One year in the late 1990s, Carlow played Waterford in the league in Dungarvan. There were only about 50 people at the match, about 15 of whom were from Carlow. Most of the away support were related to the players but Robert Molloy had travelled because of his love for Carlow football. And he brought his six-year old son, Robbie, along with him.
The standard was a joke. Both teams looked like they had just been rounded up for the day, which they probably had been, before being handed the jerseys and just told to play. The quality was brutal. The score at half-time was 0-3 to 0-2. And this was long before anyone in Carlow or Waterford knew anything about the term ‘blanket defence’. At half-time, Robbie turned to his father and asked: “Dad, is this the worst match you were ever at?” Robert didn’t even have to think twice. “Yes, it is.”
That was the culture Robbie Molloy was raised in. His family were fanatical about the game but Carlow football had no status or ambition or hope. Big championship days lay on the far side of the abyss but this summer, Robbie Molloy — the Carlow goalkeeper — his father, and all Carlow football people, have finally discovered what it feels like to mean something, to stand for something. And it must feel fantastic.
Carlow did not beat Monaghan on Saturday evening but it is not condescending or patronising to say that Carlow won something bigger than a match. The place was buzzing. A county had been awakened. Almost an hour after the final whistle, the players and management were still on the pitch mingling with the huge Carlow crowd. Kids were hunting autographs from their heroes. Players were posing for selfies. It felt special. It was special.
Carlow had always been one of those forgotten counties during the championship but they finally barged their way into the big-time. It was their second game live on Sky Sports this summer. That would have been inconceivable when Turlough O’Brien took over in late 2014. Carlow had finished bottom of the fourth division. Meath had beaten them in that year’s championship by 28 points. People often said to O’Brien that things could not get any worse. He did not necessarily go along with that theory; things could have got worse, Carlow could have ended up with no team.
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Morale was on the floor. There was zero ambition attached to Carlow football. They often only had single figures at training but O’Brien did not see his appointment as a poisoned chalice. He was a passionate Carlow man. He knew there were good players in the county. O’Brien knew they just needed to be better organised. Once they did, and the proper professional framework was put in place, all the best players in the county came on board. Sean Murphy, one of their best players this season, had been the Carlow hurlers’ top scorer from play for the last four years, but he threw everything in with the footballers this year.
They missed out on promotion to the third divisions by one point but it was Carlow’s best league campaign in a decade. They won three championship matches in one summer for the first time since 1944, when Carlow won their only Leinster title. On Saturday, Carlow almost won four championship games for the first time in their history.
O’Brien has always been into history. When his son, Ronan, was 15, he and his father cycled the Via Francigena, starting in Canterbury, England, across France and on to Rome.
They diverted to Bobbio in northern Italy, where St Colambanus founded the last of his European Monasteries in 614. O’Brien was always inspired by Colambanus because he was born on the Carlow-Wexford border. If a Carlow monk could become such a massive figure in European history, O’Brien thought, why couldn’t Carlow people achieve beyond natural expectation?
When O’Brien and his son cycled into Bobbio, O’Brien believed they were the first Carlow people to arrive there on their own steam since Colambanus 15 centuries earlier. New ground. New paths. O’Brien always wanted Carlow people to smash through new frontiers.
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And this season, they finally did.