Small parishes producing brilliant footballers.

[rosnarun]

Moygownagh in Mayo is by reputation the smallest parish in Mayo and has Produced Pat holmes and Anthony Finnerty  but like all genuinely small parishes success is fleeting and i now see they are bottom of Division 5 .
or the sadly  now defunct Team of keenagh (now part of Crossmolian ) produced  enda lavelle ,cathal carolan ,barry heffernan, PJ loftus jnr. and a whole host of minors and uder 21''s and we would definetly not breech the 1000 mark

[Rois]

Aughabrack for its size and location has far exceeded expectations and produced the like of Patsy Kerlin, Paddy & Danny Ball, Brian Dooher and Stephen O'Neill.

All blood related through the Kerlin line. Had a lesson in genealogy this evening.

[ballinaman]

There's a place known as The Golden Mile in Ballintubber. Within a very short space of each other you have the O'Connors, Feeneys, Prendergasts and Geraghtys. Paddy Prendergast was full-back on the Mayo All-Ireland winning teams of 1950/51; his brothers Murt and Ray were very good full-backs too and Ray was full-back for Mayo for around a decade in the 60s/70s. Murt's son Tom was a selector with James Horan. The Geraghtys were home to Ger, who was the star of the 1983 Mayo U21 All-Ireland winning teams and was a huge loss to Mayo when he moved to Chicago. John O'Mahony almost had him back in 1989. His nephews Danny and Ray both played county minor. Ger Feeney was reputed to be one of Mayo's best ever defenders, even if he played in the barren 1970s. His sons Richie and Alan played with Mayo and Richie is still on the panel. Both play with Castlebar, where Ger moved to, but Richie is now living back in the family house in Ballintubber. Ger's brother Seán was County Board Secretary for over a decade. Then there's the O'Connors ... Cillian is a current All Star, 19-year-old Diarmuid a huge talent in the Mayo senior squad while Padraic and Ruaidhri both played Minor for Mayo. All four brothers scored goals for Ballintubber in their Mayo SFC semi-final win over Knockmore in September. I'd say less than 300 metres separates all these families and it's a rural area, probably not ten families there. Cranmore is the townland I think. You'll do well to get such a concentration of quality players in so short a space, involving more than one family.

Welcome back RGS! Great shout

[ziggy90]

Aughabrack.....all blood related......who knew??

[Champion The Wonder Horse]

Surely the starting point for this debate would be what constitutes a small parish? Aside from the fact that in Offaly at least, it would be comparatively rare for any club to pick from an entire parish - usually there would be 2 or 3 clubs in any single parish - I always find it amusing that outside of Dublin, around 90% of clubs seem to think of themselves as "small clubs". There are people in St Brigids (Ros) that have tried to argue to me that they're a small enough club - now if they're small then you could count on one hand the number of big clubs in the province of Connacht, never mind the fact that there would be none at all in Roscommon.

To my mind any club that has a catchment area with a population of 1000 people or more (obviously it might be a little different up North where large swathes of the population in certain areas aren't really a potential GAA audience) is not small. By that measure the market leaders in Offaly would have to be Clareen for hurling (The Dooleys, Eugene Coughlan, Kevin Kinahan, Joe Bergin) and yeah, Walsh Island for football.

Maybe I should change the title of the thread to "Townlands" producing brilliant footballers.

Sammy Bradley, man of the match for Slaughtneil in today's Ulster final is from the same townland as Anthony Tohill.

[nrico2006]

Aughabrack for its size and location has far exceeded expectations and produced the like of Patsy Kerlin, Paddy & Danny Ball, Brian Dooher and Stephen O'Neill.

All blood related through the Kerlin line. Had a lesson in genealogy this evening.

If anything I would have thought there was a lot of Devine influence there.

[Fuzzman]

Devine is the most popular name around the area alright but also a lot of Gormleys and all have nicknames. I presume a lot of parishes in Ireland are like this.

Kerlin, Ball, Dooher, O'Neill, Browne and Furey some of the lesser common names in the area.

Would anyone have any old pictures of Patsy Kerlin in his hay.
I was just a tot when the big man was doing the business. I've heard stories of him and Paddy Ball playing MF for Tyrone in the odd game.

Talking of pics, how many of ye have got framed photos of Canavan or Dooher (or your own county captain) lifting Sam on yer wall?
Was thinking would make a nice Christmas present. How would I get one?

[armaghniac]

Talking of pics, how many of ye have got framed photos of Canavan or Dooher (or your own county captain) lifting Sam on yer wall?
Was thinking would make a nice Christmas present. How would I get one?

The modern man uses such pics as the back ground on their tablet.
If it was someone from Cavan ro Mayo they'd probably have a black and white photograph.

[Bensars]

Talking of pics, how many of ye have got framed photos of Canavan or Dooher (or your own county captain) lifting Sam on yer wall?
Was thinking would make a nice Christmas present. How would I get one?

The modern man uses such pics as the back ground on their tablet.
If it was someone from Cavan ro Mayo they'd probably have a  black and white photographs in more than one room !

Fixed that for you  .

[Fuzzman]

Yes I think I might know that Armaghniac but I've been in a few people's house with proper framed photos as the ones on the web are pretty crap quality

[armaghniac]

Talking of pics, how many of ye have got framed photos of Canavan or Dooher (or your own county captain) lifting Sam on yer wall?
Was thinking would make a nice Christmas present. How would I get one?

The modern man uses such pics as the back ground on their tablet.
If it was someone from Cavan ro Mayo they'd probably have a  black and white photographs in more than one room !

Fixed that for you  .

I suppose in those counties they could have a picture in every room of their house!

[fatdog]

As Parishes go Coalisland/Clone  in tyrone area must be up there. Not entirely sure what way the parish breakdown is  but within a 7-8 mile radius there is a serious number of clubs.

Coalisland, Clonoe, Ardboe, Moortown, Derrylaughlin,Brockagh, Stewartstown, Derrytresk,Killyman,  Brackaville, Dungannon, Edendork, Ballinderry

You have named more than a few parishes there, however for a relatively small area it has produced some great ballers and teams - over 40 senior Tyrone championships have been won between the clubs. Interestingly enough I believe part of Ballinderry's parish is in Tyrone, and have been told that Enda Muldoon used to play for Tyrone under age teams. Anyway heres the names of a few players from that area:

Frank McGuigan - Ardboe (All Star 1984)
Fay Devlin - Ardboe (All Star 1995)
Brian McGuigan - Ardboe (All Star 2003)
Tommy McGuigan- Ardboe
Gavin Devlin - Ardboe
Kyle Coney - Ardboe
Kevin McCabe - Clonoe (All Star 1980)
Damian O'Hagan - Coalisland (All Star 1986)
Gerald Cavlan - Dungannon
Chris Lawn - Moortown
Stephen Lawn - Moortown
P.J Quinn - Moortown
Paul Devlin - Moortown

[rrhf]

Dont forget the mighty JohnJoe. 

[Club Rossa]

John Joe only played well against the Rock

[LeoMc]

He played the odd decent games for the over 40s too