Cuala are in the Dublin football final for only the second time in their history, so what do you do? You get on to Des Cahill. And you ask Des Cahill who in Cuala should you be talking to about the club’s football story.
You’d like, if possible, to hear from somebody who was around for all the bad times. A person who, while being delighted for the hurlers throughout their All-Ireland-winning success in the late-2010s, still flew the flag for the football side of the house. A Cuala big ball lifer.
Des Cahill thinks about it for half an hour and replies by suggesting ... Des Cahill.
“In terms of this team ... that’s probably me!” reads the WhatsApp reply. “I was with them since we won the Under-21 title 14 years ago until 2 years ago. Ironically the Under 21 win – against the odds – was against Crokes ... on my 50th birthday. A day of days!”
And so here we are, a few afternoons later, walking down through the village of Glasthule with red and white flags hanging from every lamp-post. Keep going and you’ll arrive on to Main Street in Dalkey, where it’s impossible to go 10 yards without seeing some sign of the county final. This part of Dublin’s southside knows plenty about success in rugby and in hurling too. But a county football final? Not in this neighbourhood.
“The joy of it is brilliant,” Cahill says. “We’re probably getting more joy out of it than most teams, I’d imagine. People say, ‘Oh Cuala, sure you won two All-Irelands’. Fantastic. And it really was, everyone was so happy for the hurlers. But for the likes of me now, this justifies years and years of sticking at it.”
Cuala is a flipside club in Dublin. In most cases, being a dual club means one of two realities – you’re either stubbornly 50/50 or you’re a football club with a hurling section fighting its corner. In Cuala, it’s always been the other way around. Not outwardly, not officially – but everyone knows what’s what.
Cahill tells a story about Vinny Holden, brother of Mick, son of Cuala founding father Tommy. Holden hurled for Dublin for 20 years and was a mainstay of the first Cuala teams to win senior Dublin titles in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Spin the tape on and he and Cahill were in cahoots the day after the minor footballers won their first county championship in 2006.
“Mick Fitzsimons was in that group,” Cahill remembers. “But you had Paul Schutte there, David Treacy, Oisin Gough – all those lads who went on to hurl for Dublin. We beat Vincent’s in the final and we were elated. For us owl’ lads, beating Vincent’s was huge. The young lads didn’t think that was a big deal but it was for us.
“Anyway, we were all out after it and it went late and sure then we all had to ring home to explain where we were. And Vinnie rang his wife Marion and went, ‘Marion, you know the minor hurlers? They’re after winning the football championship!’
“They weren’t even called the minor footballers. So that sort of sums up Cuala for me, when people ask are we a hurling club or a football club.”
Over the past four decades, Cahill has been the club’s best known member, give or take Con O’Callaghan. When Cuala reached their only Dublin football final away back in July 1988, he was out of the country on a summer-long work adventure that took in Euro 88, the Tour de France and the Seoul Olympics. He has waited 36 years for them to get back here.
[ My Club: Des Cahill on Cuala Opens in new window ]
For long stretches of Cuala’s footballing life, they have lived in the shadow of bigger concerns. That goes for their own club, where hurling has reigned. But it goes too for the schoolyard world of southside Dublin GAA, where Kilmacud Crokes have always been the biggest boys in the flashiest kits.
“We would have resented Kilmacud years ago for being the big ogres and us being the small guys,” Cahill says. “We had a fellah, John O’Callaghan, who was a sub on the Dublin 1995 team that beat Tyrone to win the All-Ireland. He’s a great lad.
“But Dublin said to him, ‘You can’t be playing intermediate, you need to be playing senior’. And he came to us and said, ‘Lads, do you mind if I go to Kilmacud?’ And we were going, ‘Eh, obviously!’ But we were only messing – no one minded because he was a great lad and you were happy to see him do well. But that’s who we were, basically.”
