Seaview six savour the final moment

SEAVIEW Park in Quilty is an Ian McInerney free kick away from Kilmurry-Ibrickane GAA field.
Uniquely, McInerney, who plays at centre-forward, is one of six players from the estate who will pull on the green and red jersey on March 17 before Kilmurry play the biggest game in their history.
Noel Downes will wear number 15, while Paul O’Connor and Stephen Moloney will start at midfield and in the half-forward line respectively. They’ll be joined on the panel by Brendan Moloney (Stephen’s brother) and Thomas O’Connor (Paul’s brother).
The Downes, O’Connor and Moloney family houses are situated next to each other, while the McInerneys live at the front of the park. The craic is good amongst the Seaview Park six.
“I’m down in the posh part. This is the rough spot around here. I’m not usually up this far,” Ian McInerney laughs as he verbally jostles with his team-mates.
“I’ve to come up and mind Downes, the small fella,” he adds, leaving his first cousin bristling.
“I’ve to mind him,” Downes retorts as the flags and bunting waft in the early evening spring breeze.
Kilmurry training hasn’t started yet, although a distinctive lilt can be heard floating from the football field, across the green. It’s Micheál McDermott. The Seaview six claim that the din McDermott’s creates during training keeps the children in the estate awake until 10.30pm.
“They’re used to it now. And I didn’t say that Micheál!” McInerney adds with lightning speed.
Paul O’Connor stresses that the current Seaview footballers are not ground-breakers. Great Kilmurry players have emerged from the estate before them.
“Seaview Park has always provided footballers. Brendan’s brother Aidan has a couple of championships and my older brothers (John, Martin and Thomas) have a couple of championships and a Munster championship. The Galvins were always footballers from around here along with Michael Murphy. There was always a few around,” he explains.
Stephen Moloney lives next door to both Noel Downes and the O’Connors. He and Downes have an instinctive relationship on the field. When Downes moves, Moloney invariably picks the run with a perceptive pass.
“I think I’m just so used to him roaring for the ball and I if I don’t give it to him, he starts crying. So I’ve no other choice but to give it to him,” Moloney chortles.
Noel Downes picks up on the latest dig. “Don’t put that in The Clare Champion!” he pleads.
Moloney keeps talking, reflecting on what has gone before and how proud the park will be on March 17.
“It makes it that much better because we grew up together. We’ve trained together since U-10 and U-12. You go up to the field and you have as much craic as you have anywhere. Going to the matches and off to the bus, you see six or seven of us going down together every morning. You’ve the same faces, all the way out, wishing us the best. You’d be doing it for the village as well as everything else,” he says.
Stephen’s brother Brendan is the same age as Ian McInerney. They go back years. “Myself and Ian grew up together and played football together. We played basketball, I suppose, more than anything else below in his back garden. But we always played soccer on the road and on the green. You’d have 11 or 12-a-side up to 11 o’clock at night. You’d be called in about 20 times for school. We’d stay out playing ’til morning, that’s the way it was,” he recalls.
“You’d never get to play with lads as much as you do being from a village. If you’re out the country, you’d only meet in school. But every single evening, you’d be coming home from school saying ‘what time are you going up to the field?’ Coming down the road, bringing the ball home from school that we’d all have collected up for,” he adds.
Brendan marvels at the colour and the pride evident in Seaview Park and throughout the parish as Kilmurry head for Croke Park.
“It’s unbelievable. Just look at the buntings and the flags. That tells its own story. The people around here are awful proud. When the bus used to come in here with the underage, everyone would come out and clap, when you’d win an underage championship.”
Noel Downes has been listening intently, taking and giving a few verbal hits. When he gets serious though, he can’t disguise his pride or his ambition. Ten years ago, the idea of winning an All-Ireland senior club title was implanted in his head.
“We were up there (Croke Park) when we won the Féile in 2000 and the one thing we remember was Patrick Murrihy saying ‘we’ll be back here again to win a senior All-Ireland final’. He said it even before the game,” Downes remembers. Interestingly, the only Féile competition played in Croke Park was in 2000.
“It’s just great to be heading back there, especially when you’d see other teams bringing in players. Every one of our players is from the parish, which makes it even sweeter,” he observes.
Patrick Murrihy was the first man to show Downes and his age group how to handle a ball. He is giving a bit back himself these days.
“Michael Considine was away last year and he asked me to go up and give a hand with the U-10s. From U-10s down, there was 40 training. Dermot Coughlan and Kevin Coughlan were above as well, giving a hand,” he recollects.
Injury and even ’flu disrupted Noel for much of 2010.
“Every kind of dose going, I got it. I was worse than Mark Killeen!” he jibes.
Reminded that he was spotted training on his own one night in Mullagh, during the late winter of ’08, he insists that nobody would believe him if he told them that.
“If I said that to any of the players, they’d do fair laughing if you said you saw me over in Mullagh on my own,” he maintains, battling to control his own laughter.
Thomas O’Connor is the eldest of the Seaview Park six. He remembers when the days weren’t so golden. Days when selectors could be spotted peering out of the dressing room door, wondering were more players coming.
“We togged out for a championship game against Cooraclare in ’99 and we’d only 18 lads. And now we’ve 35. It’s all about numbers. The likes of the lads that have gone before never really got a chance to do this,” he says.
O’ Connor feels that players like Aidan ‘Horse’ Maloney, Dermot Coughlan and his own brother John, deserved a shot at national glory as much as anyone.
“Maybe they deserved it every bit as much as we deserve it. Maybe that’s what pushed the boys through the last day. To do it for them,” Thomas suggests.
The motivation for the Seaview six on March 17 will be manifold. They’ll be doing it for club, parish, family and for those who have filled the jersey before them. Whatever happens, Seaview’s finest will spill their last drop for the cause in Croke Park.