The heart of Cork football still beats

DRIVE from Dublin to parts of West Cork and you'll be only halfway there by the time you cross the county boundary: Ireland's biggest county," as road signs proudly remind travellers. West Cork is a distinctive location, the only subdivision of a county that has slipped into such common usage.

It is remotely rural and yet flavoured with the exotic. It is an area that suggests both family holidays and wealthy, non national residents, black pudding and newage communes. For immediate purposes, however, it suggests footballers.

"People would say that West Cork is the home of Cork football," according to GAA historian Jim Cronin. Historically, this is unarguable, but for a long time up until this decade the distinction had the same relevance as Greece under the generals still being the birthplace of democracy.

Nonetheless, the description has in recent years acquired an impressive resonance as the region has won unprecedented success on the playing fields. Four of the last five county titles have gone west and, even more strikingly, to different clubs. Two, Bantry Blues and O'Donovan Rossa Skibbereen - All Ireland champions in 1993 were winning their first senior championship, and Castlehaven only their second.

Even the odd club out, long dormant Clonakilty, won in a blaze of romance last October after a championship they had only entered as a final fling before applying to regrade as intermediate. Their supporters brought colour and passion to the county final and their team, then as throughout the championship distant outsiders, beat a UCC side laden with inter county talent from Cork and Kerry.

West Cork contains seven senior teams, a third of the county's total. The region includes two divisions: the one technically referred to as West Cork, Carbery, and the even more westerly peninsula, Beara. Divisions have a representative status whereby junior clubs within the divisional boundary can put together a combined team to compete in the senior county championship.

It's a testament to the strength of the division that Carbery continue to field a competitive team despite the gradual promotion of several of their clubs to senior status. For a long time, Clonakitty was the only senior club in the division. There are now five. Allowing, for the cyclical nature of footballing fortunes, the present era is still the most successful in the history of the region.

And it is worth noting that the region will be represented by seven men on the senior side against Kerry this Sunday.

Before examining the phenomenon, a brief history of football in the county: Cork City for a long time - and in some quarters, still - regarded football with the same lack of enthusiasm that presumably foreshadowed the extinction of Archbishop Croke's approved "amusements" of "handygrips" and "toe pegging".

The city's best football clubs in the early years of the GAA were Nils (Nil Despemndum - Despair of Nothing) and Lees, both largely made up of West Cork men working in town. Within a few years of their ceasing to be a competitive force the clubs folded at the end of the 1920s.

Over the next two decades, Clonakilty was the main power in Cork football; besides winning county titles, the club provided five players, including captain Tadhgo Crowley, to the county team which won the 1945 All Ireland.

The arrival of the city as a force in football owes most to one club. Nemo Rangers was founded in 1922. A slickly named amalgamation of the Nemo and Rangers clubs, it was at first exclusively a hurling club, but under the influence of a number of people, most notably Billy Morgan, it became a national footballing force from the late 1960s.

Between themselves and St Finbarr's, they have brought nine All Ireland club football titles - one third of the total won - to Cork City. Since 1988, however, only one county title has gone there.

Although looking for water sheds and turning points can be a specious activity, it would be difficult to argue with 1989 as the be ginning of the West Cork domination. That year Cork won the AllIreland, and three Castlehaven men - Niall Cahalane, Larry Tompkins and John Cleary - were able to bring home Castletownsend's first senior medals.

Within a month, the club won the county title before a huge crowd in Pairc Ui Chaoimh. As, most football people agree that the success of clubs from the area has, spurred each other on, it's not just local pride that leads Cahalane to claim: "I have absolutely no doubt; that we set a trend in West Cork, being the first to make a breakthrough.

How strong is this sense of local identity? Does it exist mainly in the minds of those who want to stack neat theories?

Wednesday is half day in Clonakilty for Haulie O'Neill's butcher's shop. A member of both the management and the panel during Clon's championship run, he is currently the county champions' nominee to the county selectors.

This is a big week, leading to Cork's first League final for eight years. Presumably in a footballing town, it's not easy to be the resident selector when no local has made the team. Clonakilty's Brian Murphy is Cork's captain this year, but injury and the exceptional form of his replacement combine to exclude him from the big day.

As one of O'Neill's predecessors puts it: "I experienced that. `He should be on the team', that sort of thing. It's not that easy getting fellas on the county team. It's a different standard of football. You have rattling off a fella's name and you know he wouldn't have a prayer of getting on at that level."

Haulie O'Neill has been born and bred in Clonakilty and acknowledges the sense of West Cork identity. "It's the stronghold of football. Attendances at county championship matches are always bigger when a West Cork team is playing. There's very good relations between the clubs and great co operation. If we're asked where we come from, we're not from Cork. We're from West Cork. Whether that's purely football or something else, I don't know."

Ciaran O'Sullivan is one of the top county players. From the small club of Urban, on the Beara peninsula, he plays senior football with the division. Did he and does he identify with the West Cork clubs?

"Absolutely. I've followed them all to the finish. Once you're knocked out yourself you follow them. When you see them do well, you know you can do,, it yourself. It builds everyone up.

Another sign of the tug of locality can be seen in the number of players returning home from the city to play with their clubs. Niall Cahalane and family return regularly to Castletown. "Every two weeks. We'd like to go home every weekend if we could. I love getting down there, training with the club. Really it's a therapy on its own."