As time went on and the GAA took more of a hold around the area, Cuala were never short of talent and certainly haven’t struggled for numbers. Eventually, that translated into an unprecedented level of hurling success. Five Dublin titles in six seasons between 2015 and 2020. Back-to-back Leinster and All-Ireland champions. A golden time.
In a way, it all started in 2009. The backbone of those teams came from the side that won the under-21 hurling championship in Dublin 15 years ago. What got lost along the way though is the fact Cuala did the under-21 double in 2009 and that a huge chunk of them were on the football team as well.
“That under-21 final was the start of this team,” Cahill says. “The final was just before Christmas and we beat Kilmacud against the odds. On the back of that, we had a lot of promise going forward. But the hurling took over.
“I’m convinced, with the talent on that team, that we could have had great success in football. The lads on that team were really good underage footballers. Paul Schutte was at least two years as a Dublin minor footballer as a full-forward. Oisín Gough and the Treacys were good underage footballers.
![Des Cahill: 'For those lads [Mick Fitz, Luke Keating, James Power] to be in a county final now, it’s great. It’s just brilliant.' Photograph: Evan Treacy/Inpho](https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/BVVPFRJ75Y7RXQZW4VJ6R322VU.jpg?auth=6ead7bf891c2b83bea78902817cd133e5152df6222af00b28ea8d25cc5798360&width=800&height=528)
“But Anthony Daly took them in straight away and didn’t want them playing football. We won the Dublin intermediate championship one year and we were going into Leinster. But they were going in training with Dublin in November. And I’m friends with Daly and I was going, ‘Dalo, come on’. But he was trying to make his mark as well and he was just going, ‘Des, they have to put in the work now to be ready for next summer’.
“So I lost out there. They went for Dublin, which was fair enough. We had seven in the Dublin squad at one stage. Then Matty [Kenny] came along as senior hurling manager in the club. And Matty was going, ‘This group has huge potential’. The first year or two, we didn’t do anything in the hurling. But he said, ‘You cannot be hurling only every second week. You’ve no chance’.
“And he was a very good salesman to the lads. He said: ‘You have to hurl every week if you’re going to do anything in the championship’. And he did that – and he was right! I thought at the time that we could win the football and the hurling in Dublin but he was right and I was wrong. We wouldn’t have won an All-Ireland in hurling if the lads had all played football as well.”
If it was anything, it was a first-world problem. Cuala were winning All-Irelands in hurling and the name of the club was going far and wide. The footballers chipped away with what they had – and when Con O’Callaghan came along, what they had was enough to keep them in or around the top ranks. Peadar Ó Cofaigh-Byrne arrived, big and broad and taking no nonsense from anyone. Plenty more as well.
“We had James Power, who was a very good rugby player. He’s the oldest by a long way. Him and Mick Fitz and Luke Keating have been there all the way. Power is 37 or so now, he’s kind of a posh boy, you know? A good Blackrock boy.
“He called the referee ‘Sir’ once! And everyone, including the referee, thought he was taking the piss. The opposition were laughing. But no one messes with him. He’s also the most physical player we have, he’s our toughest, hardest player as well. But yeah, he called the referee ‘Sir’ in a game and Jesus Christ the ref turned against us completely.
“For the likes of him and Luke Keating, this is so great. Luke would have made those hurling teams but he chose to stay with the football. And I felt so guilty. For those lads to be in a county final now, it’s great. It’s just brilliant.”
Cuala will travel across Dublin Bay in style, naturally. They will march through the village en masse on Sunday afternoon and climb aboard the DART they’ve hired for the occasion. It will leave Dalkey station and go directly to Killester – very pointedly not stopping in Blackrock or Seapoint or any of the other necklace of stations from which rogue Kilmacud Crokes might sneak aboard.
Then they will march on Parnell Park, a football day of days finally upon them. And though they are underdogs and though they face a Crokes team going for four-in-a-row, they won’t be put off by the odds being stacked against them. Why would they?
It’s all they know.
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