Middle class REVOLUTION

Dublin’s hurling landscape has been changed by super club Cuala who are gunning for Leinster glory

WHEN Cuala won the Dublin senior hurling title back in 1994, Des Cahill remembers the team bringing the silverware back to Dalkey and the quizzical look on the face of locals. They wondered what the cup was for. ‘They didn’t even know who Cuala were and our club is just 400 yards off the main street in Dalkey,’ the RTÉ broadcaster recalls.

Stories like that are an illustration of how far the club has come. Twentytwo on, they are on the cusp of a Leinster title with O’Loughlin Gaels in their way in today’s final and most people on Dublin’s are aware of Cuala’s presence. There may still be one or two enclaves in Dalkey and Killiney, but they are the exception rather than the rule. An area renowned for celebrity residents and affluence is now as well known for a suburban super club that serves a community stretching from Blackrock to Shankill.

The journey has been long and hard. Cuala is a huge club with over 1,800 members, but it wasn’t always like that. When the club were last winning county titles in the early 1990s, membership was only a few hundred and they struggled to field teams in every under-age grade. Today they are contesting a second successive Leinster final.

Former Dublin hurling goalkeeper Dayo Byrne, part of that 1994 team, was instrumental in developing the under-age programme. ‘I have been here since I was seven years of age,’ he proudly proclaims of his lifelong membership. And he’s still there, working as the social integration manager of the club.

When the Christian Brothers pulled out of Dun Laoghaire in 1992, it spurred the club into action. ‘When that school closed, within the club, we knew that we would have ownership of coaching kids or else GAA wouldn’t survive in the area. The whole club was re-shaped as a result,’ Byrne says.

An academy was set up. The first group to graduate from that, the likes of David Treacy and Oisín Gough, provide the backbone of the side that play in Portlaoise today,

The early days were rough. Cuala ran bingo nights at the weekend back then so the first training sessions for the academy were held in the hall of a primary school in Dalkey. ‘There was only a couple of dozen kids back then,’ Byrne remembers.

That number has swelled significantly – anywhere between 1,200 to 1,400 are being coached at a club that is represented by over 90 different teams.

For someone like Cahill, it’s an extraordinary thing to see kids walk down the street of Monkstown or Dalkey with hurls in their hand, wearing the red and white of Cuala.

When he was growing up in Monkstown in the 1970s, the broadcaster was one of only a handful of locals that supported Heffo’s Heroes. Now, as he points out, there are All-Ireland winners from Monkstown, including Con O’Callaghan, who will be one of Cuala’s main attacking threats today.

‘The success of Cuala is a reflection of the money that has been pumped into Dublin hurling in the past few years,’ Cahill explains. ‘People give out about the amount of money that Dublin GAA has received in recent years, and we could debate all day about that.

‘But one of the interesting things that money has done is that hurling has become a middle-class and southside game in Dublin. If you look at the clubs that have led the revival, Ballyboden, Kilmacud, ourselves, Lucan, it’s a band right across the southside. For years, the northside clubs dominated but that’s changed.’

Ken Fitzgerald, another Cuala lifer who has been involved in the academy since the early days, has helped the club develop relationships with 16 schools in the area but he reckons the main ingredient of Cuala’s success story is that every kid is welcomed.

‘Only eight per cent of the parents of kids in our academy would have GAA backgrounds, which is pretty unusual,’ Fitzgerald explains. ‘But everyone wants to be associated with Cuala now, because we have a good reputation and maybe are seen as being a bit cool.

‘Many of the kids won’t stay. Some will drift off to other sports, sportsampling is big here. And some may be here because the parents thought that Gaelic skills will help their rugby. And that’s fine, too. We don’t close the door to any kid.’

The club’s expansion has created headaches, mostly around facilities. They are based in an area where real estate is the most prized in the country.

‘Every blade of grass in this area costs a fortune,’ Fitzgerald concedes. ‘But even if we had six floodlit pitches, and a couple of hurling walls, it mightn’t even be enough. Facilities has always been an issue and always will be one, that’s just a consequence of where we are.’

Apart from the club headquarters in Hyde Park, they also play on local authority pitches in Shankill. But they aren’t suitable for a team planning an assault on the All-Ireland championship so the senior side has mostly prepared for today’s decider at Bray Emmets. All of Cuala’s teams lead a nomadic existence during the winter months.

‘We are training in Bray at the moment, most of south county Dublin train in Bray. Kilmacud do so, too,’ club chairman Adrian Dunne explains. ‘It costs us a lot of money to rent facilities during the year, whether they be in Bray, Stepaside, Loreto Dalkey or Holy Child in Killiney.

‘We would love to solve this problem and we are constantly looking at ways to address it but there aren’t too many five-acre plots of land going cheap in south county Dublin.’

Reaching a second successive Leinster final shows that Cuala are a gifted side. ‘It’s a once-in-a-generation group of players,’ Dunne says. ‘The majority of this team did the county Under 21 double in hurling and football back in 2009, so they are talented in both codes. But David Treacy, and the Schuttes [Mark and Paul] concentrated on hurling.’

The club has benefited from that. And as Dayo Byrne claims, the recruitment of former Galway coach Mattie Kenny has been the icing on the cake. ‘His drive and ambition has brought things to a whole new level for this bunch of players,’ Byrne says. After they lost to Oulart-The Ballagh in last year’s Leinster final, Kenny demanded that the players focus on one goal. Getting back to a provincial final. And that is where they have arrived.

‘Mattie is just infectious, his enthusiasm has infected everyone. And he leaves no stone unturned, prepares for every eventuality and just eats, sleeps and drinks the game of hurling,’ adds stalwart Byrne.

Cuala may now be recognised as one of the super clubs that dominate the landscape of Dublin GAA, but Adrian Dunne is keen to emphasise that they will never forget their roots.

‘Our philosophy is that the 10-yearold who will never play for the county is as important in our club as Mick Fitzsimons and David Treacy. Once you join a club at five years of age, you’re in that club for life. You start with Cuala, you stay with Cuala. That’s the way the GAA is, that’s the way Cuala is. It’s a family, a big family.’

If they do bring the Leinster hurling title back to Dalkey this evening, it is a family that may be set to grow even larger.

We have a good reputation and maybe we are seen as being a bit cool