In the Rathmore GAA grounds in Rathbeg, the minor team are training on the top field while a steady flow of cars arrive for an under-8s game between Rathmore and Kilcummin. The Rathmore kids are decked out in the club’s jersey, redesigned this summer. The club always wore red and white but black has now replaced the white. Children had been reluctant to wear the jersey because of its similarities to Cork. Since June, though, they ’ve sold more than 200.
There are many footballing interfaces along the 60-mile border between Kerry and Cork but this is the frontline. The small belt between Rathmore, Knocknagree, Gneeveguilla and Ballydesmond is where the Cork-Kerry rivalry is at its fiercest. The footballing divisional strongholds of Duhallow and East Kerry meet and entwine in this pocket and what each county thinks of the other is crystallised and magnified.
There has always been an edge to the relationship but it was never scented with sulphur or cordite or laced with the naked hostility that defines other rivalries. In Rathmore, they talk of the bonfires lit in Knocknagree in 1982 when Offaly stopped Kerry’s bid for five-in-a-row.
When Kerry reached the 1997 All-Ireland final after an 11-year hiatus, a few locals in Rathmore painted a car in green and gold and placed it on a ramp in the town. A few nights before the final against Mayo, a clandestine operation from across the border saw the vehicle splashed in red paint to give it the appearance of a Mayo car.
After Armagh beat Kerry in the 2002 All-Ireland final, one man from Ballydaly wrote a song celebrating Armagh’s win. When Cork were trailing Clare by six points with 20 minutes to go in last year’s All-Ireland hurling semi-final, a Kerryman left Gneeveguilla for a pub in Knocknagree to be there at full-time to gloat. By the time he arrived, Cork were level and he was out the door as quick as he had gone in.
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“The perception here is that Cork have had more beatings than us and they take it worse than we do,” says Eamonn Kelly from Rathmore. “We never rubbed it in as much as they did but if you tried in the last few years, they’d throw the hurling straight back at you.”
County loyalties are dictated by mere yards. Rathmore and Ballydesmond are unique in that they each encompass parts of Cork and Kerry. The river Blackwater dissects both parishes as it flows south. Knocknagree sits between Rathmore and Ballydesmond and inside the Cork border but the south of the parish is cut off from the rest by Rathmore. One of the Knocknagree footballers can almost kick a football into the Rathmore pitch from his home, yet he plays his club football in a different county.
Gneeveguilla lies on the other side of the Blackwater beyond Knocknagree. Ambrose O’Donovan from Gneeve-guilla, who captained Kerry to the centenary All-Ireland title in 1984, grew up just 100 yards from the Cork border. He went to school in Rathmore and most of his friends were from Cork.
“I remember there would be fellas who were very good friends and the week of a Munster final, the friendships started to wane,” says O’Donovan. “They wouldn’t speak to each other for about two weeks but then everything would be fine again.”
The unparalleled nature of the relationship and rivalry is manifested in its most latent form just four miles up the road. Before you cross the Blackwater and enter Ballydesmond, a Kerry flag is tied to a pole at one end of the stone bridge. At the other end of the bridge is a sign wishing Donnacha O’Connor and the Cork team all the best for Sunday.
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The town is split in two by the Blackwater but the parish extends into Kerry. The club’s pitch is on the banks of the Blackwater and while they play their club football in Cork, they draw half of their players from the Kerry side of the parish. As part of an agreement with the Kerry county board, though, Ballydesmond players from Kerry who are good enough to be picked for the county play with Kerry.
In this year’s Munster junior football final, two Ballydesmond players faced each other: Niall Flemming for Kerry and Gerry Healy for Cork. The week of the final, there were two posters up in the town from the club, wishing each player luck with his respective county.
They marked each other in the second half of the game. You couldn’t make it up.
“Can you just imagine sitting in the stands that night,” says Neil Kelly, who lives just 20 yards from the border on the Kerry side. “Will you stop — lads didn’t know what to think. They were nearly driven mad.”
The club has been only 42 years in existence but has provided a sprinkling of players to both counties over the years. Christy Carney played with Cork in the 1970s while Sean Kelly was on the Kerry squad at the same time. His nephew Jason played underage with Kerry earlier this decade.
