Tubber host Gort in a commemorative hurling match on Sunday.
By Cian O’Connell
On Sunday, the past, present, and future of Tubber GAA club in Clare will connect.
Remarkably, 140 years ago Tubber played a hurling match against Galway outfit, Gort, who will provide the opposition once again.
It is 10-minute spin from Gort to Tubber, but it promises to be a festival of hurling and camogie with underage teams also participating in the event. “This all stemmed from a club development plan a few years ago,” explains Tubber committee member Rory O’Connor.
“We were looking at the club, the history of it, the whole lot. We are referenced in a lot of places, there is reference to this match that we are replaying, a match between ourselves and Gort, referenced by Michael Cusack in his newspaper column, and Paul Rouse, then referenced it in his book The Hurlers recently.
“There was also talk of other historic games in the parish, we as a club decided it would be great to commemorate that, not so much the match, but the club being around and first registered 140 years ago.
“It is also good to mark that the game against Gort, who were there at the time, too. We invited them out to replay us in the game, marking 140 years of Tubber as a club, but it is also commemorating the match.”
Significant links exist between Tubber and Gort. “We're either side of the border,” O’Connor says. “There is a great rivalry, but then again when we played in a county intermediate final last year, there would have been a lot of Gort people supporting us that day.
Tubber's Patrick O'Connor won an All-Ireland SHC medal with Clare in 2013. Photo by: David Maher/Sportsfile
“When Gort won a county final in 2014, I had first cousins playing for them, and I still have first cousins playing for them now. We would all know each other very well.”
It matters deeply to the people of Tubber to maintain the history of the club, while also trying to plan for the future, maximising the resources available. “We’re very conscious that we're a very small club,” O’Connor says.
“We've been around a while, we've never won a senior county championship, but we've won other competitions. We like to celebrate those and we're very proud of what we're doing with our underage. We've set-up Tubber Tigers, our nursery from U5 up to U11/U12. We started off a few years ago, we'd have been struggling with numbers, but if you come down to our pitch on a Tuesday evening at 6pm, you'd see maybe 100 kids there now.
“For a club of our size, we're lucky that we've players coming from Ballyvaughan, as far as way as Fanore, we've kids and adults playing for us from Michael Cusacks in Carron, Ballyvaughan, New Quay, and Fanore. There is a good skelp of north Clare where we've players and club members.”
In the juvenile ranks from U12 to U20, Tubber combine with Crusheen, and O’Connor is hopeful. “We can already see an improvement, we can already see more players coming through to the next stage,” he says about the Tubber Tigers.
“We've 30 girls playing camogie and we didn't have camogie six years ago. We've have a social camogie team now which started in 2022/23. We didn't have social camogie before so this is a very positive.
“More people are involved, you've parents involved, and they want to play themselves. Everything so far has been all positive.”
There will be a festival of hurling and camogie in Tubber on Sunday.
At adult level in Clare, Tubber have contested a number of Intermediate deciders during the past decade. “We were senior for a long time, from 1976 until 2015,” O’Connor says.
“Once you go down, it is very hard to get back up. We've competed in four finals since then, losing all four in different manners. We've a good bunch of lads there, who will be competing again this year.”
On and off the pitch, Tubber are trying to make progress.
A new playground through a collaboration with the local community group has been beneficial, while Sunday’s event is another important day for the club. “We've a committee looking after the day, but also a committee looking after the commemorative match programme,” O’Connor says.
“It is a free event. We've very good supporters, members wise and sponsors. We go to the same people for fundraising all the time, we don't see the point in charging those people for something we should all be enjoying.
“We're constantly looking at ways to improve the whole area because it is a rural pitch. The pitch is in the middle of the parish, there is one house near it, there is no shop, no pub or anything near it. So, we are always looking at ways to attract the community to use the facility.”
Hurling, though, has always been relevant in Tubber for 140 years.
