-Irelands. Being in the right place at the right time matters. That said, this is a footballer and hurler of rare quality who played a leading part in his club winning both titles. It is also perhaps the last hurrah for the dual player.