THEIR ALL-IRELAND FINAL nightmare reel is a bit more packed than they would have liked. For people of a certain vintage in the village of Dunloy in Antrim, all of their trips to Croke Park on St Patrick’s Day ended painfully. And they remember every little bit from their house of pain.
They reached the final on four occasions and four times they came home with empty pockets. Their first All-Ireland hurling final in 1995 actually required two trips to GAA headquarters for the draw and replay against Birr. That second day out resulted in a 13-point defeat to a superb Offaly side who are regarded as one of greatest-ever club teams.
The other three All-Ireland finals in 1996, 2003 and 2004 were no less favourable. The losing margins were big against Sixmilebridge of Clare, Birr again, and Cork’s Newtownshandrum.
Former Antrim hurler — and current Saffrons selector — Gary O’Kane has been involved with Dunloy his whole life. At present, he’s an underage manager in the club and was previously in charge of the senior team. He hurled in all four of those heartbreaking All-Ireland finals too.
Dunloy are heading for All-Ireland final appearance number five this Sunday when they take on another giant of the game – Ballyhale Shamrocks. He’s watched this generation of hurlers develop all the way up through the grades. With the week that’s in it, it’s an unfortunate exercise to be picking through the ghosts of All-Irelands past for a memory that hurts the most.
“Maybe Sixmilebridge wasn’t a great one for us,” he remembers while chatting to The42 ahead of Sunday’s final. ”We didn’t perform on the day. I had a total nightmare and it was just one of those days. Against Birr, maybe we should have won the first day. Birr is one of those teams that’s going to go down in history as one of the best teams that’s ever played club hurling.
“And then against Newtownshandrum, we didn’t perform on the day either and it was a poor match to be fair.”
Despite those heavy losses, Dunloy also racked up some significant wins in those campaigns. They took out Galway heavyweights Athenry and Portumna, along with Kilkenny outfit Glenmore and Waterford’s Mount Sion. Wins of that calibre were forged in their small rural village in the north of Antrim.
Situated between Ballymena and Ballymoney, hurling is a huge part of the local fabric in Dunloy. Like many other GAA communities, Dunloy has a small population of between 4,000 and 5,000 people with the local chapel, GAA pitch and school binding the community together.
O’Kane also gives a mention to the local hurling academy where children spend every available hour swinging their sticks.
“We’ve an indoor arena, a gym upstairs and it’s just packed with wee ‘uns hurling.
“I’ve a wee lad of 10 and my wife would phone me when I come home from work to say to bring him home from the academy for his dinner. It’s the life and soul of the parish.
“As soon as you’re fit to hold a stick… People would go to christenings and there’d be a hurling stick there for the newborn with a name on them. The club means everything to the parish.”
Dunloy always went to Croke Park with impressive credentials. And yet, to some people in the south, they weren’t quite a proven quantity on the big stage. That doubting talk has always followed them. And the narrative hasn’t changed much this time around either. Before their All-Ireland semi-final against St Thomas’, the word reaching Dunloy was that they wouldn’t have the muscle for their Galway opponents.
They had just defeated Slaughtneil to win their first Ulster SHC title in 13 years, but that wasn’t enough to change the dial.
“We’ve always believed in our ability as hurlers and there was never an issue in us not believing that we could beat St Thomas’,” says O’Kane.
“On the day, we actually should have won by a bit more. There’s always that thing in the southern media but they’ve still got great respect of the northern teams when it comes to that stage of the All-Ireland. Loughgiel has won two All-Irelands, Cushendall has played in the final, we’ve played in the final. We can compete but in some quarters there’s a lack of respect.
“If you read all the reports in southern media after the Thomas’ game, all they were saying was that it wasn’t their day and nothing happened for them. But that’s what we hear the whole time.”
O’Kane sensed there was something different about Dunloy this year though. His nephew Gregory O’Kane, who is only three years his junior, is the manager and a former teammate of Gary’s. Naturally, the pair were often mistaken for brothers, and on occasion, Gary would present that as fact.
“If anybody asked,” Gary explains, “I just said we’re brothers. We were hurling for Dunloy and Antrim at the same time so were always together anyway.”
And when Gary took a look at the team before the Ulster final, he spotted qualities in the players that could help them end that wait for a provincial title.
“A lot of people up here say that Slaughtneil are a football team playing hurling but they have great hurlers and the past couple of years against Ballygunner and Ballyhale, they weren’t far away.
”I was confident this year going into the match and I’d seen the work the boys had done S&C wise and they seem to be structured better. But I had a feeling that it was going to be our year to beat them and we did.
“And since we got over Slaughtneil, this young team is at another level. There’s a confidence and a belief. It was a real monkey to get off our backs and then take it from there.”
One of the major positives for this Dunloy team is that they have no attachment to those All-Ireland disappointments of years gone by. That’s for the generation that came before them to think about. All that said though, All-Ireland final number five will not be any easier than the preceding four attempts.
Ballyhale Shamrocks have multiple All-Ireland titles in their locker already. In TJ Reid, they have one of the greatest-ever hurlers and his supporting cast are a powerful lot too. O’Kane remarks that Dunloy will have worries from 1-15 on the pitch when the two sides collide on Sunday.
But they will go into this final with significant momentum and without any burden of losing at this stage in the past. Those events are just ghost stories for a whole new generation of hurlers in Dunloy.
“They’ve heard the stories of before but they’re carefree,” says O’Kane. “They’ve won everything going up right through from U12 up to minor, U21 and the games of the past are in the past.
“Hurling with Antrim and playing in the Joe McDonagh Cup final has brought them on a hell of a lot as senior players. There’s probably five players whose fathers played in All-Ireland finals.
“They’re starting to grow up and they have that confidence.”
Time to travel down south once more and deliver.
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