It is the height of winter, a bitterly cold December morning in North Meath. The field is pale white with frost and the soil is granite hard. A robin redbreast whistles by overhead. There is nobody around. The early morning fog makes it difficult to see, but then, there is not much to see. As Kilmainham folk rise from their beds and make their way to work, the field lies eerily quiet. The sound of council road gritters on the N3 behind, momentarily pierces the stillness. They soon pass and silence cloaks the field once more. It is just a field, like any other. But summer will be here soon. And with summer will come life to Kilmainham GFC, because the self-professed smallest club in Meath will at long last have a pitch of their very own. Since 1968 they have played their home games in various pitches. On some occasions they would have to concede home advantage altogether. However having now purchased a field, work is getting underway on levelling, draining and re-seeding the land to create a football pitch. The field lies roughly three miles outside the town of Kells, up a laneway where old sawmills were once situated. According to chairman Declan Black it is the biggest development in the clubs history. The field itself was bought in October 2001 at a cost of £86,000. However the club have been fundraising lately in order to get money to continue the work of fencing, creating car parking facilities and provision for dressing rooms. Their target for the year was 150,000 euro and a very successful car draw has helped them stay well on course. Current Kilmainham secretary Sean Newman has been a busy man lately, but like everybody associated with the club, it gives him great pride to be involved with the endeavour: "It is a great achievement for the club. We have the actual pitch paid for and we are due a purchase grant from Croke Park and hope to get that also. We have sent in our application so hopefully there will be good news at the end of that. The field itself is somewhere in the region of six and seven acres. We only have it squared out at the moment and in the meantime we are getting quotations and working on the seeding of it. "We also have an additional piece of land we bought to broaden the laneway. We bought it so that we could make space for cars to travel up and down on both sides and we have that straight up to the main road. It has been said to me several times that we should have had a pitch 30 years ago but I think the present set-up in the club is very good and it is a great accomplishment to have paid for it within one year. "However it will all depend on the weather now as to when it will be ready. If we get good dry weather for the winter we could probably get some work done on it. By the summer we hope to have it seeded and maybe ready for the lads. So hopefully we will have the club training on it next summer," he reveals. Sean has been involved with Kilmainham for years, friendly and hard working, he is a true Gael who loves the game, and the club he once played for: "I played in the half-forwards around 1968 or so. It was junior football and we were struggling really. I have one medal from my playing days, a tournament medal, and lucky to get it." However, having hung up his boots Sean got involved with the day to day running of the club, and had Kilmainham not had dedication from people like him through the years, they would have struggled to keep afloat. He is also involved with the Round Towers, which is an amalgamation of Kilmainham, Drumbaragh and Kells at underage level. "I have been on the committee end of things for years with Kilmainham. I was a selector in the early 90's when we got to the junior final. But we lost and you know what happens selectors when their team lose a final. It is a job I have kept away from since that," he jokes. Sean has been Kilmainham secretary now for three years and been instrumental in promoting the recent car draw. And he points out that the GAA spirit is alive and well in Meath after all the support they received from other clubs in the county. "We ran a very successful car draw and sold a large amount of tickets across the county. The town of Kells has been very good to us in the past and although it has been raked with tickets for Lotto's in the last few years the people still buy Kilmainham tickets. Around the Cortown area they have been very good to us also. In fact there were senior clubs above Navan such as Skryne and a few more of them who bought full books of tickets from us for the car draw. They had no hesitation in buying them and they didn't even know us very well, so we are thankful to everybody who helped us." As for the eventual official opening of the pitch, there is only one team he would like to see playing: "I would be more inclined to see the Kilmainham lads open the pitch rather than some of the big county teams. I wouldn't be too perturbed with hosting big county teams for the opening or anything like that. It would just be great to let the Kilmainham lads play on a pitch they can call their own and have a base of their own. That is the