THE FUNNYMEN OF the internet were out in force on Sunday evening, producing the chucklesome content that still makes Elon’s vanity project worth the odd squint.
Cuala winning the All-Ireland club football championship threw up jokes both new-born and veteran.
I do believe it was the venerable Irish Times journalist Seán Moran that, upon Cuala’s first All-Ireland club title in hurling, coined the phrase – ‘There won’t be an almond milked in Dalkey all week.’
It’s still a good line and got some upcycling treatment.
So too did the picture of a viral picture of the train carriage table reputed to have been surrounded by Fulham FC fans travelling to Leicester for an away game, the surface covered in oyster shells and champagne bottles.
This was passed off as one of the specially-chartered DART carriages ferrying the victorious Cuala fans home to their homes on the hill.
There’s something about the Cuala win that feels a little, well, foreign when held up against the shared experience of GAA people.
Stay with us. It’s just that in the common, everyday portrayal of the GAA, in marketing, advertising and cultural references, you don’t see many Cuala types featured.
The typical image pushed is that of the craggy oul lad with his shirt open, the flat cap and a ribbon pinned to his jacket. Daintily carrying a bottle of mineral and throwing the cap into the air when Ringy plants another shot to the net before a late hurl opens him (Ringy, not the spectator) up from forehead to navel.
Another one. There’s the pastoral scene of a valley set in amongst the Drumlins, and the barely decipherable set of goalposts in the mid-distance, a clever catchline exhorting you – and future generations of you – to never leave your townland for 400 years because the crossbar might need a lick of paint at some point.
Cuala is none of those things. And yet, the people in Ireland most likely to come up with this sort of GAA characterisation might be advertising creatives from, well, Cuala and places like it.
As in most finals, the build-up tended to focus on the differences between the two clubs; the rural in the case of Errigal Ciarán, and the urban in Cuala.
Manager Austin O'Malley and Con O'Callaghan. Ken Sutton / INPHO
Ken Sutton / INPHO / INPHO
That’s simplistic. And it was taken to an extreme when some – myself included – invited you to think of the final as one team sponsored by the local village butcher, and the other by an American multinational biopharmaceutical company.
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But Cuala had to come from a base of nothing, having never won the top-level Dublin senior championship prior to this campaign.
“For people on the outside it’s probably very hard to process but for the group, I suppose, our whole season, all year has been built on growth and opportunity” said their impressive manager, Austin O’Malley.
“And the idea, you know, I suppose two or three years ago, when I came in was the idea of really growing the individual and then growing the group and the game within the club.
So I suppose when you set your platform out like that, and we created a vision around being successful and going after certain key targets.
“I suppose winning a Dublin championship first was a really, really key one for us to get across the line and particularly, in the manner that we’d done it, it was so tight and beating Crokes, who have been unbelievable champions.
“That really gave us a sense of ourselves and maybe it emboldened us, our spirit as well and our identity. And that kind of fed in then. The Naas game, I think we took a huge amount from it. I thought they were a real, real quality side coming through that, and it’s just grown.”
He added, “I think there’s been sort of a collective kind of consciousness then maybe even from the club and the energy and the support base around us as well that kind of pushed us on as well.
“So, look, I know it’s a historic moment, but it’s probably maybe some ways lost or redundant at the moment because you’re so focused on just having your detail right coming in here and you’re trying to sort of push all the noise away.”
The accents may change. The social demographics might differ in an overall context.
To put it in terms that makes sense to a child, I recall going down with a friend to his cousins in Dalkey when we were around 13 or so. We were there with his father who had a trailer to be filled with scaffolding and brought up the road.
His cousins were exotic birds to us, wearing chino trousers and lying up on their leather sofas. The house, as my buddy explained, was the type where you might see unopened easter eggs still in the kitchen in June.
Do that mean that Cuala don’t have the struggles of other clubs?
What does it mean that Errigal Ciarán have less than 400 adult members, while Cuala have forecast that they will have 4,500 by the end of the decade?
Well, they don’t own a blade of grass.
