Galway ace sparks Kiltoom boom time

All-Ireland Club SF Semi-final/ St Brigid's v Crossmaglen Rangers: Seán Moranon how the footballers of St Brigid's owe much of their success to Galway hurling legend Anthony Cunningham.

The AIB club championships are an accessible institution. Most years new clubs make a run for silverware, spinning new community narratives out of their own familiar territories, hard work and enthusiastic games development rewarded and given a space in the limelight.

Roscommon champions St Brigid's fit comfortably into that category. Although unique to themselves their story of under-age advancement and facility development could be set in a number of locations.

They're a progressive club that have only recently laid a Prunty pitch to go with another main playing field and a training pitch. Floodlights have been installed for the past couple of years.

It also has a good location, close to Athlone and with a commuter catchment. This puts jobs and careers within reach and the region is right in the middle of a third-level college network from the local IT to NUI Galway to the other institutes in Galway-Mayo and Sligo and even extending down as far as Limerick.

To the uninitiated, the oddest thing about their achievement is the identity of the manager.

Anthony Cunningham was in the thick of Galway's greatest hurling decade, the 1980s. Captain of the All-Ireland minor winners in 1983 and twice a senior medallist, he's an unusual presence in the resolutely football land of Kiltoom.

By his own acknowledgement he only dabbled in the big-ball game while at secondary school, but work took him to Athlone and like many working in the big town he settled nearby.

"I've lived in Kiltoom for 14 years," he says, "and have been involved with the club over that time.

"There's no hurling in Brigid's although we tried to get it started, but you need the national schools involved if you're going to get anywhere."

This may be his first year as manager, but he was previously involved as a selector and knows the players since most of them were children.

"Not all of management is about the football. You have to get inside players' heads. You learn from being involved at under-age level and I've been involved with the under-age football teams all along and would have worked with a lot of the players on the way up."

One of his selectors is John O'Mahony, now on the Mayo management tightrope, whose relationship with the club goes back 10 years to one of his rare down years spent not active at inter-county level.

Having finished with Leitrim, he was persuaded by two friends to lend a hand with Brigid's.

Former Mayo player Seán Kilbride he knew from his own playing days, whereas Marty McDermott had been in charge of Roscommon at the same time as O'Mahony had been serving his first spell as Mayo manager. That year Kilbride was overseas on UN duty while McDermott's career had moved him to Dublin.

While they were away O'Mahony took the club to a first senior title before being handed the reins in Galway. As soon as he was next free of inter-county commitments Brigid's were back and he has been a selector for the past two seasons, his involvement obviously coming to a close as soon as the All-Ireland campaign concludes.

According to O'Mahony, Cunningham brings management skills to the position that together with his commitment to the club render irrelevant his first sporting love not being football.

"His background is hurling, but he's worked with the club and lived in the area for a long time. He's very good with people, a good communicator."

The Mayo manager adds that the club scene has been revolutionised in the past few years as preparation techniques imported from inter-county begin to have an impact.

"There are certain advantages logistically because you're not pulling players from as wide an area. The quality of club preparation is improving very quickly and has come on in leaps and bounds in areas like video analysis.

"Recently, the Connacht Council ran a coaching seminar and you could see there was a fierce hunger from the clubs to update their knowledge and get on top of new training methods."

Taking over a team that's won any title can be an uninviting task, but in the past year since a comprehensive defeat by eventual All-Ireland champions Salthill-Knocknacarra in the 2005 Connacht final, St Brigid's have picked up the pace again and gradually improved.

Karol Mannion's stunning goal that slipped the Connacht final from Corofin's grasp was testimony to the adventure of the team, trailing by a point. Former county star Frankie Dolan has been playing a more considered withdrawn role on the 40, as the team evolves.

"The first ambition was to retain the county," says Cunningham, "and then after last year's experience of getting to the Connacht final, see if we could improve on that. But the big pressure was on in the county and everything since has been a bonus. We have improved as the games went on.

"We use the ball short but try and mix it. It's a young set-up bar one or two and a lot of them have won under-21s. They're fast and have done well at midfield."

The Connacht club scene has been an extraordinary success story in the past decade or so. Five of the past 10 All-Ireland titles have gone to the province that had previously never won even one. But for Roscommon there has been a feeling of gazing through the window.

The county's Clann na nGael club reached four All-Irelands between 1987-90 only to lose them all and once the west got the hang of the championship, it was a Galway-Mayo duopoly.

That underdog snap has helped Brigid's unexpectedly defeat both Crossmolina and Corofin, two of the champion clubs in question. That outsider status won't change this weekend against Crossmaglen, the biggest name in club football over the same period of the past decade.

Amidst all the exhilaration and excitement facing into tomorrow's big day in Mullingar, Cunningham hasn't lost sight of the one harsh reality of club championships at this level.

"It takes so much work to get to Sunday's match. To retain the county we know we're guaranteed matches next year. But you're just can't be sure of getting back to this stage of the championship."

Better make it count.