The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Devane was the man as Lispole ruled back West
Eugene Devane was the Fergie of the West, the man who led Lios Póil to eight West Kerry Championships
pages 50-51
“That bloody pitch is playable”
SO Lios Póil’s Liam Higgins said 42 years ago at the club’s new sports-field, on what was meant to be West Kerry final day.
It was November 1978 and matters were tense: Dingle wanted the game put back after a nasty night’s rain and, if they had their way, Lios Póil’s wait for a first West Kerry title would stretch by another few days or weeks at least.
But the townsmen lost the debate as referee Weeshie Fogarty ruled in Lios Póil’s favour. Lios Póil won the match too, by four points, completing a divisional treble. They’d win West Kerry again in ‘79.
This little club, which never won a divisional championship before ‘78, had eight by the end of 1987, the last dance of a dreamlike six-in-a-row. They won a County Junior Championship and played Division 1 football en-route, and each of their six straight championships was one half of a league-championship double. They even decided who would captain Kerry to Sam in 1985 and 1986.
“A new spirit was evident in the team, and it was no coincidence that this spirit emerged the same year that Eugene Devane took over as team manager,” Lios Póil chairperson John L O’Sullivan said at the 1979 AGM.
“We wouldn’t have won one trophy, never mind three, without him,” agreed captain Brendie O’Sullivan.
Eugene was just shy of 40 then. He’s 80 now and, while never being especially open to praise, is happy to reflect on when Lios Póil ruled a peninsula. Everyone around Lios Póil is.
SOME CONTEXT
“I WAS asked by a couple of senior fellas in the club would I have a go at it,” Eugene says.
“Why they picked me, I don’t know. I was a young man with a young family. But I said I would anyway.
“I was at the AGM at the old school in Lios Póil, and the biggest room was packed. Somebody else proposed Danny Garrett [Fitzgerald]. We were put out in the hall while the votes were being counted, and I think I won by two votes – or was it one vote? I don’t know.
“I asked Danny would he go with me as selector or assistant, whatever, and I brought in Michael Griffin too. It went from there, and ‘78 we started off.”
Divisional dominance isn’t rare, and it doesn’t take much rooting through the records to find that.
Laune Rangers won eight Mid Kerrys in a row in the ‘90s, five in the 2000s; St Marys came within one win of its own six-in-a-row last winter; Dr Crokes won eight on the spin in East Kerry from 2006 to 2013.
But Lios Póil’s eight wins in 10 years were different. Its population has hovered around 750 for half a century, and it’s penned in on all sides by footballing brawn.
Just west, Dingle: Corca Dhuibhne’s capital and most decorated outfit. Out east, Annascaul: where All-Ireland medals could deck out the village Christmas tree. Further west, An Ghaeltacht: the club that most often betters Dingle. Over the hill, Castlegregory: whose pedigree, always there, was borne out in a 2010 All-Ireland junior title.
“Even then, there were only about 20 players,” Eugene says.
“Lios Póil is one of the smallest parishes in the county, like. Denis Higgins was one man who’d go through flipping fire for you, but the whole lot of them put their flipping heart and soul into it. You had the Cathasaighs, the Higginses, the Sullivans, the whole lot of them came out of, what, five or six houses?
“And if you saw the training they used to do, I took no nonsense. Twenty rounds of the field we’d start with, and we’d have wire-to-wire then from the stand to the other side. If I blew the whistle and they half-way across, they’d have to turn and reverse.
“The training was something desperate. But fair play to them, everyone did it... You’d fellas up the country, they’d thumb down and wouldn’t charge a bob. They just wanted to represent the club.
“I suppose the rest of the teams had to respect us in the end. The Lios Póil players, like, they were inside in the dressing rooms and they’d knock flipping walls down. They’d be like, ‘Are we going to be beaten by these?’ I can’t repeat what some of them used to say, I suppose – but they’d nearly take the hinges off the doors on the way out.”
EARLY TRIUMPHS
“AH sure, I don’t know how I would put it,” Eugene says of the ‘78 breakthrough.
“The whole of Lios Póil were kind of involved at the time in regards supporters, and when it was over, it was as good as seeing Kerry win in Croke Park. You couldn’t get into Garraí [O’Sullivan’s Bar] with the crowd that was there, and the celebrations went on for a week then.”
The reportage from that time suggests the win didn’t surprise Lios Póil but surprised everyone else. At the ‘79 AGM, the late John L O’Sullivan, a genuine visionary, described the then-recent success as “inevitable”.
Fair to say The Kerryman, then, hadn’t seen the inevitable coming.