Errigal will soon be launching a draw to develop their third pitch.
Cuala still have to function. They train at ungodly hours in Wicklow on the artificial surface at Bray Emmetts.
Yet the players don’t mind. There’s something incredibly spartan about the likes of Mick Fitzsimons and Con O’Callaghan making do and mending.
James Power and Luke Keating lift the Andy Merrigan Cup. Bryan Keane / INPHO
Bryan Keane / INPHO / INPHO
And their captain James Power and his devotion to the club.
On Sunday, he sat there full of contentment. This was a game coming 21 years after he made his senior debut. By then, their centre-back Charlie McMorrow, and the point-scoring substitute Conor Groarke weren’t even born.
Power’s sporting prowess made him a rugby centre for Blackrock in 2004, alongside Luke Fitzgerald. Three years later he was taken in by the Leinster Academy, by which time he had morphed into an out-half with a monster boot.
Cuala had little to offer him. His first few years were spent bumbling around the foothills of Division Three in the Dublin league. Then Fitzsimons came along, made a position his own for Dublin, and changed the perceptions of everyone in the club. Con arriving later provoked the thought further.
“I suppose a big thing was that Con gave some of the older guys just a bit of hope,” recalls Power.
“You’re like, ‘If we can kind of cobble together a few players from somewhere, we have this kind of I suppose generational player that you can kind of go and do something.’”
Luke Keating with his sons in the huddle with the Cup. Bryan Keane / INPHO
Bryan Keane / INPHO / INPHO
When it came to lifting the Andy Merrigan Cup, he did so with Luke Keating. A few years back, Keating was all for retiring after moving to Balbriggan, on the northern tip of Dublin county.
Most wouldn’t see this as a big deal. But try sitting in that traffic to get round the M50 in the evenings to make training. He was convinced, begged and emotionally blackmailed to return. It all paid off with his 0-3 yesterday.
And still, Power reaches for a memory probably long-forgotten by most to sum up the club.
“There was a league match we played against Raheny a good few years ago now, and he was only supposed to be watching, I think he saw David Henry coming on, on the other side and then he goes ‘feck this’ gets his boots on and starts playing.”
That manic desire tends to pull others up the cliff-face. Now they’re at the summit.
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'A big thing was that Con gave some of the older guys just a bit of hope' - The rise of Cuala
THE FUNNYMEN OF the internet were out in force on Sunday evening, producing the chucklesome content that still makes Elon’s vanity project worth the odd squint.
Cuala winning the All-Ireland club football championship threw up jokes both new-born and veteran.
I do believe it was the venerable Irish Times journalist Seán Moran that, upon Cuala’s first All-Ireland club title in hurling, coined the phrase – ‘There won’t be an almond milked in Dalkey all week.’
It’s still a good line and got some upcycling treatment.
So too did the picture of a viral picture of the train carriage table reputed to have been surrounded by Fulham FC fans travelling to Leicester for an away game, the surface covered in oyster shells and champagne bottles.
This was passed off as one of the specially-chartered DART carriages ferrying the victorious Cuala fans home to their homes on the hill.
There’s something about the Cuala win that feels a little, well, foreign when held up against the shared experience of GAA people.
Stay with us. It’s just that in the common, everyday portrayal of the GAA, in marketing, advertising and cultural references, you don’t see many Cuala types featured.
The typical image pushed is that of the craggy oul lad with his shirt open, the flat cap and a ribbon pinned to his jacket. Daintily carrying a bottle of mineral and throwing the cap into the air when Ringy plants another shot to the net before a late hurl opens him (Ringy, not the spectator) up from forehead to navel.
Another one. There’s the pastoral scene of a valley set in amongst the Drumlins, and the barely decipherable set of goalposts in the mid-distance, a clever catchline exhorting you – and future generations of you – to never leave your townland for 400 years because the crossbar might need a lick of paint at some point.
Cuala is none of those things. And yet, the people in Ireland most likely to come up with this sort of GAA characterisation might be advertising creatives from, well, Cuala and places like it.