principal thing after all." On the field this season, Kilmainham retained junior A status during their first year in the grade. Having won the junior B championship in 2001, the step up to junior A was always going to be a tough one, and so it proved in their first outing against Dunsany. The red and blacks lost 1-10 to 2-3, with David Tiernan and Mark Lynch finding the net for Kilmainham. A 1-12 to 0-13 defeat to local rivals Drumbaragh followed and then a third straight defeat at the hands of Ballinabrackey, 2-10 to 1-6. It was Tiernan again who found the net for Kilmainham on the day, and he scored an impressive total of four goals in the championship. Following the defeat to Ballinabrackey, Kilmainham were fighting for their junior A lives. A draw with St. Mary's meant that the final game against Dunshaughlin was a proverbial six pointer. The Paddy O'Rourke coached side put on their best performance of the year, running out 2-10 to 0-13 victors and maintaining junior A status. The goals came from Tiernan again and David Farnan. Looking back now, Sean believes that 2002 was a successful year on the pitch for the Kilmainham charges, and is adamant that the future is looking very bright indeed. "I thought we did well in the junior A this year. We just missed out narrowly in some of the earlier rounds and could easily have won them but in hindsight it finished up better for us in a way because we still remained in the grade and that was our aim really. The last day against Dunshaughlin, the lads put in a great performance. The two of us needed to win to ensure survival, so that really puts our win into context. It was a fantastic victory. "I don't think it would have done much for us to get too far in the junior A championship a year after capturing the junior B because things can go stale very quickly. Hopefully the lads will all have a good appetite for it next year. I think we will have a better chance next season because we now know where we stand. We remained up this year and that is the main thing," he says honestly. These are good days for Kilmainham. Sean has seen and remembers enough of the bad ones to realise that when the good times come, they should be grabbed with both hands. Talented, exciting young players such as Harry Newman, Danny Butler and Stephen Woods are still the former side of 21. They also boast former Meath under-21, and junior star Barry Lynch. The towering midfielder is still only 22 and an integral part of Kilmainham's future. And there lies the naked truth about this club, which flanks the edge of the N3 for a few miles outside of Kells. The majority of their players are still young and will only improve: "I go to all the games and love to see 20 lads or so in the dressing room. It shows commitment and it is great to see the camaraderie and everybody standing up for each other. There are a lot of good young lads coming through and although they might just need a couple of years, certainly the potential is definitely around for success. We won the under-21 special championship there in 1998 and 2000. We got to the final of it in 2001 but were unlucky to be beaten by Duleek. It would have been nice to win it because it would have given us the double, along with the junior B championship," laments Sean. His son Robert was part of that championship-winning panel of 2001 and so the Newman association with the club continues in strong vein. The scenes of celebration following that junior B triumph were both emotional and jubilant. The Kilmainham team paraded through the streets of Kells with the cup. A cavalcade of noisy cars all decked out in black and red banners followed an open back truck around the town. The players stood on the truck holding aloft their trophy. It was of course illegal, but then so was the fact that such a small club, with no pitch, had just won the junior B title. The people of Kells applauded. Kilmainham had won not only the championship, but also the respect of those who realised they had done so against all the odds. In years past doubters have questioned Kilmainham's very existence. They talked about merging, but the club stood firm. After all, today's giant oak is only yesterday's acorn that refused to move. And in time to come Kilmainham GFC will have a football field they can call their very own. Today, standing in the icy cold, it is just another field, but the seeds of many people's dreams are being planted here, and summer is fast approaching. Presidents: Sonny Madden, Willie Tevlin, Tony Morgan and David Walsh Chairman: Declan Black Vice Chairman: Thomasina Black Secretary: Sean Newman Asst. Secretary: Tony O'Reilly Treasurer: Paddy O'Rourke Asst. Treasurer: Gerard Morgan Committee: Peter Curran, Sam Black, Anthony Farrelly, Patsy Walsh, Stephen Woods, Brian Black and Denis Newman PRO: Padraic Black County Board Delegate: Peter Curran Coach: Paddy O'Rourke Junior Selectors: Paddy O'Rourke, Declan Black, Gerard Morgan and Denis Newman Under-21 selectors: Petsie Curran, Trevor Lynch, and Anthony Farrelly Tweet

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