The long shared history between Ballinagar and Raheen GAA Clubs

JUST a handful of years ago, Ballinagar and Raheen GAA Clubs came within a couple of votes of amalgamating.

After intensive discussions over several months, the officers of Ballinagar and Raheen both backed amalgamation proposals and duly called simultaneous Emergency General Meetings to put it to their members. On a night of incredible drama and emotion, Ballinagar members sanctioned the merger but Raheen rejected it by just five votes. A large majority of Raheen members voted in favour of it but just fell short of the numbers required to disband a club – a swing of a couple of votes would have won the day.

A couple of very influential voices were instrumental in the Raheen decision that night – in fairness to them, they were not that long out of a failed marriage with Killeigh and there was a groundswell of opinion in Geashill, Cloneygowan and environs reluctant to go into another amalgamation. The rejection, however, left Ballinagar in an invidious position. After all they had voted their club out of existence but then been jilted at the altar and the mood in their club rooms that evening and the local pub afterwards as word of the Geashill vote came through was fairly black.

All of that creates a fascinating backdrop to Sunday's Intermediate Football Championship final between Ballinagar and Raheen. The amalgamation made perfect sense to many at the time as the parish underage club, Na Fianna had enjoyed fantastic success in the previous years, winning Minor Football Championship in 2019, U-16 in 2016.

There was an understandable desire to keep those players together but old parish rivalries were among the factors that played a role on that night.

For most of the years, Raheen had been the clear masters in the parish. While only formed in 1973, they were the senior club, Ballinagar very much the junior one for decades but the wheel had begun to turn during the 2000s. Ballingar experienced a remarkable spurt in population during the Celtic Tiger boom years. There were three fairly significant housing estates constructed, one each on three of the major approach roads into the village, bringing new people and families into the area.

Previously reliant on stand alone bungalows and cottages, those estates irrevocably changed life in the village, in addition to the usual quota of one off houses that continued to sprout up all over their area. While it has a small village, Ballinagar is the archetypal rural club with Raheen and Killeigh adjacent to them in Killeigh parish and bordered by Cappincur, Ballycommon and Daingean on its western perimeter.

For decades they have been reliant on hugely proud, dedicated local families – names such as O'Meara's, Dolan's, Dunne's (there are at least three different Dunne families who have contributed powerfully in the area), Tyrrell's, Brophy's, Cuskelly's, Malone's, Cunningham's, Betson's, Gallagher's and many others have backboned teams down the different generations, ran the show, kept the ship afloat in a variety of ways.

The new houses changed everything for the area and club, and it was not lost on anyone in the parish that Ballinagar not only had a huge representation on those successful underage teams but also provided many of the star players. From the minor team that won in 2019, Diarmuid Finneran, Adam Strong, Jack Gorry, Morgan Tynan and Jacob Beatty will play for Ballinagar in the final while Eoin McGuinness will be a sub and Ryan Strong and Ryan Dunne would probably have been there only for injury in the case of Strong, a twin of Adam, and work in Denmark for Dunne.

David Carthy and James Nolan will line out for Raheen in Sunday's mouth watering shootout but they have got a much smaller dividend from that team for the very simple reason that they had much less players on it.

Ten of minor team were Ballinagar members:

Ruari Daly; David Carthy, Mark Kelly, Eoin McGuinness (B); Ryan Dunne (B), Adam Strong (B), Diarmuid Finneran (B); David McElduff (B), Ryan Strong (B); Jack Gorry (B), Morgan Tynan (B), Adam Mangan (B); Jacob Beatty (B), James Nolan and Barry Crombie. Subs used Dylan Cahill Oisin Henchy and Fergal Dolan.

The failed amalgamation process five years ago was ironic as there had been many years when St Mary's club, the predecessors of Raheen, objected to Ballinagar forming a club as they argued that they could cater for players in that area and wanted to field the strongest possible team.

While Ballinagar long believed that they were formed in 1916, as part of the patriotic fever that engulfed the country at the time, this was a myth, promoted partly by some famous local republican figures who liked the idea of it and the picture it portrayed. They were in existence much earlier than that, playing games in the 1890s – they were actually beaten by Frankford in a senior football semi-final in 1892, a period subsequently wiped from the records and declared unofficial with the Offaly championship records only dating from 1896. In any event, that championship was never completed with the GAA on its knees and almost going under at that time – Irish Republican Brotherhood takeovers and the fallout from the Parnell Split after Parnell's downfall tore the then fledgling association asunder.

