Last Monday evening, the football talk stopped – briefly. There was the launch of a book chronicling this part of South Down from the Stone Age up to the 1800s.
Given the timeline in A Place We Call Burren, there was little mention of the GAA club that’s made this small village famous.
But there’s always a connection. The author is Margaret Harty, a former schoolteacher who is also the local historian and has been organist at the church for almost 70 years.
And she happened to come up with the club motto: Ar Aghaidh Le Chéile, which means moving forward together.
‘I think it sums up this club, and this area,’ says Brian McAvoy, Ulster GAA secretary and club member who is currently involved in a project to chronicle the club history.
‘Togetherness, family, connection, that’s who we are, who we have been.’
This weekend, St Mary’s Burren (their full name) are back where they feel they belong. In Newry, they face neighbours Clonduff hoping to claim their 15th county title.
A fortnight ago, inspired by Odhran Murdock and Liam Kerr, they ended Kilcoo’s seven-year reign as Down champions in a chaotic, classic shoot-out.
Niall Toner of Burren celebrates his goal against Kilcoo in the Down semi-final last month
Kilcoo have only been beaten twice in county championship since their extraordinary era of dominance began in 2012 – the 2018 final and this year’s high-scoring semi-final. Burren were the team to do it on both occasions.
‘They have won nothing yet,’ says club legend John ‘Shorty’ Treanor, whose son Ryan captains the side.
‘I told them as much when they came back to the clubhouse that Sunday. Everyone was giving out to me for being an old grump. But how often do you see in sport, when the team takes down the big gun and then doesn’t finish the job the next day?’
‘Shorty’ is remembered as the magical forward on a Burren side who claimed five Ulster club titles and two All-Irelands during the club’s golden period in the 1980s.
Typically, he reckons they should have won more.
‘We definitely left an Ulster or two behind us, maybe an All-Ireland or two as well. And with all the county titles I won (10 in total), I never captained the team, which Ryan will do tomorrow.’
Ryan Treanor (son of club legend ‘Shorty’ Treanor) captains the current Burren side
THE BEGINNINGS
McAvoy says that in the autumn of 1924 that a number of like-minded individuals came together in the village to set up a GAA club.
Their first game had been scheduled for November but wasn’t played until 15th of December.
‘The team reached the junior championship final in 1928 and won it in 1930. So, it started well, but because of emigration and the war, the club folded in the early 1940s and players from here would go and play for Warrenpoint, which is only a couple of miles away,’ McAvoy says.
‘One of those was John McClorey, the first Burren man to play for Ulster, who decided one evening he had enough of playing for Warrenpoint and told him he was going back up the road to form a new wee team,’ explains McAvoy, whose father Barney was made club treasurer when the club reformed in 1949.
‘That wee team went from a seed into a flower. Three years after reforming, they were junior champions and played their first senior final the following year, as fate would have it, against Warrenpoint.’
McAvoy reckons that 1953 senior final – the first in the club’s history – has an unique place in the GAA annals as Warrenpoint became champions without their players scoring.
‘I don’t know if many other clubs have won a county final without scoring. The final score was 1-0 to 0-1 and their goal was an own goal when our goalkeeper, Sean Campbell, tried to fist the ball clear and it ended up in his own.
‘That’s Warrenpoint’s last county title. The club finally won its first senior title in 1966, but the next one didn’t come until 1981.’
In the middle of that period, a move was made that was transformative. In 1975, Burren became the first GAA club to install floodlights.
‘I was only around five at the time, but have a vague memory of going to the pitch, Down playing Armagh in challenge to turn the lights on,’ current chairman Donal Murdock remembers.
‘It was a big deal, no other club had them.’
It was a grim time in the North and the club were not immune from The Troubles with senior player Mattie Campbell losing his life to a no-warning bomb planted by UVF outside the Ulster Bar in Warrenpoint in April 1976.
The floodlights provided an extra bit of security at such a time – and allowed teams to flourish.
‘We were very fortunate to have exceptional leadership in the club, and it showed in the way they installed floodlights,’ says Frank McClorey, part of the great 1980s side.
Club stalwart Frank McClorey (aka Frank Mitchell) was a weatherman on UTV for many years and is seen here showing Queen Elizabeth II around the studio during her visit to Belfast in 2010
FAMOUS FACE
McClorey is better known as Frank Mitchell, who was the weatherman and presenter on UTV for more three decades. Mitchell was the nom de plume used when working in pirate radio in Dundalk – and it stuck. His father, John, was the club chairman during the successful period of the 1980s.
‘The floodlights meant we could train when other teams couldn’t, play challenge games when others couldn’t organise them. It was definitely a big advantage,’ Mitchell recalls.
‘When I was growing up in the 70s, Bryansford were the team we couldn’t beat. We weren’t even thinking of winning county titles, we just wanted to beat Bryansford.
‘At the time, Kilcoo was somewhere you went to buy sheep and Mayobridge were a Division three team.’
The team were making strides. Six years after the floodlights were switched on for the first time, Burren had won their second Down senior title and the torch-paper was lit for an extraordinary decade of success.
‘There were 222 families living in the village of Burren in the 1980s when we were winning All-Irelands and everything revolved around the GAA club and I suppose it gave us pride that our small village was known in GAA circles and was distinct from that other more famous Burren in a different part of Ireland.
‘The GAA team put us on the map and our small little club taking on the likes of Vincent’s or Castleisland, who had the great Charlie Nelligan in goals,’ remembers Mitchell.
