I would love to go back and coach; we have a repsonsibility to do that
IDENTIFYING Ciarán Kilkenny looks an easy job.
He is a nominee for footballer of the year, and the low-slung orchestrator of Dublin’s four-in-arow greats.
In a team of supremely-prepared operatives, a side regarded as the distillation of all Dublin’s excellence and advantages, Kilkenny is the ‘ne plus ultra’.
But even in this age of the demanding inter-county life, there is another side, room for another life.
For Kilkenny, it will find practical expression at midday today in Parnell Park, when his club Castleknock play Ballymun in the Dublin Senior Championship.
The time players in any county spend with their clubs is now squeezed into a few weeks of the autumn and winter. The imbalance between the glamorous games of the summer and the wet, dirty days the clubs are left with to play their matches is perhaps the great existential problem confronting the GAA today.
It led to the establishment of the Club Players’ Association, and it has triggered apocalyptic talk of a permanent schism between the club and county games.
That last fear remains a hysterical one, with the GAA authorities recognising the difficulties created by the marginalisation of the club game.
And besides the continuing spirit of volunteerism and the powerful sense of identity binding clubs, another important strength is the support of the county stars. They may not get to spend many weeks in the colours of their home place, and they will make few enough training sessions from one end of the year to the other, but they still care.
And Kilkenny feels it as powerfully as any All-Ireland winner who cares to share their thoughts.
He famously passed up the prospect of a professional sporting life with Hawthorn in Aussie Rules to return to Ireland in the winter of 2012.
He was still a teenager, fresh from his Dublin debut earlier that summer under Pat Gilroy. His second match in the Dublin colours remains his only senior Championship defeat, to Mayo in the 2012 All-Ireland semi-final (he tore a cruciate ligament in the spring of 2014, and so missed the loss to Donegal later that summer).
And, after a few weeks in Australia, Kilkenny returned home, explaining his reasons in a statement that was conspicuous for its maturity. In particular, he stressed the value of home in his decision.
‘Sport has always been something I did for enjoyment and I have found that it’s not something I can do merely because it’s my job,’ he said at the time.
‘The passion I feel for hurling and football is not transferrable to any other sport and seeing my neighbours and team-mates happy when we do well is reward enough.’
Cynicism is liberally and far too enthusiastically deployed by some in their dealings with the Dublin senior football team.
But the company of Kilkenny brings quick proof that his club remains an enormous part of his life.
‘I was five years of age when the club was founded,’ he says.
‘It was one of the first teams (at underage level that he was involved in) and it’s special to be a part of that.
‘We’re celebrating 20 years this year, which is massive. We’re still a very young club and I’m sure there’s still a lot we have to learn, but we’re going in the right direction.
‘We have a few very good underage teams at the moment, but what’s most important for us, like every other Dublin club, is retaining them.
‘That’s our main goal now: get the next crop of lads and girls through, because the ladies’ teams and the camogie teams are going very well, moving up the ranks, too.’
That celebration of a GAA club anchoring a community, like the hub of a wheel tying in all the spokes, is most commonly associated with rural communities. In the modern imagination, clubs in Dublin are depicted as warehouses churning out fearsome prototypes that will end the notion of competition in the sport within a generation.
But Kilkenny’s reflections on Castleknock chime with sentiments shared about clubs on the western seaboard or in the rural midlands.
‘You know everyone in the club,’ he says.
‘Even at Dublin games, you see people from the club after the games and you go up to them and it’s brilliant. It’s so special to see them at those matches.
‘It’s a unique bond, and anyone that’s involved in the GAA knows it.’
Dublin’s success is so frequently spun as a triumph for corporatism as much as volunteerism, that it is soothing to be reminded of the players’ motivations. World domination is not, it turns out, what keeps these men chasing glory.
‘The most enjoyment I get out of it all is seeing how much it means to family, how it makes my dad feel,’ he says.
‘Or say I would have aunties who would never have been involved in GAA or sport, and to see how much it means to them; they’re mad into it now.
‘How much joy it brings to them is what gives me the most enjoyment. Besides that, it’s the people in the club that put so much work and effort in.
‘There are so many selfless people, and to see them after the games and say, “Thank you for everything you’ve done”, all those relationships that you’ve built; I love that element of it, making other people happy.’ Kilkenny is still just 25, and will be at the buzzing centre of Dublin’s involve-ment for another halfdecade at least. And then Castleknock will have him whole again.
‘I feel we have a massive responsibility to go back and coach. We were fortunate enough to have past players who gave up their time for us. I’d love to do that.’ Ciarán Kennedy is an ambassador for Sure, official statistics partner of the GAA.