Hurlers achieve their goal
November 30, 2005
Clann na nGael hurlers set out with the aim of maintaining their senior status during the course of the 2005 SHC and experienced player Eamon Clancy admitted that their performances during the campaign came about due to hard work and determination.
Eamonn has just completed his second year with the club having moved down to Athboy from his native Dublin at the end of 2003. In his first year, the former St Vincent's hurler helped the side to the intermediate hurling title and this year was ever present during the senior hurling championship.
Clann na nGael are a club with a very proud tradition and it hurt them badly when they failed to make an immediate return to the senior ranks. They made no mistake last year as the Athboy outfit cruised to the intermediate title.
Once again Eddie Priest was in charge of the team and Eamonn believes that the former Meath's hurler's influence had a major bearing on their performances this year.
"Eddie is a very good manager. He and Padraig Reilly (selector) are gentlemen. The interest and enthusiasm that they have, rubbed off on the players, which helped us in the senior championship," said Eamonn. "At the start of the year our main priority was to stay up."
The draw for the senior hurling championship saw Clann na nGael in the same group as Kilmessan, Drumree, Dunboyne, Trim and Kildalkey. It was a tough group by any standard and one that Clann na nGael were expected to struggle in.
If the group was tough enough, then Clann na nGael's opening match couldn't have been any harder as defending champions Kilmessan were the opposition. If a team ever entered a match as underdogs, then the Athboy side epitomised that tag.
However, a confident and fit Clann na nGael took the field that day and gave the favourites an almighty fright.
"We went into the Kilmessan match knowing that we could cause an upset. It was the first match and Kilmessan were obviously going to be confident. However, we played really well on the day and should have at least got something from the match. Six points separated the sides at the end of the match, but that did not reflect how well we played in all fairness," reflected Eamonn.
The 2005 Meath senior hurling championship was hampered as fixtures were not being fulfilled and Clann na nGael had the experience of twice taking the field without any opposition. The first time this occurred was when they were due to play Drumree, only for the South Meath side to refuse to play without their county footballers.
Subsequently, Drumree were eliminated from the group stages of the championship and all teams were handed two points. A meeting with St Peter's Dunboyne was next on the agenda for Eddie Priest's charges. A midweek fixture scheduled for Longwood on a glorious evening was a perfect setting for a championship match.
However, it was a case of de ja vous for Clann na nGael as Dunboyne refused to play the match and a number of their players stood behind the goals watching on as wing forward Barry Higgins fired the sliothar into an empty net and the referee blew the whistle.
"There were obviously issues that the county board should have dealt with. This happened in two matches, which should never have been the case. Hurling is very much secondary in this county and there needs to be more done to promote the game," stressed Eamonn.
The sides finally met a few weeks later, and despite their performance against Kilmessan, critics gave the Athboy\Rathcairn combination little hope of causing an upset. Dunboyne have been Kilmessan's main challengers over the last few years, however their title challenge suffered a serious setback when Clann na nGael recorded a two-point win.
"We played really well against Dunboyne. The lads were really up for that game and everything seemed to go right for us. I think the fact that we were already safe from relegation took the pressure off a lot of the players. After that game, we really believed that we could make the semi-finals," he revealed.
Trim would be their opponents in the next match. The red and whites have come out on top in recent encounters between the sides, but this was a chance for Clann na nGael to gain some sort of revenge.
Neither side really got going on the day as the Athboy men seemed to be in awe of their opponents, although they did secure a draw when Daithi Geraghty equalised from a free to leave the scores 0-10 apiece at the end of the match.
"We were lucky in the end against Trim. A lot of the players were wound up for the match and maybe too much so. They felt this was a glorious opportunity of beating a side that they hadn't much success against in recent years," revealed Eamonn.
"It was a bad match but it was good to get a draw. This meant that if we won our last match, we had a chance of making it through to the semi-final, which would have been a huge achievement for this club."
Old rivals and neighbours Kildalkey stood in the way. These sides have produced some tense battles down through the years and with so much at stake it was always going to come down to who wanted it most.
A win for Kildalkey would have seen them straight through to the semi-finals, while Clann na nGael needed a win and hoped that Dunboyne beat Trim for them to make the last four, otherwise they would have to play Trim in a play-off.
A massive crowd turned out for the clash in Kilskyre. Kildalkey may have been favourites but there was a feeling that Clann na nGael could cause a surprise. It was the blue and whites who settled quickly and raced into a four-point lead. Were it not for the heroics of Vinny Doyle in the Clann na nGael goals then the match would have been over as a contest after 15 minutes.
