Nomads bid to find new home for county title

Tuesday evening of county senior football final week, the sun is setting over Galway Bay beside Liam Mellows Hurling Club pitch at Ballyloughane, and St Michael’s are a long way from home.

It’s an unusual setting for the Bushypark/Newcastle/Westside outfit, but they’ve become accustomed to playing in different places since their home pitch at Seamus Quirke Road has been ‘out of bounds’ for four seasons.

Like nomads, St Michael’s have played all over the city this year. Three ‘home’ league games were played at Crestwood, thanks to Fr Griffin/Éire Óg, one at Pearse Stadium.

Training posed the biggest problem: in February, they trained at Seamus Quirke Road but the dressing rooms were out of action, which meant no showers. They also used a piece of ground with goalposts at Shantalla; a green area that is the traditional home of St Michael’s but it’s not full-length or proper width and has no showers or dressing rooms.

Things got so bad during the year that they were forced to train for two months on a gravel patch next to the hockey pitches at Dangan. Club man Gerry Dolan subsequently built up a relationship with NUI Galway and brokered a deal that got them use of the actual pitches – rather than the gravel! – at Dangan.

There aren’t proper floodlights at NUIG, and now that the students are back, the pitches are booked up, which is why St Michael’s had to switch to Ballyloughane this week.

“It’s not been ideal,” admits manager, John Kenny.

But it’s against that backdrop, and a backdrop of financial restrictions – the club has debt to pay-off on its clubhouse and has no gate revenue due to the closed pitch – that makes it such a remarkable achievement for St Michael’s to qualify for their first ever senior county final since it was established in 1956.

“It’s just a testament to the lads. They know the situation, they don’t demand anything and there are no Prima Donnas,” he says.

Kenny, from Castlerea, Roscommon, has lived in Galway for 35 years, 25 of them in the city. He married Evelyn, one of the Boyles from Rahoon Road, and his brothers-in-law, Seán and Tony, have played with St Michael’s. Based in Dangan Heights, Kenny has been involved in St Michael’s since 1990, and bar one or two lads, has trained the entire current panel at some stage.

Pat Walsh, one of the founders of St Michael’s underage structures, started mini-bussing kids from around Shantalla and Westside up to train with him in Dangan. Vincent McGrath in Hazel Park started training children at the same time; and so too did, John Ruane up in Bushypark Lawn. Kenny and Ruane, his trainer/selector, are still together today.

“We entered a team in the Community Games in 1992, at U-10, and in 1993 we redoubled our efforts and we went all the way and won the U-10 All-Ireland Community Games, which was an amazing achievement. It was never done before, and it was under the banner of Newcastle.

“We won the county title in 1994 and 1995 and were beaten in two Connacht finals – that was the genesis of a lot of the underage structure. There was a great buzz about the place and Gaelic football became the thing to play among young kids,” recalls Kenny.

Kenny and Ruane – “we’ve always worked together” – then took over the adult team, and kept them ticking over in intermediate.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.