OPINION: Corlough feeling pinch as numbers decline

Rural depopulation is having a devastating effect on small GAA clubs, writes Paul Fitzpatrick.

Eight years ago this week, Corlough opened their new playing facilities. It was a great day – the rain stayed off, a big crowd turned out and Kerry legend Mick O'Dwyer cut the ribbon.

But the years since haven’t been kind to the club, or to west Cavan in general. The Quinn empire buoyed the area for a couple of decades and created employment where there was little or none before but it declined along with the economy in general.

It's 18 years since Corlough enjoyed any real success at adult level; that season, they were promoted to Division 2 of the All-County Football League. Several of those players are still part of the panel, which this year was limited to 16 or 17 players.

It's tough going, working off such a limited base and players travel from around the country to keep the flame burning, dreaming of a day when they can, as the song says, party likes it's 1999.

This year, some players lined out while injured in the championship to make sure the club fielded a team. They managed that and improved as the championship wore on, funnily enough, but they still lost their four Junior Championship matches by 28, 15, 10 and six points against Knockbride, Kildallan, Kill and Shannon Gaels respectively, none of whom made the final.

At present, as far as we can ascertain, club membership is hovering around the 45 to 50 mark. That includes players, adult and juvenile. It's a very difficult position to be in.

The Corlough club was founded in 1904 and at one time had both football and hurling teams. The club folded for a while but when the Feehan family came to the parish in 1947, they helped re-energise things.

The club was revived in 1963 and after a surprise win over Belturbet in a Junior League game the following year, this paper noted that the team “if kept intact should have a bright future in front of them”.

A scan through the archives of this newspaper, and the Corlough news section in particular, makes for interesting reading. The usual, humdrum goings on in a rural parish are recorded down through the years.

Some white owls have appeared, a McGovern girl from Owencam has headed for the States, tourists from Holland camped on Pat McGovern's farm, a priest or two is home on holidays – or have returned. 

There was the odd concert in Tonlagee Hall, a man grew a monster 8lb turnip and the usual meticulous recording of births and deaths. And, of course, there were the footballers.

The decade and a half from 1970 on was one of Corlough football's brightest periods. In the summer of '70, The Anglo-Celt noted that the bonfire night tradition was kept alive, with flames licking the sky from fires around the praish, including one huge blaze at Tullyveela, fuelled by pallets and bushes and tyres.

That summer, a trip to Birmingham was organised by Peter Heavey and, the following year, Corlough won a Winter League title, to date the only adult success the club has enjoyed.

Peering from the outside in, it appears to have been the best of times for the club and the area. A festival was established around then and a branch of the ICA, too.

In 1982, Corlough reached the Junior Championship final, losing narrowly to Gowna; the two clubs' paths diverged after that. A couple of years later, they lost a Junior League final to Maghera. They remained competitive for the a long time afterwards but, as of yet, haven't taken their places behind the band on the big day since.

When that Winter League was won back in 1971, Offaly's magnificent All-Ireland-winning captain Tony McTeague arrived with the Sam Maguire Cup in tow to present the medals. Things were different then – Sam didn't tour the world as he does now and hadn't actually visited Cavan since the Breffni county were last champions in 1952.

So, it was a big deal and a homecoming of sorts, too, because the brilliant McTeague's father was a native of the parish. And therein was the rub; emigration has been the bane of clubs in west Cavan and Corlough, a small area hemmed in by Swanlinbar and Templeport and situated hard against the Leitrim border, suffered more than most.

It’s possible to draw a line on a map of Cavan, west of which there are over a dozen clubs, none of them in senior. West of Belturbet, five of the six clubs are now junior, with just Swad a grade higher.

 

Young talent

At underage level, Corlough have been producing some very fine footballers in recent years. Their players have been lining out under the Dernacrieve Gaels banner, joining forces with Swanlinbar and, sometimes, Shannon Gaels.

They have competed strongly in Division 1 and at the top end of Division 2 which provides proof, not that it were needed, that the club is doing things the right way. The problem, however, is that there are simply not enough of these young players.

In recent weeks, rumours have circulated that the Corlough club may be considering making this link-up more permanent and closing the doors. The stakeholders in the club find themselves in a precarious position if - and nothing is clear - that is the case.

The thorny issues of identity and tradition run deeply in the GAA. But yet there is a need to be realistic, too, and provide a pathway for the next generation of footballers in the locality to play the game at a good level.

This is not a new problem not is it one of the club’s own making.

In 1951, the population of the Bawnboy Rural District was 6,272. In the following four censuses, that plummeted by 8.5pc, 10.8pc, 10pc and 9.2pc respectively. And then, it steadied – between 1971 and 1979, the area lost 'just' 66 people for a 1.8pc drop.

Is it any coincidence that, around that time, the Corlough club, as we have stated already, enjoyed its most successful era? And between 1991 and 2002, during which Corlough footballers gained promotion in the league and their neighbours in Templeport went all the way to senior ranks, the population of the Bawnboy rural area actually rose by 100.

So, one thing is clear – this is a population issue which, sadly, seems to be out of the club's hands. There is just one national school feeding into the club, St Patrick's (formerly Tullyveela NS), which has two teachers and a total roll of 36.

When the economy has gone well, so have Corlough. The Programme for Economic Expansion pushed through by the Lemass government in the early 1960s provided the foundation for a period of net in-migration in this country, which was underpinned by our joining the EEC in 1973. Then came the club’s best era.

But the boom-bust cycle has continued since then and the most latest recession seems to have hit rural GAA clubs harder than ever and, for some, there may be no way back.

“Rural depopulation in west Cavan is significant. This is an important cross-party concern among all members of Cavan County Council,” Director of Services Eoin Doyle told an Oireachtas Committee last year.

Sadly, things may have already been allowed to slide too far. We have no clue as to what the Corlough club intends to do but they don't seem to have many options – they can only fight against the tide for so long before they are washed away.