Doyle produced a man-of-the-match display throughout and kept his side in the match on numerous occasions. With less than ten minutes remaining in the first half, Eddie Priest's side eventually opened their account from a pointed free. They did manage a couple more scores before the break, but it was Kildalkey, who were in total control.
Clann na nGael needed a goal and they got just that ten minutes into the second half when a long range free by Gary Mangan deceived the Kildalkey defence and goalkeeper and ended up in the net.
Their spirits were lifted slightly and the crowd felt that the tide may be about to turn. The match was so tense that it threatened to boil over at times and although the players were kept in check by the referee, one staunch Clann na nGael supporter managed to land a right hook on a Kildalkey official that Muhammad Ali would have been proud of in a world title fight.
However, on the field Clann na nGael could not play with the same passion as their neighbours looked the hungrier and it was no surprise when they ran out 0-15 to 1-4 winners.
"We were very disappointed with our performance on the day. We know we can play a lot better than that and I think some of the younger lads were a bit nervous. Some of them have never been that close to a semi-final before and I think this affected their performance.
"But to be fair no one played well that day apart from Vinny, the game would have been over early on, only for him. Looking back it was a decent performance overall in the championship and our target was to stay up, so we have to be happy enough with that," he stressed.
During his career, Eamonn has amassed an impressive haul of silverware and also has the distinction of playing in an All-Ireland minor hurling final when in 1983, Dublin lost to Galway in what has become the 'Niall Quinn' final.
"Yeah I played in the '83 final in the same team as Niall Quinn, while I also have won two SHC medals with St Vincents among others. I've also been lucky enough to win an intermediate medal with Clann na nGael and an All-Ireland junior medal with Meath last year," he revealed.
Eamonn believes that there should be more done at grass roots level to promote hurling in the county and he points to his native Dublin where a structure is in place that has already begun to pay dividends.
"In Dublin, the divide each area into four regions - north, south, east and west where a number of coaches are allocated to find the best talent in the county, which has been working fairly well.
"Something similar has to be done in Meath because there is the talent there. All you have to do is look at our own club and we have talented hurlers like Daithi Geraghty, Gary Mangan, Darren Heaney and Mark Geraghty who would make on to any club team in the country."
Despite qualifying for the Dublin masters side this year, Eamonn lined out at centre back for Clann na nGael in the championship compared to last year when he was at full back, so if clarification was needed on the old phrase that "Life begins at 40" then any doubters should just take a look at the evergreen Eamonn Clancy.
Promotion garnered
It's hard to know just where to start with Clann na nGael. The hurlers held their own during in the senior championship this year but the junior footballers were about as easy to read as James Joyce's Ulysses. By Gordon Manning.
In the year just gone, Clann na nGael's junior footballers lost all seven of their group games in the junior A championship - but they avoided relegation to the junior B grade after Dunshaughlin had problems fielding a team.
But as everything around them was falling apart in the championship, the Athboy-Rathcairn combination seemingly couldn't put a foot wrong in Division 5A of the All-County Leagues.
They lost two of their first three games but then went unbeaten for the rest of the campaign as they finished second in the table behind Bective to win promotion up to Division Four for 2006. Clann na nGael lost to Bective by the minimum in the final, but promotion had still been guaranteed.
"It was an up and down year alright. There were highs and lows," admitted Mick Mellet, who was in charge of the team along with Sean Kelly, Sean Carrigy and Padraig Seoighe this year.
"We had a very young team this year but we were still extremely disappointed by the way the championship worked out. But there was some consolation after we won promotion in the league.
"At the start of the year the aim would have been to make it to the quarter-finals of the championship and also have a good run in the league. I think it would be safe to say that the championship didn't go according to plan."
However, after an indifferent start in the league, Clann na nGael went unbeaten in Division Five from their third round defeat to Bective in early March all the way through until the final.
They lost 2-5 to 0-7 to Boardsmill in their first league game in early February but bounced back with a 0-17 to 2-6 victory over St Paul's two weeks later. However, a 1-9 to 0-7 defeat followed to Bective and it appeared Clann na nGael were set for an erratic league campaign.
But it was the last time they were to lose in the group stages as they blazed a trail to finish second in the table - with nine wins and two defeats from 11 games.
Among those wins were impressive performances against Clonard (1-12 to 0-6), Killallon (6-14 to 1-4), St Paul's again (3-13 to 3-8) and Bellewstown (3-12 to 1-8). However, it was a 3-9 to 3-8 win over Boardsmill in mid July, prior to the Bellewstown game that effectively turned their season.
