By Kevin Egan

To stay ablaze, fire needs fuel, oxygen, and a spark to set it all alight. Without any of these three ingredients, it will quench. The same could be said of any strong GAA rivalry – there are key elements, without any of which it will struggle to burn brightly.

The fuel element could be equated to proximity. Sometimes, by virtue of coming to prominence at the same time, counties that have a fair amount of distance between them can start to produce contests with a lot of edge.

Cork and Meath footballers in the late 1980s and early 1990s come to mind here. The caustic rivalry between the two counties that shared the four All-Ireland titles from 1987 to 1990 is a world away from the current situation, where meaningful meetings between the counties are rare. For generations the provincial system meant that counties that were on each other’s doorstep might never meet in a big game and while qualifiers have changed this, it means Meath vs Cork will never mean as much as Meath vs Dublin, or Cork vs Kerry.

The oxygen for the blaze comes from being at roughly the same level, over a reasonable period of time. Kilkenny’s land border with Wexford wouldn’t be as long as either their border with Carlow, or that which they share with Laois, but because games between Kilkenny and Laois – in either football or hurling – tend to be somewhat predictable and rarely go against the grain, consequently, there’s no reason for any real tension to build up.

The spark can be, well, anything. Nicky English being perceived to laugh at the wrong time led to a Clare vs Tipperary ferocity that lives on till this day. Cavan and Meath supporters of a certain age would talk about the sharpness that went with their relationship in the 1940’s and 1950’s, and some would argue it lingers on to a degree. Once that spark sets a relationship alight, the embers can burn forever, as long as the fuel and the oxygen never runs out.

But then there’s a different type of fire – the type of molten, volcanic fire that only comes from shifting plates underneath the ground. The unique, intense heat derives from the sense that while these things don’t happen very often, the very ground itself could move once in a blue moon.

That’s the unique landscape that defines the border between Offaly and Tipperary, where the fire of rivalry burns with intensity, despite the lack of either oxygen, or spark.

The proximity aspect is certainly there – and more on this presently. Because of the shape of the two counties, with the southern end of Offaly tucked in between two jutting Tipperary “peninsulas”, the border is lengthy.

Yet the other ingredients are completely lacking. The footballing heartlands of the two counties are a long distance from each other, and the counties have played just one championship qualifier against each other, but even in hurling, the first championship meeting wasn’t until 2002, by which time Offaly’s golden era was beginning to wane.

An All-Ireland U-21 hurling final in 1989 stands out as the exception to this rule, a ferocious encounter that ended 4-10 to 3-11 in Tipperary’s favour, with multiple future All Star winners featuring on both sides.

The Faithful County were at their peak in the 1980s and 1990s, when Tipperary were arguably at their lowest ever ebb. There were league clashes, but Offaly’s wildly oscillating levels of interest in the league meant that there was never too many tears shed at results one way or another in those games.

For the same reason, there has never been a “spark” to ignite a rivalry, barring the regular mixing of the two communities in schools, shops and social outlets in places like Birr and Roscrea.

Yet the unique feature to this pairing is that in GAA terms, the border has moved, quite frequently. Had some club delegates got their wish, it could have moved even more. Coolderry, Offaly’s most successful hurling club with 31 senior hurling titles, and Lorrha, who have won eight North Tipperary championships, both applied to move into their neighbouring counties in 1925. Neither application succeeded, but there are three clubs where there is both a strong Tipperary and an Offaly identity, and where their allegiances shifted at various stages.

Carrig and Riverstown

Although all bar one very small laneway of the parish is located in the county of Tipperary, Carrig and Riverstown is a part of Birr parish, and consequently the people of the area have had a natural affinity to Birr town for centuries.

Hurlers from the area played with Birr on championship winning teams in 1912, 1913 and 1915, before a club for the area – Lockeen United – was subsequently formed. That evolved into Carrig hurling club, which took part up until 1961 before a dispute with the Offaly county board meant that they spent eight years without fielding teams.

During that time the club applied to affiliate in North Tipperary and this move had strong local support, but were denied on several occasions, only to return to the Offaly scene in 1969. Since then they’ve enjoyed intermittent success at junior and intermediate level, but have struggled to make a bigger breakthrough.

Ger Oakley, an All-Ireland winner with Offaly in 1998 and a stalwart of the team up until his retirement in 2010, is the club’s most famous hurler and he explained how the dual identity is still very much a thing in the area.

