IN FOCUS TUAM STARS:A club forever linked with the great days of club football in Galway is on the rise again, writes KEITH DUGGAN

THE HEADQUARTERS of Galway football may have relocated to Pearse Stadium in Salthill but the belief that Tuam remains the ‘home’ of maroon football remains true in many quarters. Tuam has its cathedral and it has Tom Murphy and it has the Sawdoctors but it has always been a beacon for football and any mention of the town evokes thoughts of St Jarlath’s, Tuam Stadium and, of course, the “Terrible Twins”, Stockwell and Purcell. The surprising emergence of Tuam Stars from an absorbing and unpredictable Galway championship is timely.

Alan Mulholland’s appointment as the senior county manager has given rise to optimism that a bewildering few years for the senior team may be about to end.

Alan Flynn, a selector on Mulholland’s back room team, is manager of a Tuam Stars side who are seeking to win the club’s first championship since 1994.

They are outsiders against Corofin, the modern-day powerhouse of Galway football. But in the roll of honour, Tuam Stars have a record that remains untouchable, with 25 championships. The revitalisation of the senior team could be interpreted as a good omen.

“There is a sense of sheepishness about the fact that they have made it through because you wouldn’t have been terribly hopeful for them,” says John Purcell, who captained the Stars team that won back-to-back county titles in 1988 and 1989.

“We are all just delighted that they are there. They wouldn’t be considered a team of stars – no pun – with just one intercounty player and nobody since Ja Fallon. And there has been a lot of disappointments in recent years. So their form and determination since coming through a tough campaign has been great for the club and for the town.”

Although he lives in Dublin now, Purcell is steeped in Tuam football. When he began to play senior football for the Stars in 1984, they hadn’t won a county title since 1962. Even then, there was the sense of a glittering past that was almost impossible to recapture. Being Seán Purcell’s son meant he had a keen and constant awareness of where Tuam and Galway football stood in the pantheon of national accomplishment. The arrival of Neil O’Dea from Tipperary to work as postmaster in the town was a crucial moment for John Purcell’s generation.

“He brought a family of 12,” Purcell explains. “In my age group, Rory, Conor and Jim were playing and they were a huge infusion of talent into our team. So we won everything coming up. But then we would go along and support the senior team and find it hard to understand that we hadn’t won a county title in all that time. But for all that, you had this sense coming through that Tuam had this aristocratic reputation or whatever and that gave us confidence.”

Purcell was 21 when he won his first county title in 1984, playing alongside established players like John Tobin, Declan Smith, Joe Kelly and the late Aonghus Murphy, who was killed while serving with the Irish United Nations battalion in Lebanon just two years later.

Purcell recalls looking at a photograph of the team some years later and realising that 14 of them had played senior football with Galway at some stage. “And you would say, well pity about ye not winning a county title so. But it was hard to make the breakthrough. It is hard.”

Purcell had the right temperament to cope with being the son of one of the most revered Gaelic footballers in the history of the GAA. He played football with Francis Stockwell, the son of Frank Stockwell.

Both boys went through the Jarlath’s academy and graduated onto the Stars teams carrying these evocative surnames. They were townies. “Anyone from outside Tuam – the rest of the world – were buffers. We were the Fancy Dans and the country lads loved to beat us,” Purcell jokes.

“But football was just something you did. But in terms of the Purcell name being a pressure, my automatic answer to that is that it was not.

“Playing in Jarlath’s or other teams, there may not have been too many benefits. But within Tuam, it was great because there was never any resentment or a sense of people trying to put you down because of your name. In all clubs, there is a great sense of family and that is true in Stars.”

Seán Purcell’s death in August 2005 drew the curtains on a period of Galway football where the accomplishments equalled the romantic memories of the period. The funeral ceremony was extraordinary in that a huge crowd of mourners filed the street but the occasion remained very local and intimate. Purcell was a national figure but his days in the Tuam shirt were dense with accomplishment, when the team won every Galway championship between 1954 and 1962 and saw St Vincent’s, Dublin as their chief rivals. And then it just stopped.

Since then, the good years have been sporadic but this year’s team has shown incredible resilience, with a win after a replay against Salthill-Knocknacarra. They have been playing championship football every Sunday for the last month but have shown no signs of fatigue. That the final has been relocated to Tuam Stadium makes the occasion even better for the local team. Corofin will come hoping to add to the 13 titles they have collected in their history, with 10 of those won since 1991. It is the quintessential meeting of old and new, of town and country.

“Rural clubs have many disadvantages but they do have a tremendous community spirit that can be hard to replicate in towns,” John Purcell says. “Frank Morris put a great structure in place for Corofin and that has transferred onto all the teams that have come through since. It should be a terrific final and it means so much for Tuam to be back competing.”