Ballinagar resurfaced in the early 20^th century, winning a Minor Football Championship in 1932 on an objection against a Belmont team, who had no compunction about fielding a few “hairy” young lads! They then went out of existence from 1956 to 1967 but as the '60s wore on, they made a number of attempts to re-affiliate. Objections from St Mary's were the big factor in this and one of their long time stalwarts, Pat Leogue admitted in a 1990s interview, some time before his death, that he objected on their behalf as he felt those players were adequately catered for by them,

St Mary's were very much a parish club and their motives were very genuine but the objections did lead to an ill feeling in the Ballinagar area that took years to drift away.

Yet the St Mary's name remains revered among older people in both areas. St Mary's won the Senior Football Championship in 1947 and 1950, and combined with Gracefield to win as St Patrick's in 1959. St Mary's had been formed in 1943 to provide a parish club for players from the four villages in the parish, Ballinagar, Cloneygowan, Geashill and Killeigh and soon became a powerful force.

Gracefield quickly went on their own after 1959, winning their first senior football title in 1961 and Killeigh became the “parish club” in the wake of that. They were beaten by Daingean in the Senior Football Championship final in 1962 but with players from all over the parish playing – that final was only played in 1963 as Killeigh's semi-final victims Clara challenged the legality of a member of a famous Cloneygowan family, Pat Byrne. Byrne had also played junior for Cloneygowan that year and Clara argued that he could not play for two clubs. A long series of appeals and objections took place in Offaly and Leinster GAA boardrooms over the following months before a replay was eventually ordered which Killeigh won before losing narrowly to Daingean in the final – a game that Pat Byrne didn't play in.

At different periods over the years, there had been clubs in Geashill and Cloneygowan. Cloneygowan were mainly junior while Geashill was one of the great early forces, winning the Senior Football Championship in 1902, and four in a row from 1904 to 1907 – they were also beaten in the finals in 1903, 1908 and 1911. At the time, they picked players from a wide area and it was far from a Geashill team. There were certainly players from Walsh Island and Tullamore playing and the possibility of others drifting in from across county borders in nearby Laois can't be verified but has to be considered – The playing of illegal players was rampant for years.

Just before Geashill started their great run of dominance, another side from the parish, Quarrymount, won the title in 1901 – Quarrymount is a townland close to Killeigh but mainly on the Laois side of the border. It prompted Offaly GAA secretary Pat Healy to complain in his report to Convention later on that the championship had been won by “mostly Queen's County men” - and the win is commemorated mainly in the Kilcavan and Clonaghadoo area in Laois. A memorial to the win was erected by a relative of team members, George and Jack Plunkett years ago and that is located on the Laois side of the border

Both Geashill and Quarrymount teams also included players from Tullamore but the 1909 introduction of the parish rule in Offaly ended Geashill's day in the sun. They may have returned to the final in 1911 but without outside players, they soon struggled to compete. The parish rule states that a player must play in the parish he was either born in or lives in and has always referred to Catholic parish borders but Geashill made failed arguments at the time that it referred to the Church of Ireland borders, which would have allowed them to bring in players from Walsh Island and Cappincur.

After Geashill, Killeigh became a force, winning the senior football title in 1915 and 1916 – now amalgamated with Killurin as Clodiagh Gaels, Killeigh is known mainly as hurling territory but they have wins in senior football and lost that '62 final yet have never made a senior hurling decider.

Cloneygowan was very proud of its club and won junior football titles in 1914 and 1926, when that was the next step below senior. St Mary's brought them and Geashill under the one umbrella, along with players from Ballinagar and Killeigh.

Other clubs came and went in the parish over the years, some existing very briefly with nothing retained of who they were, where they played and who played for them. Killurin were the most recent, existing from 1985 to 2015 when they amalgamated with Killeigh, while there were also clubs in Annagharvey, in the traditional Ballinagar hinterland, and Newtown, in the Killeigh area several decades ago.

The landscape in the parish changed with the 1973 formation of Raheen – formed to cater for players from Geashill and Cloneygowan, and their surrounding townlands, Raheen was chosen as a compromise name as it is half way between the two and the home of the local Church.

St Mary's had reformed as a senior club in 1964 and only formally discontinued in 1978. It's name remains entrenched on the psyche of those over 50 years of age in the parish. The St Mary's name continued to be used for the parish underage football club until 1989 – when it became Raheen-Killeigh following the amalgamation of the two at adult level that year.

Their greatest day was winning the 1974 Minor Football Championship in 1974 and that was a real parish effort. Ballinagar players on that much celebrated panel were Mick and Martin Dunne, Pat Geoghegan, Joe Brophy, Sean Campbell, Sean Campbell, Pat Dolan and James Dolan. Killurin man Brendan Brady was the only representative from the wider Killeigh end of the parish and Raheen was amply represented by Dermot Gorman, Gerry Leen, Hugh Bolton, Hugh Flanagan, Gerry Briscoe, Joe Bolton, Ed Dolan, Kieran Cox, Danny Leonard, Philip Cox, PJ Pender and Sean Boland.

