*Gearoid and Owen Lynch. Photograph: Páraic McMahon
GAA is at the heart of life in the Loop Head Peninsula with Naomh Eoin bridging to win promotion to the Clare senior football championship for the first time.
Drawing players from Cross and Kilbaha, the Peninsula club take on Wolfe Tones in Saturday’s intermediate decider in Cooraclare which has a 15:00 start. Capping off the fiftieth of the year since the club’s foundation by claiming the Talty Stores Cup is now the focus.
Owen Lynch is captain of the Naomh Eoin side while ten years previous his older brother Gearoid was the victorious captain when the club won the Junior A football championship.
Gaelic football has been the talk of the place since their semi-final win over Clondegad, Gearoid admitted. “It is hard to avoid the talk around the place, everyone is excited, it is the first time ever that we’re in an intermediate final so everyone is excited back here, it is a matter of passing the next days away”.
That comes as no surprise given the importance of the GAA club in the locality. Gearoid said, “It is massive around here, it is the centre of everything, I know everyone says that but in a small place it is massive. Myself and Niall Bonfil were training the girls (West Clare Gaels) and I called here a few mornings at 8am to get gear and Niall’s father John would be here, if he wasn’t cutting grass he was spraying weeds or doing something, people like that are great and it brings excitement, hopefully everyone will be there on Saturday and it should be a great occasion, hopefully the result will add to it, the excitement here shortens the winter around the place”.
Activity in the parish is often based around the football club, Owen outlined. “It is the centre point of the community, after every game you’d go into the pub and everyone would be there congratulating you, it’s brilliant, everyone is delighted, it isn’t just us on the panel that would be delighted after a game, everyone would be in great form and on about it, when you meet someone on the road it is the first thing anybody talks about”.
David Russell was manager of the Naomh Eoin side to win the Junior A in 2014 while Kilkee man Barry Harte is now in charge. Time hasn’t been long going since that success, Gearoid observed, “Ten years ago for the fortieth anniversary, it was great, I was twenty three at the time and it doesn’t be long passing, you’d never think it was ten years ago but it was great, we had gone through a few tough years with emigration, no more than any other club but it hit us a bit harder, we were already a bit tight on numbers, we got a few lads through at the one time, we got near it a couple of years before we thought we would, it was a brilliant year for the club”.
The trend of Naomh Eoin reaching county finals on anniversary years since its foundation and one of the Lynch’s acting as captain are notable coincidences. “There isn’t much difference to be honest, it is an easy bunch to be captain of because there’s leaders all over the field, there’s no change for me, I don’t do any extra talking, other lads do more talking than me, it is obviously an honour to be captain but there’s plenty of leaders on the team,” Owen commented of leading the team into battle.
Speeches are often a strength of captains and as far as best man speeches are concerned, Gearoid certainly knocked it out of the park when in the role for the wedding of former O’Currys footballer Tom Downes and Ennis native Una Casey, both of whom are now based in New York City.
Their sister Ciara is responsible for running the club’s Facebook Page, Gearoid works their father Gerry as a plasterer, “he’ll have to be understanding come Tuesday or Wednesday if things go right but we’ll be busy Friday”. The brothers agree that it’s their mother Eileen that will be most nervous in advance of the final. “The old lady is a bit excited about it,” Owen pointed out and Gearoid added, “She would be a bit excited about it, in our house you can be too busy sometimes to be worried about a game”.
Captain Owen turns twenty five on Thursday (October 24th), he finished a degree in quantity surveying and may yet return to that line of work but for now is working with a local contractor, he spent some time in Australia two winters ago but is content to be back in Cross, “there wouldn’t be as much rain or wind but this place has its perks”.
Cross has the greater proportion of players on the Naomh Eoin panel compared to Kilbaha with the brothers calculating that the breakdown is thirteen to ten, “the parish league would be weak coming from Kilbaha, it is mainly from over this side,” Gearoid pointed out.
Regardless of the amount of brothers on the panel, it is a very tight-knit group. “We’re close, we’ve the Magners, the Bonfils, the likes of Sean Roche in goals and his brother Liam doing stats, the rest of the lads then if they are not brothers they are related, it is the nature of it back here, everyone knows everyone and everyone is related to everyone,” Gearoid said.
