Ballintubber v Corofin - AIB Connacht GAA Football Senior Club Championship Semi-Final
My Club and I: Cillian O'Connor
In this week's 'My Club and I' we speak to Mayo senior footballer and two-time Young Footballer of the Year Cillian O'Connor about his club Ballintubber.
By Brian Murphy
Ballintubber, sometimes known as Ballintober, is a village in west Mayo which derives its name from its original Irish name Baile on Tobair, which translates as 'Settlement of the Well'.
Located 14km south of Castlebar on the Ballinrobe Road close to Lough Carra and Lough Mask, Ballintubber is famous for the beautiful Ballintubber Abbey, which was founded in 1216, and more recently the exploits of its senior football team, winners of Mayo SFC titles in 2010 and 2011.
The club is located in a very rural and sparsely populated area of Mayo and covers the villages of Killawalla, Ballintubber, Clogher, Carnacon, and Ballyglass. Ballintubber play their adult games in Ray Prendergast Memorial Park, Clogher while underage activity takes place at Ballintubber GAA pitch, located next to the national school and community hall.
The club was founded in 1910 and celebrated its centenary year in truly remarkable fashion by winning their first-ever Mayo SFC title, beating Castlebar Mitchels in the final under the stewardship of current Mayo manager and Ballintubber man James Horan.
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The club's most famous son is Paddy Prendergast, full-back on the last Mayo team to win Sam Maguire back in 1951, while Cillian O'Connor is one of a number of Ballintubber men on the Mayo senior panel, including his younger brother Diarmuid, Alan Dillon, Jason Gibbons and Danny Geraghty.
For more on Ballintubber GAA Club, log on to their website .
Q. What are your earliest memories of playing with Ballintubber and how did you first get involved with the club?
A: My first day down at the pitch was at the community centre in Ballintubber for an U8 blitz. I was four years old and I was on the 'B' team because my dad was the manager and they were short. Dad would have played for the club in the 1970s and '80s and he has also been involved in a coaching capacity so that's how I got into it at four or five years of age.
Q: Can you tell us a little about the area and where the club draws its players from?
A: It's located in the west of Co. Mayo about 15 minutes outside the town of Castlebar. It's a rural area and it would be made up of small parishes - Killawalla, Ballintubber, Clogher, Carnacon and Ballyglass and some other areas. It's quite a big area but it wouldn't be heavily populated. Sometimes it can be quite hard in certain age groups to field players and to get a squad of 20 together. We've competed fairly well at underage level in recent years and have plenty of 'A' titles, and thankfully we have turned that underage success into U21 'A' titles and senior titles.
(Ballintubber's location, marked by the red arrow, in west Mayo)
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Q: Can you tell us what the grounds are like and what facilities the club has?
A: We have a new community centre beside the national school, we have a gym and function room and two or three brand new dressing-rooms. The community centre is where all the underage games are played. It was built two years ago and has a brand new hall.
We also have a second ground in Clogher - the Ray Prendergast Memorial Ground, where the senior team play and we share that with the Carnacon ladies. That's where we play most of our championship games. There is a redevelopment planned in Clogher over the next five years.
Q: Do you remember when you first broke into the Ballintubber senior team?
A: I do. James Horan was our manager and my first game would have been in 2008 in a league match against Claremorris. We had won the Mayo Intermediate Championship the year before so I was lucky to go straight in playing senior football. I think I came off the bench and got a point. The first championship game would have been later that year when we were beaten by Knockmore, which is Kevin McLoughlin's team, in the championship, and by the time we won back-to-back county titles in 2010 and 2011 I was in the team.
Unfortunately, injury ruled me out of the championship in 2012 and a lot of 2013, but hopefully we can get back to those heights again in 2014. Peter Forde, the former Sligo and Galway manager, is in charge of us now so we would have ambitions of getting back to winning county titles.
Q: How important was James Horan's arrival as manager in the club's re-emergence as a real force in Mayo?
A: It was huge, massive, to get him on board with Tony Duffy, the former Mayo minor and U21 manager. They brought in a new level of professionalism and organisation and demanded a huge commitment and dedication from 35 lads and really helped us to win the Intermediate Championship in 2007, which really raised the bar and the standards in the club. Thankfully, those standards have been embraced by everyone at the club and have been carried on by the new manager.
Q: What are your memories of being involved in the club's first-ever county title success in 2010?
A: It was huge, definitely the highlight of my club career. I think I was 19 at the time and beating the neighbours, the rivals, the 'townies' Castlebar Mitchels in the county final on the 100-year anniversary of our club after only being promoted to senior three years before was huge.
There were a couple of emotional attachments as well, with a local bereavement of our captain's uncle and the opposition's captain's father, Ger Feeney, who tragically died in the lead-up to the game. It was an emotional occasion but thankfully we just came out on the right side of it. It wasn't a pretty game, but it was a massively proud game for everybody in the club. It was a big win. It also laid the foundations for us to go back and win it again the following year, but in fairness to Castlebar they have come back even better and raised the bar again.
Q: Football must be hugely important to such a small, rural community, so in that context was it a hugely emotional day for the people of Ballintubber and the community in general?
A: There are a lot of the people in the area who live, sleep and breathe football so it meant an awful lot to club volunteers who put in 30 to 40 years' work and who have given endless amounts of time to training that team from four or five years of age. Lots of credit for the win must go to our parents' generation and even the people that came before them who put the structures in place years before.
Many of the players on the team that won senior titles played on our U21 team which won county titles in 2009 and 2010, but that's a while ago now and we have to come at it again and mix it with the likes of Castlebar and the other teams that have raised the bar again.
Q: Have many Ballintubber men gone on to represent the county and who were your role models at the club when you were growing up?
A: Paddy Prendergast, who played at full-back on the All-Ireland winning Mayo teams in 1950 and '51, was a Ballintubber man and there have been plenty of others, but in recent years James Horan and Alan Dillon have been the marquee names and probably the two that have inspired a lot of the younger generation and current players to take up the game.
Alan has been the figurehead for 10 or 12 years and would have been the fella we would always have looked to and has dragged us over the line in many games. He's one of our big players and someone we would look to, and hopefully we can get the best out of him again next year. As good as he is at inter-county level, in club games he is massive. His ball-winning ability, his strength, game management and big-game temperament have been invaluable to us. He has won us countless games over the last five to six years that we simply would not have won without him. He's dragged us to the heights we have reached now.
Q: The club must also be proud of your own achievements with Mayo, winning three Connacht titles and the Young Footballer of the Year award twice...
A: The club have been fantastic to me. Obviously, I can't train with the club all the time because of my commitments with the county, but the biggest thing I have found with the club hierarchy is that they are so accommodating to the senior players when we can't be there. Thankfully, the support structure has been put in place for us, whether we get injuries or need the use of facilities in the area, the club have been brilliant. I think they have been very proud of our achievements and anything we ask for we are always looked after by the club.
Cillian O'Connor is a forward for the Mayo senior football team. Mayo face Galway in the Connacht Senior Football Championship final at Elverys MacHale Park, Castlebar on Sunday, July 13 at 2pm.
