There are GAA clubs that will go through their entire existence without ever featuring in a county senior final.
Others have to wait decades for a day like that in the sun. For Castleknock it has arrived far quicker than that.
Just 18 years, to be exact. The west Dublin club was only set up in 1998 and their first adult team played in Division 10 that season.
Fast forward to 2016 and they take on St Vincent’s, one of the strongest and most famous clubs in the country, one whose name resonates, in the Dublin Senior Football Championship final (throw-in Saturday 3.0pm).
“This is our first year in Division 1 and before a ball was kicked I was hoping that we’d scrape together eleven or 12 points and stay up!” laughed Castleknock chairman, Charlie Spillane.
West Dublin is an area of the capital that has undergone enormous growth in recent decades and the spot that the club now inhabits was literally all fields not that long ago.
With young families moving into the area it became apparent that there was no near-by GAA club to bring their children too.
So on night in April 1998 Fergus Hamill, a Monaghan man teaching in a local school, Johnny Corcoran, a member of Dublin’s 1976 All-Ireland winning panel and originally an Erin’s Isle man from Finglas, and John Conway organised a meeting in Myo’s bar in the village.
From Division 10 in 1998 to Senior Championship final 2016! So Proud of group& everyone who contributed throughout the years @CastleknockGAA
— Ciarán Kilkenny (@CKKilkenny93) October 27, 2016
It was decided that they were going to set up a GAA outfit of their own and this is just what they did despite objections from some of the long-established local clubs.
They got the use of a green in the middle of a housing estate which was dubbed Tir na nÓg and this is where the first training sessions were held.
“We had to prove to the county board that we wouldn’t be taking from any of the other local clubs,” explains Corcoran, who has been with Castleknock every step of this incredible trip.
“We had 23 children down that first day; I could probably still name every one of them. Within a couple of weeks we had 130. We knocked at every single door and handed in a leaflet about the club.
“We entered three underage teams that first year, ’98/’99, and there was such interest we decided that we’d surely be able to enter an adult team at junior as well so that’s what we did.
“We wore Jimmy Magee All Stars jerseys in our first couple of games,” laughed Corcoran at the memory. “We had a fella involved with the club who promoted bands and he got them for us.
“They were XXL, they were red, yellow, pink, had stripes - they were showband colours. Everyone was laughing at us, naturally enough because we were laughing at ourselves!”
Two of those children who were at that very first juvenile training session 18 years ago, Evan Kennedy and Jack King, will be in the Castleknock panel for Saturday’s clash with St Vincent’s.
Along the way the club has won All-Ireland hurling and football feile titles, the premier Under-14 national competition - a remarkable achievement for such a young outfit.
The tournament in 2007 was held in Kilkenny and the Dubliners were so good they caught the eye of the Cats’ legendary manager Brian Cody, who took a special interest in them and gave them a talk and a tour of the Nowlan Park facilities the night before the final.
From that team Graham Hanningan, Shane Boland and Footballer of the Year nominee Ciarán Kilkenny will be involved at the weekend. Player-retention is one of the things that Castleknock does best so they will be hoping to make the most of the teenagers who won the football feile earlier this year.
The club rents two pitches off Fingal County Council Council in Porterstown and in 2011 they signed a long-term lease with the council for a 24 acre plot of land in Somerton which now hosts two full-sized pitches, a juvenile pitch and an all-weather surface.
They’ll shortly turn the sod on a new two-storey €1.1 million club house that will literally cement the club’s future in the area. It’s a long way from a meeting upstairs in a suburban put 18 years ago.
“I have no idea what sort of a crowd we’ll bring with us this weekend, but I can tell you for sure that there’ll be people there that were never in Parnell Park before!” said Corcoran.
“There’s huge interest. There’s a very quick turn-around in the Dublin championship at this time of the year with match after match so we didn’t have much time to get things organised.
“We were told that we wouldn't be able to get flags in the club colours - blue and yellow - because Tipperary won the All-Ireland this year! We managed to get it sorted out anyway.”