He continued, “the youngest is from eighteen or nineteen, Seamus is the oldest at thirty eight, I’m thirty three, Declan is the next at thirty, there’s only three on the panel in their thirties, I know the panel isn’t massive but we’re lucky to have a group of lads in their early twenties, it helps with the style of play”.
Indeed their direct style has been applauded by neutrals. Owen said, “We love to go at teams, we have confidence in our ability, the running game suits us because we have great lads on the ball like Odhran (Lynch) and Niall (Bonfil), real strong runners so it is playing to our strengths”.
Lessons were learned from their 2-12 0-13 semi-final loss to Kilmihil last year, Owen maintained. “We had a bit of inexperience the last couple of years, we were still a young side but now everyone is that bit older, a bit more experienced, last year playing against Kilmihil it was obvious to see that we were a bit nervous, we went 1-5 0-0 down, it’s been a totally different feel to it this year, last year everyone was on about history making a first intermediate semi-final but this year we’re there on merit and we know that”.
Agreement was voiced by Gearoid, “Last year against Kilmihil we didn’t know what to make of it, we were very nervous on the day, we didn’t know what to think of it and we were nervous, that came out in how we played. This year has been a point to prove for ourselves never mind anyone else, there will be plenty of people that will say we shouldn’t be there but whatever matters is within the group and we had a point to prove to ourselves never mind anyone else”.
Naomh Eoin have never played in the senior championship but some of their players including Owen have, in 2019 the amalgamation of Western Gaels saw O’Currys, Naomh Eoin and St Senan’s Kilkee join forces. “It was a big jump but it was a bit all over the place, there was no real training and you didn’t know until the day of the game if you were starting never mind who was beside you, we didn’t do too bad, we lost to Kilmihil in Doonbeg and Kilrush in Kilkee, then there was a dead rubber with Miltown in the last game and we drew with them in Cooraclare, it wasn’t a total failure but it hasn’t happened since, we were playing Saturday and Sunday so it was near impossible,” Owen recalled.
Injury rather than protesting at playing with O’Curry’s players kept Gearoid out of action at the time, “It’s hard to make it work when clubs are still playing, it was tough”. They’ll have plenty of support from the Peninsula this weekend, “For the most part! I wouldn’t say all of it but the most part”.
Beating Clondegad by six points in the first round set them on their way in this year’s championship but it was not plain sailing back in Miltown Malbay. “We had a fierce bad first half that day, there wasn’t a word said at half time until the management came in, we knew that we played terrible in the first half,” Owen recalled. Gearoid added, “They could have left us there at half time, the silence was enough for us to go out and do something in the second half, it just happened that we went out and got a few goals, they were a big help on the day but that first half cannot happen again, you’d never get away with it”. He added, “We gave ourselves a good kick up the hole at half time in the Clondegad game, to call it a turning point is not really the case, it was more wake up and get on with it, it is hard when you put it down to anything in particular, we’ve had a point to prove”.
When it came to the semi-final against Clondegad, Owen kicked the winning score from a free, a clip of which has been viewed close to 120,000 times on The Clare Echo’s TikTok account. He was at a loss to explain why it went viral, was it the roaring about ‘where he was kicking it from’ or the celebration to the crowd, “I don’t know, it was a normal free kick, I don’t know was it because of your man at the ploughing. I’m used to kicking frees, I didn’t feel that much pressure kicking it, kicking frees all year I knew if I set it out to the far post that it was going split the posts so that it was I did and thankfully it went over the bar”.
Wolfe Tones have already beaten Naomh Eoin twice in the league. “We played them in the first round of the league and they gave us a right clipping. We played them in the league final, both teams were missing three or four, well we were probably missing only one or two but they were definitely missing three or four and they beat us a point that day, they are a good side, we have struggled to beat them the last few years so hopefully Saturday is the day we do it,” Owen recalled. “We didn’t bother going to it, we play our own game, we know they are a good game, they will be favourites and rightly so,” he said of the Shannon’s side semi-final with Kilrush Shamrocks.
Between now and Saturday, there will be plenty more football conversations for the brothers to contend with, “I thought last week was a very quick week,” Owen said of the build-up and Gearoid concluded, “Last week was grand, Friday will be a long day but a Saturday game is grand, it would be worse if it was Sunday evening”.