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This summer, Donnacha O’Connor became the first player from the club to win a Munster senior medal.
“When you’re so close to the pulse, the rivalry is absolutely deadly on weeks like this,” says Neil Kelly. “The crack is something else. Unreal. Losing is like the end of the world but the one person in the town who is always unhappy is the parish priest. His collection is always down because the losing crowd usually don’t show up for a fortnight.”
Life is even more complicated for Dan O’Connor, Donnacha’s father, who runs the pub in the town. He is originally from the Kerry side of the border and is still a fanatical Kerry supporter.
“If Donnacha wasn’t playing, there would be no question who I’d be shouting for,” says Dan O’Connor. “You’d be concentrating on your own fella and you’d want him to win. But Kerry is still in the blood and it would be confusing at times.”
In the past, it’s always been a case of trying to divorce loyalty from identity. Billy Lane remembers Christy Carney playing for Cork one year and his clubmates with Kerry hats cheering him on anytime he got the ball. Kelly was talking last week to a fanatical supporter from the Kerry side and she told him she was shouting for Cork because of Donnacha.
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“There were a few occasions when it got very bitter here in the past,” says Dan O’Connor. “But Donnacha has changed a lot of that and people on the Kerry side are staying neutral now. Things would be a lot tenser though, if he wasn’t involved.”
Other loyalties are harder to break. Dan O’Connor and his six brothers made a name for themselves in the early 1970s by annually challenging sets of brothers in a seven-a-side tournament as part of the Ballydesmond carnival. They came from all over the country to take them on. They played as proud Kerrymen then and that hasn’t changed. “A lot of them will be hoping that Donnacha will play well but that Kerry will win,” says Dan. “Jesus, it’s hard to change fellas.”
Donnacha’s involvement has given an identity to this pocket of Cork football. The area had been largely ignored in terms of producing players for the county.This year the trend has changed and the team is packed now with players from junior and low-profiled clubs.
“There have been a lot of excellent footballers from Gneeveguilla and Rathmore on Kerry teams over the years but the general view is that if they were from a couple of miles across the border, they’d never have made it with Cork,” says John Fintan Daly from Knocknagree, who coached the Cork U-21s to the 1994 All-Ireland. “It’s not deliberate but you have a smaller number of clubs in Kerry and players get identified a lot quicker there. There are so many clubs in Cork and it’s easy to lose players. But that seems to be changing now.”
They could even see that in Kerry. “I’d say that would have cost Cork an awful lot in the past,” says Declan O’Keeffe from Rathmore, who won All-Irelands with Kerry in 1997 and 2000. “There were always excellent players in those clubs in Duhallow but they never seemed to get a chance.”
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The differing structures in the counties are also an issue. “There’s a huge difference between how games are organised,” says Donal Murphy from Rathmore. “We could be playing underage in Dingle or Tarbert but they don’t play outside their division in Cork unless they win a divisional title. Players in Kerry get far more games.
“I’ve seen some outstanding players at underage in Duhallow and never heard of them again. Any good footballer in Kerry will get a chance. The system doesn’t suit them in Cork but, if they ever wake up, they’ll be unbeatable because they’ve loads of class players.”
Rathmore have reaped the benefits of their underage system. After Din Joe Crowley won All-Ireland medals in 1969 and 1970, the club had nobody on the team until O’Keeffe in 1996. Tom O’Sullivan arrived in 2000 and Aidan O’Mahony won his All-Ireland two years ago.
Apart from An Ghaeltacht, no other club has consistently had two players on the Kerry team since 2000.
Today the area will empty itself again as the convoys head to Croke Park. It’s all on the line. Again. Neighbour against neighbour and friend against friend with the bragging rights for the next 12 months up for grabs. They’ve never known any other way.
Charlie McCarthy from Gneeveguilla and John Buckley from Knocknagree grew up together as close friends and won All-Ireland Vocational Schools titles together with Rathmore. In the 1996 Munster senior final, they marked each other. The morning of the game, Declan O’Keeffe went to mass in Knocknagree and noticed Buckley.
Prayer before the battle with a warrior from the other side in the same church. You wouldn’t find it anywhere else.