GAELIC GAMES / Kilmacud Crokes v Sarsfields: Keith Duggan asks Crokes captain Ciarán Kelleher about the current strength and recent progress of the club
For many years, Kilmacud was an excuse for provincial teams to round up a sevens team and frame the All-Ireland football final around good morning games and a few nights of fun. Since the great breakthrough of 1995, however, the south Dublin club has acquired a reputation as a juggernaut gathering steam and a template for the potential of Dublin football. It has an ambitious and enviable underage programme and seems to produce high-quality teams year after year.
"Well, I won nothing underage," clarifies Ciarán Kelleher, who captains Kilmacud Crokes in tomorrow's Leinster final against Sarsfields of Kildare.
"When I started out at under-11 we were in division two south and we struggled to win. There were days when we got absolutely hammered. Naomh Mearnog put nine goals past us in one game. A few years after that, though, really good teams began to come through. Liam Óg (Ó hÉineacháin), that crowd. You would have noticed them when they were starting out and they just seemed to be winning competitions all the way up. But it wasn't an automatic thing."
Kelleher took the time-honoured path from St Laurence's primary school in Stillorgan to playing with Crokes at weekends. Dublin policy meant that youngsters hurled and played football on alternate weekends and although he enjoyed the former, he declares he was "pure useless".
The outstanding achievements of his teenage years were winning an All-Ireland colleges medal with Coláiste Eoin (in 1998) and getting selected for the Dublin minor team of 1997. "Nothing fancy. Just a corner back."
By ordinary standards, these are significant achievements. But in the teeming environment of Dublin football, they don't distinguish you from the pack.
Kelleher estimates fewer than half of the boys he started out in primary school with are still kicking ball at one level or another, but notes that the percentage is significantly higher than pertains to some of his friends who went to rugby schools.
The point is that while Dublin has all the advantages of population, it is so much easier for a child with talent to disappear and be lost to his or her game. And by extension, it is more difficult to shine. Although Kelleher is understandably wary about engaging in the debate, it is widely acknowledged that Crokes is an easy target as a GAA club.
For a start, it is located in a prosperous south Dublin suburb. It has secure financial backing. Founded in 1966, it has no great historical claims, no profound Republican links. It can easily be derided as a smug, progressive suburban club, modern in every possible sense. Kelleher allows that those perceptions may exist, but is not about to lose any sleep over them.
"I have always felt lucky that the club was run by a lot of people who were very serious and diligent in their business lives and applied the same kind of effort and enthusiasm to the club.
"Stillorgan is not a traditional GAA area, but people have worked very hard to give the club a voice here. I would hope that we might have three or four thousand supporters at the final. That would be nice, but there might be a population of fifty of sixty thousand in the locality.
"I am sure plenty of people aren't even aware Crokes are in a final. That's inevitable when you live in a community of this size. But I do think the old divisions are changing anyway. Traditionally, GAA competes with soccer and rugby. But we have a few guys who came through Blackrock College.
"And the Dublin minor hurling team that won Leinster there had a pile of lads from Gonzaga. I think if you are a serious enough rugby player, you will be identified early and if you have a chance to make it professionally, away you go. In general, though, GAA has made an impact on the private schools. We are the same as any other club, though, working with players from a young age and trying to keep them interested."
Sometimes, that is easier said than done, particularly at senior level. As one of Robbie Kelleher's sons, Ciarán was more keenly aware than most of the powerful allure of the Dublin senior football team.
The phenomenal sight of Dublin football Sundays in Croke Park has become emblematic of the new GAA. But for club teams, it can be hell. "A pure nightmare trying to keep it going," Kelleher concedes.
This year, Crokes played their first championship game in May and then were in limbo until September. Having tried to maintain intensity during last summer's break, they took a calculated gamble this year and permitted players to do their own thing.
A few students went to America. Kelleher got to go to Italy, a miracle in that he booked it, travelled and returned home with no complications. Training continued and when the intensity returned, the freshness that they had banked on gave the team a momentum that had been missing last year. Players who have come and gone from the Dublin scene are beginning to play out of their skins.
As many city players have discovered, wearing the blue can be an unforgiving experience. Kilmacud Crokes players are no exception. Ray Cosgrove was full of exuberance and goals in 2002 and finished the year with an All Star. Over the next two years though, his confidence was eroded and his place disappeared. Liam Óg Ó hÉineacháin has had passionate advocates for his inclusion in the Dublin senior team, but his chances have been fleeting.
It can be a bruising process.
Kelleher went from the minors to the under-21 panel, but did not get a shot at senior. But on July Sundays, he is happy to count himself a Dublin fan and has to smile when, on the Monday mornings of a championship defeat, there is heady talk about the untapped naturals languishing in the Dublin club scene.
"I have been playing club football for a while so it's logical that I would come up against the best players in the city. And most years, I think that Dublin selections have represented the best of what is out there with maybe one or two exceptions.
"The problem for guys trying to break into the team is that they seldom get an opportunity. You may get half a league game in February and if you don't turn it on that day, you might be discounted. And managers tend to stick with more experienced players because they are under pressure to deliver a result in every game now.
"I don't know Paul Caffrey (Dublin manager) at all, but he seems to be doing well in what is not an easy job. Hopefully, players will get their chance to make an impression over the next while. If you take guys like Alan Brogan, you can argue we are bringing quality players through. And we feel Kilmacud have players of great potential. Mark (Vaughan) is often mentioned, but we have a few players really on song at the moment.
"It is a very broad issue, though. And as for the notion that for years selectors have been missing out on great players, I can't see it. There are a lot of fine players out there, yeah. And that makes it hard. But there is no Colm Cooper type guy just waiting to be plucked from obscurity. Not that I have seen."
There are about eight intercounty players on the Kilmacud team. Contrary to popular assumption, Crokes are essentially local produce. Dan Nelligan (son of Kerry legend Charlie) keeps goal, Colm Flanagan plays for Monaghan and Fermanagh man Liam McBarron is the other non-suburbanite. But the majority of the team are Stillorgan boys.
The Kelleher name is synonymous with the area given his father was one of the key members on the charismatic Dublin teams of the 1970s that reawakened Gaelic football in the city. Ciarán's brothers are also keen footballers, but were never inhibited by their father's achievements.
"I suppose we always knew about it just from seeing photographs or whatever," he says lightly. "But whenever we started looking at the videos it just seemed to be Kerry players scoring goals. Obviously we were proud of what he achieved with Dublin but there was never any pressure or anything to try and live up to that.
"It wasn't something we were even that conscious of, to be honest. Like, he is a selector with Crokes now and it makes no difference. If I am having a bad day, he will be as quick as anyone else to haul me off."