As in most finals, the build-up tended to focus on the differences between the two clubs; the rural in the case of Errigal Ciarán, and the urban in Cuala.
That’s simplistic. And it was taken to an extreme when some – myself included – invited you to think of the final as one team sponsored by the local village butcher, and the other by an American multinational biopharmaceutical company.
But Cuala had to come from a base of nothing, having never won the top-level Dublin senior championship prior to this campaign.
“For people on the outside it’s probably very hard to process but for the group, I suppose, our whole season, all year has been built on growth and opportunity” said their impressive manager, Austin O’Malley.
“And the idea, you know, I suppose two or three years ago, when I came in was the idea of really growing the individual and then growing the group and the game within the club.
So I suppose when you set your platform out like that, and we created a vision around being successful and going after certain key targets.
“I suppose winning a Dublin championship first was a really, really key one for us to get across the line and particularly, in the manner that we’d done it, it was so tight and beating Crokes, who have been unbelievable champions.
“That really gave us a sense of ourselves and maybe it emboldened us, our spirit as well and our identity. And that kind of fed in then. The Naas game, I think we took a huge amount from it. I thought they were a real, real quality side coming through that, and it’s just grown.”
He added, “I think there’s been sort of a collective kind of consciousness then maybe even from the club and the energy and the support base around us as well that kind of pushed us on as well.
“So, look, I know it’s a historic moment, but it’s probably maybe some ways lost or redundant at the moment because you’re so focused on just having your detail right coming in here and you’re trying to sort of push all the noise away.”
The accents may change. The social demographics might differ in an overall context.
To put it in terms that makes sense to a child, I recall going down with a friend to his cousins in Dalkey when we were around 13 or so. We were there with his father who had a trailer to be filled with scaffolding and brought up the road.
His cousins were exotic birds to us, wearing chino trousers and lying up on their leather sofas. The house, as my buddy explained, was the type where you might see unopened easter eggs still in the kitchen in June.
Do that mean that Cuala don’t have the struggles of other clubs?
What does it mean that Errigal Ciarán have less than 400 adult members, while Cuala have forecast that they will have 4,500 by the end of the decade?
Well, they don’t own a blade of grass.
Errigal will soon be launching a draw to develop their third pitch.
Cuala still have to function. They train at ungodly hours in Wicklow on the artificial surface at Bray Emmetts.
Yet the players don’t mind. There’s something incredibly spartan about the likes of Mick Fitzsimons and Con O’Callaghan making do and mending.
And their captain James Power and his devotion to the club.
Power’s sporting prowess made him a rugby centre for Blackrock in 2004, alongside Luke Fitzgerald. Three years later he was taken in by the Leinster Academy, by which time he had morphed into an out-half with a monster boot.
Cuala had little to offer him. His first few years were spent bumbling around the foothills of Division Three in the Dublin league. Then Fitzsimons came along, made a position his own for Dublin, and changed the perceptions of everyone in the club. Con arriving later provoked the thought further.
“I suppose a big thing was that Con gave some of the older guys just a bit of hope,” recalls Power.
“You’re like, ‘If we can kind of cobble together a few players from somewhere, we have this kind of I suppose generational player that you can kind of go and do something.’”
When it came to lifting the Andy Merrigan Cup, he did so with Luke Keating. A few years back, Keating was all for retiring after moving to Balbriggan, on the northern tip of Dublin county.
Most wouldn’t see this as a big deal. But try sitting in that traffic to get round the M50 in the evenings to make training. He was convinced, begged and emotionally blackmailed to return. It all paid off with his 0-3 yesterday.
And still, Power reaches for a memory probably long-forgotten by most to sum up the club.
“There was a league match we played against Raheny a good few years ago now, and he was only supposed to be watching, I think he saw David Henry coming on, on the other side and then he goes ‘feck this’ gets his boots on and starts playing.”
That manic desire tends to pull others up the cliff-face. Now they’re at the summit.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Cuala GAA Gaelic Football LOVE OF PLACE