Mitchell feels fortunate to be on a team that included Paddy O’Rourke, who would lift Sam Maguire as Down captain in 1991, Brendan McGovern and Brendan McKernan. But he reckons that the best of them all was ‘Shorty’ Treanor.
John ‘Shorty’ Treanor seen here playing for Down is regarded as an all-time great in Burren
LOCAL HERO
‘Shorty’ Treanor remembers sitting in a classroom when he was 14 and asked what his ambition was when he grew up.
‘I said I wanted to win a county title with Burren. My teacher was Barney McAleenan, a footballer himself, and he said there isn’t much hope of that. Five years later, I had won one,’ he recalls with a chuckle.
‘The following year, we were beaten in the first round as defending champions. There was a lesson there.
‘We won the county back the following year and went on a six-in-a-row. The club brought Jackie McManus in as coach and manager, he had played soccer with Dundalk and Coleraine and he trained us like a soccer team, there were all these sort of drills.
‘The first year I played senior, training sessions consisted of running some backs against forwards.’
After winning their first Ulster club title, Treanor and his team travelled to Athlone for the All-Ireland club championships, which was played over a weekend.
They lost to Meath champions, Walterstown, who were coached by Jack O’Shea. But they had the taste for it.
Having won Ulster again the following year, they were drawn at home for the 1985 All-Ireland semi-final.
It meant the great St Vincent’s side coming up to St Mary’s Park. ‘I remember looking out the window on the morning of the match and had never seen a crowd like it, they were coming to watch Brian Mullins, Bobby Doyle and Tommy Conroy.
‘They beat us by a goal they scored a few minutes from the end but it shouldn’t have been given. They had 16 players on the pitch.
‘Vincent’s had a free while Bobby Doyle was being substituted. Bobby was walking off the pitch but the freetaker thought he was running to find space and kicked him the ball.
‘Bobby dropped it in the square and Sean Dalton, the guy who replaced him, scored the goal. There was a lot of shouting, lot of anger in the ground, but to no avail.
‘There were a few of us down in Kerry on a golf trip a few years later, in a hotel in Kenmare and Mullins, God rest him, walked in with his wife.
‘We had a great night’s craic, slagging him about Bobby not leaving the pitch and the 16th player.’
McManus stepped down after that defeat and Ray Morgan, a doyen of Mourne football, took the helm. A year later, Burren had won their first All-Ireland, Treanor putting a goal past Charlie Nelligan in the final.
‘A great memory. And that’s what it’s about. Memories. I remembered the year we beat Nemo in the semi-final, 56 of us went down on the team bus but only 12 went back on it.
‘The rest stayed down in Cork to celebrate, getting the train the next day or day after. Wouldn’t happen nowadays.’
Down captain and Burren man Paddy O’Rourke lifts the Sam Maguire Cup at Croke Park in 1991
Treanor was the most exciting club footballer in Down, and teams tried everything to slow him down.
‘We played Tyrone champions Augher one year in Carrickmore and the grass was about six inches long, it was their idea to slow down all these nippy, skilful Down lads. We still won, mind.
‘A lot of the games in Ulster at the time were hard going. One Ulster final against Scotstown, we won 0-6 to 1-2, another final we lost to Castleblaney 0-4 to 0-3. Not a great watch!’
Treanor missed that Ulster final against ‘Blaney as he and goalkeeper Declan Campbell were involved in a car accident the weekend before.
That cost the club three All-Ireland titles in a row, although they did come back to win both Ulster and the All-Ireland the following year.
As wonderful as Treanor played for Burren, he was often accused of not performing the same way for the county and in 1991, just months before Down claimed the All-Ireland, he left the panel, frustrated at not getting enough game-time under Pete McGrath.
‘Not the best timing. I was at Croke Park and watched them win it, and it was a strange feeling because you think you should be there, or at least on the panel.
‘It was always said to me I didn’t play for the county like I did for the club, but the club was everything to me, I grew up 500 yards from the football field, it was where everyone went in Burren.
‘My father played for them, Ryan’s now playing for them, as is Saoirse. It will always mean more.’
Tyrone great Collie Holmes has come on board to help out with the senior team this year
NEW DAWN
The club has a busy day tomorrow. The Ladies team, fresh from their first county intermediate title, have an Ulster championship game in St Mary’s Park at 1.30pm before everyone heads toward Newry.
Jarlath Burns was recently in the village to open a third pitch to cater for the numbers who are now making up the teams coming through.
‘We have won under-16 titles for both boys and girls in the last few years, as well as minor A championship and we are just trying to make sure that they keep coming through,’ Donal Murdock explains.
And another county title, and a tilt at Ulster will help in that regard.
They have enlisted Collie Holmes from the great Tyrone team of the noughties to oversee the seniors this year.
The connection came from Murdock’s day as Queen’s freshers manager in 1995 when Holmes was their centre-half-back.
‘I have stayed in touch with him ever since, we have a Whatsapp group and all that. It is funny how small the GAA world can be at times, the connections that are made and the way it can all come full circle.’
Never more so than in Burren this week. Shorty Treanor hopes that if they do beat their neighbours tomorrow, they might get liberated in the province.
‘That happened us a bit, once we were out of the county, we were freed up a bit to play. But they have to get over Clonduff, first.’
The names on the teamsheet will be familiar. Treanor. Murdock. Fegan. The thing keeps moving on in circles.
Family and connection. Everyone moving on together. Into a future that may yet be redolent of their glorious past.