"We lost two of our first three games but then we got a bit of a run going. I suppose the calibre of teams we were playing weren't as high as what we were facing in the junior championship.
"But when we beat Boardsmill the second time we met them in the league then I think that gave the players a lot of satisfaction.
"During the course of the year I suppose our emphasis changed from the championship to the league because things hadn't been going well in the championship. But we realised that we had a good chance of getting promoted in the league."
They finished well ahead of the third and fourth placed teams in the division to secure promotion. Clann na nGael faced Bective in the final at Bohermeen, but a late burst by their opponents proved decisive, 1-6 to 1-5.
"It was great to win promotion but it would have been nice to finish the year off with some silverware as well. We had done quite well in the final, but Bective took the lead for the first time with just two minutes left and we couldn't come back."
Their Junior A championship campaign started off with a three point defeat to St Mary's, 0-9 to 0-6, in early April.
"We were unlucky enough that day in our first game against St Mary's. They were one of the top teams in the group so the performance was encouraging. But Dunboyne gave us a lesson in our second game and that really knocked a lot out of us.
"We were heavily beaten that day and that meant we had lost our first two games in the championship which left us in a tough position straight away."
That 1-18 to 1-2 defeat to Dunboyne at the end of April really rattled the confidence in the Clann na nGael dressing-room. However, they did run Skryne close next time out only losing by a goal, 3-10 to 2-10.
With their aspirations of making the knockout stages all but over after that defeat, Clann na nGael were now fighting for their survival. But defeats to Curraha, 3-9 to 1-10, and Kilbride, 1-15 to 1-5, followed as they tumbled down to the basement of the group.
At the end of July they lost heavily to Dunsany in arguably their most disappointing performance of the year, 2-13 to 0-2. In their final group game Simonstown hit four goals against to inflict yet another heavy defeat on Clann na nGael, 4-15 to 0-6.
"I think the championship had gone out the window, so to speak, at that stage and we were finding it hard to motivate ourselves. The only saving grace was that we didn't get relegated because I think Dunshaughlin had problems fielding."
Mellet, who played at wing-forward on the 1967 All-Ireland winning Meath team, believes that there is a bright future for the club.
"It is a very young team - we had about five or six minors on the starting 15 this year," he said.
"I would say that in the next couple of years they will be very competitive in the junior championship. The players will gain experience and I really don't see why they can't be genuine contenders for the junior championship in the next few years."
Impressive young players including Anthony Farrell, Joe McDonagh, John Sheehan and Brian Duffy made their marks this year, and they are all sure to become prominent figures with Clann na nGael in the future.
A number of others also showed well in 2005 including stalwart Tom Hanley, Mike Timmons, Dan Flynn, Michael Priest, Sean McDonagh and Eamonn O'Conghaile.
Clann na nGael's acquisition of Mellet and former Meath footballer Sean Kelly was a big boost for the club. However, the unassuming Mellet - who won an intermediate championship with Martinstown-Athboy in 1979 - has played down his influence.
"I think my role has been overstated really. Sean Kelly did a lot of the training and the other selectors put in a lot of work. I'm living in Dublin now so I just travelled down to help out with some of the training sessions and at matches really."
The senior hurlers were slightly unfortunate not to have finished second in Group A of the Martin Donnelly championship this season as they made a safe return back up to the top grade after winning promotion last year.
Although it was the first time this current amalgamation has been in the senior ranks, Athboy were no strangers to the top flight in the past.
Clann na nGael finished the group with five points from as many games, winning two, drawing one and losing two - though bottom of the table Drumree were thrown out of the competition providing walkovers for teams.
Clann na nGael, who beat Gaeil Colmcille in the 2005 intermediate decider, suffered defeats to Kilmessan (1-12 to 0-9) and Kildalkey (0-15 to 1-4). However, they saw off St Peter's Dunboyne in late July (2-7 to 1-8) before playing out a draw with Trim, 0-10 apiece.
The hurlers can take heart from their 2005 campaign though. They looked more than comfortable in the senior ranks this year and can build on that knowledge in 2006.
Indeed, 2006 will be a challenging year for both the club's hurlers and footballers. Both teams certainly have enough talent in their ranks but they'll have to transfer that to the field next year if they are to win silverware.
The fortunes of the footballers will certainly be intriguing. They have a challenging Division Four league campaign ahead of them while they will need to raise the bar in the championship as well.
Clann na nGael's junior footballers have juggled with relegation in the championship all too often since coming into existence in 2003. Next year, on the field, they must prove that they have the desire and commitment to push the club forward.
For as James Joyce once noted: 'The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.'
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