Carnew Emmets players and supporters celebrate after victory in the Wicklow Junior B Hurling Championship Final, the first of six adult county finals the club contests this year.
By John Harrington
Located in the south-western ‘finger’ of County Wicklow, Carnew Emmets are their own little Gaelic games peninsula.
The county border with Wexford is little more than a kilometre from the eastern edge of the village, the Carlow border is nine kilometres to the west, and Shillelagh-Coolboy GAA club cut them off from the rest of ‘mainland’ Wicklow.
These geographical constraints means they have a relatively small playing population to pick from, but by God do they make the most of it.
Incredibly, this year they will contest six adult county finals between hurling, football, ladies football, and camogie.
The Junior A Hurling Championship is already in the bag and on Sunday they’ll contest the Wicklow SHC Final against Bray Emmets.
They also have a Wicklow Intermediate football final, a Wicklow Junior C football final, a Wicklow camogie senior final, and a Wicklow ladies football Intermediate final to look forward to.
That’s some going for a small, rural club.
“Sure it's unbelievable,” says Club Chairperson, Ken Redmond. “We take great pride in it
“Look, it won't be nice if we don't win any more of them and we might have our tails between our legs in three weeks time, but if you're getting to them you have a chance.
“It's absolutely marvellous, really. I don't know what other club has gotten to four men's adult finals and two ladies adult finals in the one year, especially with not that massive a pool of players.
“The vast majority of our players in men's and ladies would all be dual players too. There's four lads on the football panel who don't play hurling, but all the hurlers would play football.
“Balancing the two codes is a challenge and it pushes us a bit but that is what we want. If you want to get to the top, you have to push it out and that's just the way it is.”
The Carnew Emmets ladies footballers will contest the Wicklow Intermediate Final.
This sort of success doesn’t happen by accident. Carnew Emmets put a big emphasis on underage develop with consistently good results.
They’re reigning Wicklow Minor A hurling champions and have a proud record of success in Féile competitions.
“There's huge work put in to our underage teams over the years," says Redmond. "We've used every resource the county board has given us in terms of videos and other information on player-pathways and the rest.
“You're trying hard to get the coaches up to as high a level as possible, that's the main thing. Underage is critical and you have to work very hard at it because if you don't then you won't have a senior club."
Carnew Emmets are in just as good health off the pitch as they are on it. They invested significantly in their facilities in the noughties and their clubhouse includes four dressing-rooms, a gym, a meeting room, and a kitchenette.
“We have very good facilities now and the most important thing is that a lot of people use them," says Redmond. "We're very much open to the wider community. We have the Girl Guides up there, 'Men on the Move', 'Mothers and Others', an Inclusive Programme for children with additional needs every Saturay. We have had the sensory bus down twice this year for them.
“We're trying to be as much a community hub as a GAA club, really. We have a walking track that's very popular and we're just trying to make the club a safe and welcoming place for parents and children alike.”
The Carnew Emmets senior hurlers have already won the Wicklow Senior Hurling League Division 1 title this year.
Carnew Emmets are very much a dual club but are more renowned as one of the traditional king-pings of Wicklow club hurling.
They sit top of the roll of honour with 19 county titles, but are enduring something of a famine by their standards having not won a championship since 2009.
“If you had told us back in 2009 that 15 years later we'd still be waiting for another one, we'd be saying, 'Jesus, don't be mad!”, says Redmond.
“But Bray have come along and dominated and Glenealy won a few too.
“We've been in eight finals in that period but in some of them we weren't at the races at all.”
Carnew are very much the underdogs going in against a Bray Emmets team gunning for a sixth Wicklow senior championship in a row on Sunday, but will take some encouragement from the fact that they beat the Seasiders in the Division 1 League Final this year.
It’s a young Carnew team still tracking an upward graph that should have learned a lot from last year’s final defeat to the same opponents, but Redmond knows they faced with an almighty task.
“Bray are a fabulous team, just look at what they've done over the years,” he says. “They have really brought the bar up in Wicklow hurling and we have to get to it and that's just it, that's the driving force for us.
“They won a Leinster Final two years ago and they were beaten by the eventual winners in the All-Ireland semi-final who were a Limerick senior hurling team prior to that.
“That's the level that Wicklow hurling is at the moment and Bray haven't gotten worse. We're just hoping that we can have a very good day and hopefully things happen right for us.
"You would hope that the experience of losing to Bray in last year's final will stand to the lads. Losing finals hurts you. You put a lot in and to lose out hurts.
“We're looking to close the gap as best we can. We just have to try our best.”