The ’78 semi-final against an improving An Ghaeltacht was a tight call, “but on current performance, the Gaeltacht men appear to have the edge,” this newspaper wrote. Lios Póil won by four. The Kerryman favoured Dingle for the final, too. Lios Póil won again by four.
The following year’s final against Annascaul was tighter, with Roibeard Ó Cathasaigh needed to kick a winner, but it was enough to prove this paper wrong again. We’d tipped Annascaul.
Lios Póil did lose the title in 1980 and won no trophies at all in ’81; they even ended that year without a round of applause, if accounts of the ‘81 social are accurate – but Devane is convinced his team never stopped being West Kerry’s best, even then.
“In ‘80, we went up to Division 1, and we were playing some massive teams. Take the Stacks in Tralee. They had Mikey Sheehy, Ger Power, the O’Keeffes, every game was like a championship game. We stayed there for two years before we
were demoted again to Two, and then, of course, we set off on the six-in-a-row.
“I think that’s what affected us not winning West Kerry in ‘80 and ‘81. It’s easy to talk in hindsight, but I reckon if we’d stayed in Division 2, we’d have won ten in-a-row.”
NOT-SO-SECRET INGREDIENTS
JUST before that ‘78 title, Lios Póil had no fixed abode and relied on two separate pieces of land belonging to John L and another club figurehead, Johnny Barrett. But at a cost of roughly £120,000, the club nested in Garraí na dTor, with a new pitch the centrepiece of a project also including a community hall and handball alley.
While substantial funding came from Roinn na Gaeltachta, the GAA, and AnCO, the club sourced five-figure sums from both voluntary subs and fund-raisers, and another few thousand from exiles worldwide.
The facilities matched anything in the county, and the sports-field received the official baptism it deserved in May ‘79 with a Kerry-Dublin and West Kerry-Crossmaglen double-bill.
“The field brought the players on a lot, and it gave the parish a mighty boost,” Eugene says.
“John L and Johnny Barrett were the main drivers. Furthermore, West Kerry would never have won a County Championship only for John L, simply because he was on the phone all the time to the Kerry players to see would they play, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“Himself and Barrett were great men in the club. Plenty more backed them up, but they were the go-to guys.”
It would have counted for less without players fit for the fresh sod, but the field’s first decade hosted one winning Lios Póil team upon another. The late Liam Higgins was the best known –being a two-time All-Ireland-winner – but brothers Gabriel, Gearóid, and Roibeárd Ó Cathasaigh all lined out for Kerry at both senior and minor, with Gabriel winning an All-Ireland minor medal. Their brother, Seán, played minor too.
Denis Higgins played at all levels and won an All-Ireland junior title – alongside Gabriel – under his brother Liam’s management. Tomás Ó hAiniféin, an addition at the tail-end of Lios
Póil’s wonder years, won a junior All-Ireland of his own and also played Under 21.
A few more were unlucky never to wear green and gold; others weren’t of county standard but were vital to that decade of dreams made real.
Through most of it, Devane was only one part of a managerial three-piece as he called for assistance from a club stalwart, the late Michael Griffin, and an army man from the townland of Gabhlán Árd named Danny
Fitzgerald.
“Danny Garrett, brains? That man could do anything,” Eugene says.
“I could go away up and down the sideline, and I’d see a weak link, and I’d ask if we needed a substitution or a switch. Then Danny would say, look, we’ll switch these two, and I’d go away thinking, ‘Feck it, he’s probably right’.
“He could probably read a game better than I could when I was in charge. He was a kind of genius, you could say. I would always adhere to him, and to Michael as well, of course.”
STRENGTH BECOMES DOMINANCE
OVER six years – ’82 to ’87 – six leagues and six championships were for the taking out west. Lios Póil won all 12 titles; Corca Dhuibhne’s smallest club had the peninsula to itself.
Respect’s hard won when you ought to be little, but a thumping win over Castlegregory in ‘82 and another title against An Ghaeltacht meant they’d taken all four local rivals in finals. The team was beyond questioning.
“One could not but admire this side, who must now rank amongst the greatest West Kerry club teams,” The Kerryman wrote in ’83.
Then came deep frustration for Dingle, reduced to a Jimmy White role versus a Stephen Hendry-like Lios Póil. They were well beaten in ’84 and came much closer in the next three deciders, only to be pinned down each time.
“My brother was managing Dingle for two years,” Eugene smiles, asked what the highlight of the run was.
“Yerra, no, I didn’t mind the first time beating him, but blood is thicker than water. I could feel it for him being beaten the second time.
“I don’t know, it was a big day out by the Lios Póil fellas. They’d go for their few pints after, and the discussion about football inside in the pubs would bother you. I used to go downtown myself, but I’d go into the snug of the quietest pub in town, I didn’t want to be talking about it at all.
