Gaelic Games: Keith Duggan talks to Pat O'Dwyer, manager of Kilmurry-Ibrickane, about how the voluntary commitment of a trinity of three villages has helped build a dominant force in Clare.
The Kilmurry-Ibrickane football field is located in Quilty, a fishing village just past Spanish Point, flush on the outrageously beautiful stretch of Clare coastline. There is a story told that when the club decided to provide some measure of protection against the Atlantic weather, the wall volunteers built was completed over a single weekend.
The club chairman, Michael Talty, was one of those classic marshals of spirit and energy and he gathered over 40 top-class bricklayers among the volunteers. Local people driving to work at Moneypoint on Saturday evening came home that night to find a small fort framing the local field.
Sometimes manager Pat O'Dwyer feels that event is as good a way as any to explain what the small west Clare football club is doing cropping up in a second Munster club final in little over a decade. But, of course, the real reasons are both simpler and more complex.
To begin with, Quilty is one of the trinity of villages that makes up the parish team of Kilmurry-Ibrickane. Mullagh is a neighbouring village two miles inland while Coore, the most rural area, has seen a lot of regeneration in the past decade and is providing a lot of the club's younger players.
O'Dwyer - Mullagh born and bred - says that beneath the mutual loyalty to the club lies a fierce independent streak among all three component places but he generously allows that where football is concerned, Quilty is the passion base.
"The evening we won the county final, it was a magical drive out from Ennis along Connolly Way because there were bonfires lit the whole way along and when we got to Quilty I was truly astonished by the reaction and by what it meant to people. Remembering 1993, it was just as strong but I suppose I was a bit surprised that people felt the same way about the club."
Although O'Dwyer is in a position most GAA managers only get to dream about, guiding his club to a Munster final, he talks of what has been a remarkable season with a note of humorous despair. His record is outstanding - he was a player on the first Kilmurry-Ibrickane championship team to win in Clare in 1966 and managed their other successes in 1993, 1999 and 2002 - he confesses to be somewhat astonished by the turn this season has taken. He has vowed - as he did in earlier years - that this is unquestionably his last season as a manager and only now, with the slightly left-field sensation of football fever coinciding with the arrival of Christmas lights - is he beginning to enjoy it.
"I wish I could say that I am really enjoying it but there is too much emotional turmoil, there really is. I retired from teaching over a year ago and it is just as well because this is like a full-time job now, it really is. There were times when I was telling myself that I needed this like a hole in the head, when we were going down to the field there and only four or five guys turning out for training."
In a sense, Kilmurry-Ibrickane were victims of their success. At the close of the year, they hold the Clare under-12, under-14, under-17, minor A, under-21 A and senior championships. Under-16 was the lone grade that evaded them. That profile means they have five players involved in the Clare senior team and others committed to county under-21 training and college and work.
The speed of life is one of the changes O'Dwyer notices when he compares the present Munster championship run to that of 11 years ago. The game has developed in a similar vein, more guile and fast-moving ball now than the brawn and winter digging of yesteryear. Because of Kilmurry-Ibrickane's juvenile success, neighbouring coaches often request a copy of what they presume to be a neat and structured blueprint. The reality is, as O'Dwyer constantly marvels, much more haphazard and elusive.
"In terms of winning the Clare championship, I would say hand on heart that luck was a prime reason because early on, we were just scraping by and could have gone out. It was only after the game against Drom-Broadford (the Limerick champions) we began to see the possibilities because we played fabulous football that day. I don't know where the players found it but they did. And I suppose the underage success comes of younger players watching and trying to emulate the older teams.
"It is an astonishing thing to see 60 and 70 kids out there in the field on Sunday morning and to think that is all down to the voluntary commitment of people. And that is such a precious thing. Without that, the whole thing can disappear overnight."
O'Dwyer grew up on a farm in Mullagh. As he recalls everyone does: "There was about eight pubs and maybe 14 shops in Mullagh then but everyone kept a farm as well. This was the lean '50s. Everyone was into self-subsistence farming - all organic produce too. We kept dairy cattle and my mother would have always had turkey, geese and pigs. So we ate well."
The general flight from the land has been the chief change in the area. Building has probably replaced farming as a chief source of livelihood and the last decade has seen a reverse of the bleak trend of emigration that characterised the 1970s and 1980s. The places are still recognisably the Mullagh and Quilty of his boyhood but in pace and temperament, they have changed greatly, all of which lays greater weight on the importance of the local club.
The teams are cyclical. Four of Pat's sons play tomorrow, from Odran, the Clare veteran and International Rules player, to Peter, Michael and Robert. Paul Hickey was man of the match in the 1993 Clare final: his 17-year-old son Shane has been the revelation of this season. Ger Talty kept goal 11 years ago: his son Evan plays outfield now.
"Ger is a selector along with Frankie Frawley and we have shared the burden of this equally. I told those guys that I am not as young as I used to be and they fairly rowed in. I suppose as manager you appear to have a central role but I lean heavily on those men and on TJ O'Loughlin, our chairman. So many people give untold hours to this. At least now, the terrible anxiety we felt early in the championship is gone and there is an element of enjoyment to it. When you reach something like a Munster final, you have to try and savour it as you are going along."
Still, sometimes they have to pinch themselves. In 1993, they were the fairytale team that was, as expected, crushed by Nemo Rangers in the Munster final. This time, they are probably favourites against Waterford champions Stradbally.
"There is a rich irony in that as anyone who saw our earlier games will vouch for," says O'Dwyer. "Because the idea of us going into a final on December 6th would have been laughable back then. The fact that we are here, I think, comes down to the togetherness of this bunch. They are playing together since they were kids and there was a real desire to give it a bit of a lash this year. But I mean, for a long time it did not look like it was going to come together. Our preparation was terrible. As for being favourites, I really think that is because we beat the Kerry champions. There is no other justification because Stradbally are four-times Waterford champions, they are a really strong team and have the same incentive as us."
O'Dwyer has not thought beyond the Munster campaign. This latest - and last - foray into the madness of management has forced him to postpone a long-planned holiday following the Lewis/Clark expedition route from Ohio out to Montana. You cannot organise a training session from Butte. Next year, he promises.
On the sideline, he experiences the usual conflicting emotions watching his sons with a father's natural pride and a manager's critical judgment. He still believes the team has to play its best football and because of that there are still a few places to be nailed down.
Dealing with the younger members - confident, talkative, skilful teenagers - has been one of the new challenges. Keeping them patient, keeping them interested. Three decades of school-teaching gave him a good grounding in fielding questions but sometimes it is hard to get across the oldest lesson of all in Gaelic games: there is always next year.
Except for Pat O'Dwyer. He has sworn this is the final season. He has pioneer routes to trail. Whether they take him out to the American midwest or to the great plains of Croke Park remains to be seen.