This is not a phenomenon exclusive to West Cork, but the distances that have to be covered within Ireland's biggest county impose a remoteness and, at times, an alienation on players from the west of the county.

O'Sullivan grew up on the peninsula and was educated in Ballyvourney (where he was influenced by Kerry's Mickey Ned O'Sullivan, a teacher in the school). For him football existed in microfocus.

"I looked to my club and the division and always looked out for players from home. I have only very vague memories of the county team. They never played near where we lived, unless it was for a ground opening or something.

"I used look on them as more of a city team. Nothing wrong with that. The city players were stronger and deserved their places, and that's the way it was. But it's different now.

Just as Ciaran O'Sullivan was alienated by the metaphorical distance between West Cork and the county team, players are disadvantaged by the actual travelling involved in being on the county panel.

Terry O'Neill, father of Cork midfielder Damien, was Bantry's representative with the county selectors last year (despite a curious background of having managed Carbery, one of the teams beaten by Bantry en route to the title) and feels the input demanded of West Cork players is debilitating.

"It's harder for a guy from the likes of Bantry, Skibbereen, etc, to travel up and down to Cork for training. He finishes a day's work and has to sit into a car and drive for a an hour and a half to Cork. He trains for an hour and a half and goes back home again. His day is gone, and he does that two and three times a week.

"Compare that with a fella living in the city, maybe 10 or 15 minutes away, just down the road. Squad training has upped so much. Before, serious training only started in March and April. Now it's back before Christmas. I couldn't see intercounty players taking it for more than four or five years, especially if they don't win something.

"Look at a fella like Ollie O'Sullivan, driving from Ennis to be on the pitch at seven o'clock. And then back to Ennis." Ollie is a garda, stationed in Ennis, but it makes O Neill's point to reflect on the fact that were he at home in Garnish. out on the peninsula, his journey would be only half an hour shorter.

Ciaran O Sullivan says the distance was "a main reason why I relocated . Disadvantage persists because, like Cahalane, he must now make the journey to train with his club, although those demands aren't quite as inexorable.

Tradition hangs over the region like a heat haze. Even for clubs recently arrived at the top table football was a defining influence, a, measure of existence. In a place like Clonakilty, it is a constant which heightened the sense of deliverance when the club won the county title against all predictions.

Haulie O'Neill points out of his shop window. "There's a man, Denis McCarthy, who started working in Houlihan's bakery the year we won the county title in 1952. He retired last year when we next won it." County titles sandwiching a working life.

Had the lengthy spell in the wilderness exerted pressure on the club as 1952 faded into the distance. "Well, I'll put it this way," he says. "You wouldn't be allowed forget it."

There is a variety of views on what lay behind the decline of West Cork after Clonakilty stopped winning titles. "I wouldn't say it was a decline," says O'Neill. "It's just that the city clubs were better organised and better prepared."

According to Terry O'Neill, emigration both within the county and overseas, took its toll, one group was lost completely, and the other, working in Cork City, were unable to train as regularly as players with city clubs.

Unvaried adherence to an old, traditional style of football left West Cork a bit behind the times. "It wasn't," says Jim Cronin, exactly finesse. When they went for the ball, they'd blow you out of the way.

Significantly, the new wave from West Cork have nearly all practised a more mixed approach: in the case of Castlehaven and, especially, Skibbereen, a noticeably shortball game. As their fitness levels rose, such tactical diversity became possible, and even Clonakilty by Haulie O'Neill's admission "too small and basically limited" to play it the old way but who "worked like hell for each other" succumbed.

It was Castlehaven who led the way. Niall Cahalane says it was the club's 1973 junior championship team who pioneered a short game in West Cork, but he spoils the sense of history by adding that the innovation came about "a lot by accident".

The future is bright. Everyone says so.

Haulie O'Neil has his reservations about the lack of sheer spontaneity in the attitude of youngsters towards practice: "Two hours twice a week. It's not enough, but everything has to be organised, nowadays". Nonetheless he is happy with the club's recent achievements, which include a West Cork under 21 title.

Each of the breakthrough clubs have enjoyed underage success as a preliminary. Under 21 success marked out Bantry as likely challengers, although people were still surprised at the speed with which they realised their potential. Last year Beara came through at under 21.

Demographic considerations have also improved. "At the moment," says Terry O'Neill, "emigration has slowed down. There's plenty of employment in this locality at the moment."

Niall Cahalane is also upbeat."We're nearly 20 years playing senior football, which is an achievement for a population of 700. When we came up originally, people gave us about three years, but we've gone on for 20. I think it's good for another to years. We have kept bringing players through despite having lost great players to emigration and for other reasons.

"It hasn't been a complete struggle. In any city or big town, there's a lot of distractions and attractions outside the GAA. Where I grew up, if you didn't play football you were lost to society."

For Cahalane, involved with Castlehaven since at the age of seven (he played under 12s for the club), the future holds other prospects. His son Damien travels back to training with his father at weekends.

"I, grew up, as a country lad and I'd like to think he would go back and play with Castlehaven, but that may be unrealistic. He'll be going to ,school in Cork and his friends will be in Cork, but I've no doubt he'll play for Castlehaven at some stage. When I go back at weekends, he comes with me and goes training with the under 12s."

Damien Cahalane is four and a half.

"Ah, yeah. He's out of his depth." For a year or so.

The future in West Cork starts here.