For the beauty of the club championship, we need look no further than the semi-final line-up in Connacht this time around.
Four clubs left, none of them super-powers, none of them carrying the heft of big population bases. When Carrick-On-Shannon, home to St Mary’s Kiltoghert, is the biggest urban centre left in the competition, you know it’s turned into a year for the little guy.
It’s quite the turnaround. For the longest time, the club scene west of the Shannon had become the preserve of the big guns and the establishment.
Before last year’s breakthrough victory for south Roscommon club Pádraig Pearses, it was a competition that had been won by just three clubs since 2008.
Between the smooth excellence of Corofin, the flinty precision of Castlebar Mitchels and the heavy-metal wildness of St Brigid’s, nobody else got a look-in throughout the late 2000s and all of the 2010s.
The scene this year couldn’t be more different. Whatever happens, there will be a new name on the Shane McGettigan cup in a couple of weeks. None of Strokestown, Moycullen, Tourlestrane or St Mary’s have been provincial champions before.
Of the 53 Connacht club finals that have been held since the competition began in 1966, only three have featured any of the clubs still standing.
Tourlestrane’s dominance of the Sligo championship began in the late 1990s and has been cemented across the past decade. They’ve won 14 of the last 25 Sligo titles, including their current run of seven in a row. Yet, for whatever reason, their dominance has never translated into so much as a sniff of provincial honours.
In fact the Sligo kingpins’ only appearance in a Connacht final came fully 40 years ago. Sadly for them, they ran into a Clann na nGael side that was embarking on a decade that would make them one of the province’s greatest ever club teams. Tourlestrane lost by double scores in that 1982 final and haven’t been back since.
Tourlestrane’s abiding problem in recent years has been an inability to overcome one county in particular. In four recent Connacht club championships, they’ve been knocked out by Mayo clubs – Knockmore last year, Ballintubber in 2018, Castlebar in 2016 and 2017. If nothing else, they will welcome the variety represented by their Leitrim opponents this time around.
Carrick club St Mary’s Kiltoghert can likewise look back on just a solitary run to the Connacht final in their history. They made it as far as the 1995 decider, only to lose by seven points to a Corofin side that was winning just its second provincial crown.
St Mary’s record in the Leitrim championship is nothing to compare to Tourlestrane’s in Sligo but this was their fourth title in the past 20 years. Playing at home, they have a quarter-final win against the London champions under their belt and Tourlestrane haven’t had a game for five weeks – they can’t say conditions aren’t in their favour to close off that 27-year gap.
That’s the thing with this Connacht championship. Although the winter finally insinuated its way into November this week, there is newness and freshness everywhere you look.
Strokestown hadn’t even been to a Roscommon final in 20 years, never mind winning one. Of the four remaining teams, they’re the most recent Connacht finalists but you have to go back as far as that 2002 team for their one trip to the showpiece game. They ran into Crossmolina on that occasion and were beaten by 1-11 to 0-10
In their way this time are Moycullen, the Galway club who are at once the club with the least history in the Connacht club championships and the unbackable favourites to win it out. The encounter in Tuam tomorrow will be Moycullen’s first ever match in the competition, having missed out on a Connacht campaign after their maiden Galway title in 2020.
Already home to a Superleague basketball team, an Olympic medalist rower in Fiona Murtagh and AFLW player Áine McDonagh, Moycullen has more sporting pedigree than a small village on the road to Clifden has any right to. The Connacht club championship is a new frontier but they head into it knowing the same goes for the other three teams too.