It was a source of regret to all that they couldn't add the U-21 football title three years ago, put Tullamore, on their way to a famous clean sweep of Senior, U-21 and minor titles, just pipped them in the final.

Raheen's greatest day was in 1985 when they reached the Senior Football Championship final, losing agonisingly to Edenderry. That defeat and a controversial disallowed goal was regretted and analysed for many a long year and that Raheen was very much a joint co-operation with Ballinagar. At the time, players were allowed to play junior or intermediate with their own club and senior with another side in the parish. That Raheen team included Ballinagar men, Mick Dunne, Dermot Cunningham, Enda Daly and Martin Dunne. Johnny Dunne came on as a sub while Mickey O'Meara, John Malone and Damien Cunningham were on the panel – the decision not to start or play Mickey O'Meara, a very accurate forward then in his peak, was regularly discussed over the years.

Pat Dolan, a very good wing back, played with Raheen in 1984 but didn't go in '85 when he would have been expected to make the lineup and other Ballinagar men played with them in the 1980s. The star of the team was 1982 All-Ireland winning hero Johnny Mooney – while most associated with his native Rhode, Mooney owned the later Hamilton's Pub in Geashill at that time and transferred to them for a couple of seasons: he also had a namesake, Johnny Mooney, a native of the parish on the team. It included another '82 hero, John Guinan and Martin Fitzpatrick, who was lined up to come on in the final win over Kerry but with rain falling and the game heading down to the wire, manager Eugene McGee opted for the experience of one Seamus Darby, instead of the 19 year old attacking protege from Geashill.

The 1985 team was: Mick Dunne; Billy Guinan, John McNally, Dermot Cunningham; Enda Daly, Martin Dunne, Fergus Byrne; Johnny Mooney, Joe Bolton; John Mooney, John Guinan, Pat Guinan; Pat Reynolds, Martin Fitzpatrick, Gerry Leen. Subs – Johnny Dunne for Enda Daly, Dermot Gorman, Charles Doorley, Mickey O'Meara, Pat Lanigan, John Malone, Damien Cunningham, Hughie Bolton, Johnny Boland, Pat Leogue, Gay McNally.

That was a very good Raheen team. Their strength is reflected by the fact that another sub in 1982, Hughie Bolton didn't figure. They probably couldn't have made that final without the Ballinagar contribution and the mood of the time is best summed up by the fact that the team captain was a Ballinagar man, Martin Dunne.

The Ballinagar players on their squad gave Raheen their main focus from 1984 to 1986, when they won a senior league title but after this, they gave priority to their own club as they had their first golden era – winning the Junior Football Championship in 1988, resoundingly beaten by a Vinny Claffey inspired Doon in the 1989 intermediate final and losing two semi-finals in the following years before returning to the doldrums for an extended period. They also purchased their playing field in 1989, developing this up to its 1993 official opening.

In any event, in 1989, Offaly GAA was told by Croke Park that they were breaking rules by allowing players to play for two separate clubs and this avenue was shut down, meaning that every club were paddling their own canoe – Edenderry drove the final nail into that rule by objecting to the make up of Ferbane in a league final but the writing was on the wall irrespective.

In 1989, Raheen amalgamated with Killeigh as Killeigh-Raheen – Ballinagar, with their shared history and deep family ties, may have been a more natural partnership but with Ballinagar going well and getting their own pitch, this was not something they would have countenanced at that time.

For a few years, Killeigh-Raheen sailed on smooth seas but it was not long before they found troubled waters. Unlike other amalgamations such as Kilcormac-Killoughey and Shamrocks (Mucklagh and St Carthage's), they didn't find the success that they needed to ensure its long term future and banish the opponents in both areas. When the break came, it was instigated from the Cloneygowan end – there were a few rejected applications to reform a Cloneygowan club in the late 1990s/early 2000s. With strong personalties in both Killeigh and Cloneygowan ends adding fuel to the fire, the relationship reached breaking point and the nuclear button was eventually pressed when members voted in favour of disbanding Killeigh-Raheen in late 2002 and Raheen and Killeigh returned to their original status a few weeks later.

The end of the amalgamation also changed the underage environment and within a blink of the eye, separate Na Fianna underage football and hurling clubs had been formed – in 2003. Representatives of Ballinagar, Killeigh, Killurin and Killeigh were all present at that meeting and there was a debate over the name with St Mary's having significant support. The St Mary's name was valued by many and had support of representatives from each of the clubs but the view points of others present, who felt that a fresh name with nothing political attached, were also valid and won the day by a slender margin.

Like a lot of parishes, it is a long, complicated history and while it will go over the head of most of the players playing on Sunday, it is one that will ignite interest, rekindle memories and inflame passions among supporters of a certain age.