“There are plenty of people around the club that would consider Tipperary to be their county, we wouldn’t have been a huge hurling house where I grew up, and I would have supported Tipperary in school” he says.

“I was hurling my underage with Birr, I started being selected on Offaly underage teams when I was a teenager, and I always would have trained and hurled with everything I had, that’s the only way to play. The path was laid out for me, so playing with Tipperary was never an option, it was always going to be Offaly”.

That didn’t sit well with everyone in his locality. Graffiti and the burning of signs led to prosecutions and fines, and given that he would have known some of the people responsible, Oakley’s response is incredibly gracious.

“99.9% of people are good people, regardless of what lines there are on a map around them. There was a small pocket of people, not at all connected to the club, who would have been involved in that, but this is an Offaly club, generations move on and it’s not going to change”.

Ballyskenach

In a reverse of the Carrig and Riverstown situation, Ballyskenach is located in Offaly but is part of Roscrea parish, and while it first affiliated to Offaly and won a junior title in 1927 under the name Mountheaton, the club lapsed in 1940.

In 1942 it was reborn as Ballyskenach and due to geography and economics, they decided to affiliate in North Tipperary in 1943. After winning a North Tipperary junior title in 1948 they reached the Intermediate final of 1956, where they lost to a Burgess side spearheaded by the Nealon brothers, Donie, Sean and Patsy. They went on to capture a second junior title in 1959, at the expense of Lorrha.

In 1961 Tipperary County Board introduced a bye-law that restricted each parish to one hurling and one football club. Consequently, as Ballyskenach were part of Roscrea parish, they were refused affiliation. Offaly county board agreed to accept affiliation in August 1961 and the club returned to competition in Offaly. Just three months later they took the 1961 junior title and they went on to punch well above their weight in the county, reaching the senior final in 2003 when they lost out to the then All-Ireland champions, Birr.

Moneygall

Perhaps the most celebrated case of them all, in no small part because the village shot to global prominence in 2011 due to the visit of US President Barack Obama.

While the geography is clear - that Moneygall village is in the county of Offaly - it’s not as simple as that, as secretary Eugene Ó Riain explains.

“There are five roads out of Moneygall village, and all five bring you into county Tipperary within two kilometres or less” he told GAA.ie.

“Our pitch is entirely in Tipperary, it was part of an old estate taken over by the Land Commission, and all of our developments would have been supported by the North Tipperary board or the Tipperary board.”

Eugene’s father, former GAA president Séamus Ó Riain, produced a history booklet which explains how the club was formed, somewhat appropriately, with a foot in both camps. One club originally played in Offaly alongside Dunkerrin under the name Thomas Davis and winning an Offaly senior championship in 1888, but there also would have been a club, Honeymounts, competing in North Tipperary.

“James Nolan would have been part of the famous Foreign Invasion tour of the United states in 1888, and he would have been listed as an Offaly player with Dunkerrin, even though he hurled with Honeymounts” said Eugene.

Eventually, after a turbulent period in the 1890s, Dunkerrin once again became the club that represented Moneygall. In 1910 they beat Killoughey by double scores in the inaugural Offaly Junior Hurling Championship final but were thrown out due to an objection and that was to be the last time they hurled in Offaly. In February of 1912 they were affiliated to Tipperary, and since then they have gone on to produce a number of famous hurlers, not to mention winning two Tipperary senior championships in 1975 and 1976.

When Carrig and Riverstown applied to affiliate to Tipperary in the 1960’s, there were objections in Moneygall because that might lead to the establishment of a precedent. Minutes of a North Tipperary board meeting in March of 1963 read:

“…Ryan, Moneygall, proposed that no motion be taken. He pointed out that Moneygall have always been in Tipperary over a long number of years for GAA purposes. From the way this application has been approached, their club was in danger, and hundreds of Tipperary people in Moneygall parish were in danger, if the application was granted.”

Today, Eugene Ó Riain says with a smile that the matter has now been settled and at this stage, Moneygall GAA supporters can be confident that their short, medium and long-term future lies in the Premier County. Nonetheless, he feels a full exploration of the border situation might yet be a bit premature.

“It’s like the War of Independence, maybe in another 30 or 40 years we can talk about it. There’s too many people still alive to do so now!”.

Some border rivalries are made of fire – but as lines like that would indicate, the one between Tipperary and Offaly is truly volcanic.