skip to main content

Documentary on One:  Once Were Champions

Captain Billy Lyons and Miley O'Connor with the All Ireland Cup Image Name: Captain Billy Lyons and Miley O'Connor with the All Ireland Cup

Saturday 22nd August, 1pm, RTÉ Radio 1

 

It’s a bleak, cold Sunday in March. A small town in north Kerry is empty. You can almost see the straw blowing on its wide main street. There isn’t a sinner to be seen. Flags hang from every shop front, pole, and house in this town – their blue and white boxes wrestling with the swirling wind.

 

This is a town called Castleisland in Co. Kerry. Today, March 24th 1985, every man, woman and child has travelled 75 miles up the road to Tipperary town.

 

Castleisland Desmonds are in the Senior Football Club All-Ireland Final. It’s their first and only winning appearance at this level.

 

Desmonds were facing Dublin team St. Vincents. St Vincents had all the swagger of a city team and the confidence of growing up in the capital. They had the players: all-stars like Brian Mullins, Tommy Conroy and Pat Canavan. Desmonds were men of the countryside, summers of their youth spent in bogs and meadows. City v country. Big club v small club.

 

It was the first time in their history that a Desmonds team had made it to such a lofty stage. They had tasted success locally, but never dined with such prestigious company.

 

St Vincent’s, by contrast, had won 24 Dublin senior championships, three Leinster senior championships and one All-Ireland senior championship title in their illustrious history.

 

Castleisland Demonds appearance in the final didn’t come out of the blue. They had been progressively developing over the previous 10 years: three county intermediate championships and four north Kerry championships.

 

In a dour, tough All-Ireland Final struggle, Desmonds manage to score only four times. Four times in 60 minutes! One of these scores was in the very last minute.

 

It is now 30 years since Desmonds captured that All-Ireland title and brought so much joy to the people of Castleisland.

 

In Documentary On One: Once Were Champions, we revisit the team of that time, hear of their journey to the final and the impact it had on their lives.

 

In the economically bleak mid-1980s, this journey took the small community of Castleisland on the trip of a lifetime. We meet the players and trainers and hear what happened before and since that All-Ireland win.

 

In many ways, this documentary encapsulates everything about club GAA: community spirit, team ethic, belief – and a GAA legacy that this small town is proud to have.

 

Narrated and produced by Dan Kearney with production supervision by Liam O’Brien.