“I didn’t want any of that praise, fellas belting you on the back, ‘fair play to you’, this, that, and the other thing. I did my job, and I used to step back after that.
“We had tough, hard games with Dingle, and they had star players, you know, but they still couldn’t beat us. You had Lios Póil fellas going to Mass here, and then they’d go back to Mass in Dingle again just to be in Dingle.”
Sweet though western supremacy was, a county title eluded Lios Póil until ’84, and it would’ve been cause for regret had it never arrived. They lost the Junior final to Valentia in ’81 but, three years on, they completed the set by beating Ardfert in Tralee.
Lios Póil now had sway beyond Blennerville Bridge. Eugene became a county Under 21 selector for one year and, more notably, was part of the management set-ups when West Kerry won county championships in ‘84, ‘85, and ’90. Lios Póil men – Gabriel Ó Cathasaigh and Denis Higgins – captained for the first two wins.
“Those were West Kerry’s first times winning, only they weren’t really,” Eugene says.
“Dingle, as they called themselves, won way back in the ‘40s, but they weren’t Dingle: you had fellas from Lios Póil, Annascaul, the Gaeltacht playing with them. How could they be Dingle? I’ve had that out with Dingle people, and I don’t give two monkeys what they say!
“But it was great anyway. One thing that stands out to me is from the year Denis Higgins was captain, there was this Nedeen Kelliher had a pony and trap outside the Brandon, and he’d give tourists a drive as far as Blennerville. He brought Denis and Bishop Moynihan [the cup] across Blennerville Bridge. That always stayed with me.
“Páidí Sé was Kerry captain in ‘85, and when he stood up on the Hogan Stand with the cup, he thanked Lios Póil for the captaincy. We had the final say, you see, as West Kerry champions. Tommy Doyle, then, got in in ’86 – thanks to us.
“I was selector with the Kerry Under 21s. In ‘86, I suppose? Don’t matter, I was only there the one year. It was a big thing that time, like going for the Dáil: you’d to go down around Waterville, Ballinskelligs, up around Tarbert looking for votes.
“I got in, but I didn’t really want to go back. I was too busy, and there was too much travelling. If there was a challenge game, you’d have to down tools and go. It wouldn’t work out.
“Winning with Lios Póil was ahead of anything, anyway. Lios Póil meant more to me than the county.”
BACK TO REALITY – SORT OF
IT’S not that things went south quickly after 1987, but Lios Póil gave in to what’s natural. Players can’t last forever, and they didn’t.
Eugene remained in charge for some years afterwards and has returned on and off in various roles, most memorably as a selector when Lios Póil won their ninth and most recent West Kerry title in 2004.
They played another junior final that same year, but fell painfully short to hot favourites Finuge. It’s probably unfair to compare Lios Póil’s performances since ’87 against the wonder years’ standard; it could happen again, but it won’t be soon – and why should it be, it being such a small parish?
Using a fair measure, the club still does well. It dropped to Division 5 at the end of the ‘00s, but that kind of misery’s been rare, not the norm. The club has won three junior Comórtas Peile na Gaeltachtas – Eugene was involved with all three teams – and later won the county and Munster Novice Championships as well as a County Junior title between 2016 and 2018.
Then emigration and retirements bit in. The foundations under small clubs are made of paper, and 2019 was a sour end to a bright decade.
“It’s an awful pity, we’re barely able to put out a team,” Eugene says.
“You’d have to give great credit to the lads keeping the show going. It would be an awful disaster if you’ve no football team, the fine facilities above there [in Garraí na dTor] could fall asunder.
“Emigration doesn’t help, but what can you do? It’s going on all over. You look at North Kerry, ‘twas a stronghold of football one time. You had your Moyvanes, Ballylongfords, and Tarberts and them. Valentia can barely field a team, and they were very good one time.
“You’re a small parish, and you haven’t the numbers. You lost a couple of good players, the likes of Donnacha Higgins, Noel Higgins, Eoghan Griffin, who went away. Brian Rayel, who won an All-Ireland minor medal [in 2014]. They’re a big loss to a small club.”
To hear someone neither born nor reared in the parish caring so much for the club tells of a man long converted since he lined out with John Street (Dingle) at underage. As he words it, he got married, moved over to Lios Póil, “and the rest is history”. He’s ‘black’ Lios Póil and has been for years, long absolved for any past with other clubs. Eight West Kerrys in ten years settled that.
“I don’t know... was I lucky – or did I just have that gift?”
He’s joking – but he had something.
It worked, too.
Danny Garrett, brains? That man could do anything. He could probably read a game better than I could when I was in charge