By Brian Murphy

If a recommendation made in the recent report from the Central Council Work Group to complete the club championships in the calendar year is adopted, this weekend’s junior and intermediate finals at Croke Park will be the last played in February.

They have become a fixture in the calendar since former GAA President Seán Kelly granted the competitions formal recognition and then moved them to GAA Headquarters in 2006.

While they may be about to find a new pre-Christmas home in the calendar, the fact that the Junior and Intermediate club finals are being staged at Croke Park for a 10th successive year deserves to be celebrated.

Realistically, only a handful of teams can win an All-Ireland title at senior inter-county level; at club level, just about every player in the country and beyond that laces a pair of boots can now dream of playing in Croke Park and of winning an All-Ireland title.

At inter-county level, the skill levels are undoubtedly higher and the pace infinitely quicker, but there is a raw beauty to the club game that some argue has been airbrushed out of its elite-level equivalent.

At club level, the stories are rich, the characters are full and the entertainment is pure and unvarnished. This account of Kildare side Two-Mile House’s All-Ireland Junior success last February is a fascinating testament to that, while the Connacht Junior final between Oileáin Árainn and Achill Island stirred the romantic in just about everyone.

This weekend, another eight teams from all over Ireland and Britain come to Croke Park looking to win an All-Ireland club title. In some cases, they are coming back for a second and third time, while in others this is new and very exciting territory.

For the first time ever, three British teams will be represented at the finals – Fullen Gaels (Manchester) gunning for the junior hurling title having lost the final in 2013; John Mitchels from Liverpool looking for glory in the junior football final having lost the 2009 decider against Skellig Rangers; and the Intermediate hurlers of Kilburn Gaels from London seeking to follow in the footsteps of Robert Emmetts, who became the first overseas side to win an All-Ireland title in 2007.

(The Fullen Gaels team, pictured before their 2013 final defeat to Thomastown) 

The Junior hurling final between Bennettsbridge (Kilkenny) and Fullen Gaels on Sunday is worth examining closer. Only a certain kind of competition could draw two clubs with such contrasting histories and heritages together.

Fullen Gaels are only in existence 10 years, having been founded in 2005 when a group of men came together with the aim of reviving hurling in the city. It’s been a remarkable rise for the club, which made it to Croke Park two years ago, only to lose to Thomastown from Kilkenny in the final, despite struggling for competitive games and being forced to play in the Warwickshire Championship for years until the Lancashire Championship was revived last summer.

They duly won the first instalment, and with five successive All-Brian Junior Hurling titles under their belt, Stan Murray-Hession’s side, which includes former Wexford player Greg Jacob, now look better prepared to land a national title.

However, in Bennettsbridge, they face the most formidable of opponents. While the Junior and Intermediate club finals are often a place for small, rural clubs from villages and parishes whose stories have never before reached into the national consciousness, Bennettsbridge fall into a different category of club for whom these competitions can sometimes offer redemption or a leg back up – that of the fallen giant.

Between 1951 and 1971, Bennettsbridge were close to invincible in Kilkenny, winning 11 of their 12 senior county titles in that period. They are the club of nine-time All-Ireland winning Kilkenny goalkeeper Noel Skehan, who won six county titles with the club, while Liam Treacy, Paddy Moran, Séamus Cleere, Pat Lawlor and John Kinsella all represented the club and wore the black and amber of the county side in that golden era.

“I'd go as far as to say that if there had been an All-Ireland Club Championship at that time, they'd have won many of those as well because they had great players,” Skehan said in an interview with GAA.ie in 2013.

Five ‘Bridge’ men have captained Kilkenny to All-Ireland titles, and a remarkable 47 All-Ireland SHC medals have been won by 18 different Bennettsbridge players, goalkeeper James McGarry being the latest clubman to add to the haul with the six he won, the last of which came in 2008.

However, the glory days came to a sudden end, as described beautifully in a presentation made for the AIB Club of the year award in 1982, an extract of which features on the club’s excellent history section. “After a storm comes a calm – the tide went out. The period after 1975 was a painful one for our club. After the ecstatic excitement of 25 years of glory, there came a great lull. The only thing notable about the second five years of the 1970’s was the complete absence of anything notable.”

In many ways, Bennettsbridge are still waiting for the tide to come back in and have been operating at junior level in Kilkenny for the last number of years. They secured the Kilkenny JHC title, gaining coveted Intermediate status for 2015, with a 1-17 to 1-7 victory over Mooncoin, having lost the two previous finals. Two of their brightest talents, Liam Blanchfield and Jason Cleere, starred on the Kilkenny minor team that beat Limerick in the All-Ireland final last September. The future is starting to look very bright once again for Bennettsbridge.

O’Donovan Rossa from Antrim, who face Kilburn Gaels from London in the Intermediate hurling, are another club who firmly fall into the ‘fallen giants’ category. The west Belfast outfit are third on the Antrim SHC roll of honour with 15 titles, their most recent coming in 2004, and will see their meeting with Kilburn Gaels as a chance to start out on the journey to regaining the glory days.

Whether it’s a one-off moment in the spotlight for a small club or a shot at redemption for some fallen giant, the club championships offer something for everyone. Regardless of where they fit into a re-shaped calendar, they deserve to be nourished and cherished for what they are.

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