Club History

Laune Rangers G.A.A. Club, Killorglin was founded in 1888.Two Teachers, who had played with Erin’s Hopes in the Dublin Co. Championship, were appointed to Killorglin N.S. The Game most popular locally at the time was rugby, but the players were soon to give their allegiance to the G.A.A. Guided by the two teachers, the newly formed club the Co. Championship of 1889 and 1890, In 1890 having been again crowned champions of the Kingdom. Rangers represented Kerry in the All-Ireland series. They defeated Clondrohid 3-6 to 0-5 and won the Munster final by accounting for Dungarvan 0-12 to 0-0.

Unfortunately, in the All-Ireland final played in Clonturk Park, they were controversially beaten by Young Irelanders of Dublin 1-4 to 0-3.Though they retained the county title in 1883, this great team had begun to decline as a force.

The club resurfaced to annex the titles of 1900 and 1911. Long years of obscurity followed with the club playing in the East -Kerry District Board. When the Mid-Kerry Board was formed in 1947, our club switched allegiance. Seven Laune Rangers players won the Co. Championship in 1967. The Major decision to enter the Co. Championship as a club in 1970. Immediately a youth policy was embarked upon. Many of the senior players of the time sacrificed opportunities to win further championships with Mid-Kerry in the hope that some day we would do it on our own. Years of frustration followed until at last the dream became a reality in 1989.

Under the tutelage of Noel o Mahony the Bishop Moynihan trophy was brought across the Laune for the first time in 78 years. We drew with Clonmel Commercials in Killorglin but made amends the following week in Clonmel. In the Munster semi-final we had to succumb to the Larry Thomkins led Castlehaven. In 1993, the team, led by John Evans, again achieved the ultimate in Kerry at the expense of Aunascuaul. We beat Cloughane of Limerick in Killorglin. In a downpour in Ballinlough we drew with Nemo Rangers but lost the replay at home.

Report of 1892 Munsterfinal.

Munster Final V Dungarvan. - Sun Dec 4^th – Fermoy

The Kerry Sentinel reported on the game as follows

Without exaggeration, the teams played up to their knees in snow. Snow fell heavily on Saturday night, and Sunday morning saw the entire country, as far as the eye could reach, under the fleece mantle. Laune Rangers won the game 0-12 to 0-0. they now had had qualified for the All-Ireland final but the Lenister championship was yet far from over.There was great discontent in Killorglin with the delay and the finger of guilt was pointed mainly at Dublin. Eventually the final was fixed for Sunday, March 26^th 1893 at Clonturk Park in Dublin.

Report of 1892 All Ireland final.

The Kerry Sentinel reported as follows:

Our premier gaelic football team, the gallanth Laune Rangers, who have on so many occasions borne the laurels of victory home to Killorglin, lost the All-Ireland Championship on Sunday. The honours fell to the lot of the Dublin Young Irelanders. To any person, however, acquainted with all the surroundings of the contest, it will be quite apparent that the issue was not fought on anything like equitable terms. Having had to perform a tedious train journey of over two hundred miles to the scene of the action, it was to the indelible disgrace of the Dublin crowd which lined the park be it said, that they acted towards the Kerrymen in a scandalous and utterly the inIrish fashion. In the midst of play they did not content themselves, with cheering for the Dubin men, but actually indulged in vigorous hooting and grooming of the Kerrymen, the inevitable result of which of course, to take the spirit out of them. The final score was 1-4 to 0-3.

The First Match

The first recorded clash between Laune Rangers and John Mitchels took place on Sunday,  December 9, 1888 in Killorglin and it was an event well worth going some distance to witness. The appointment was known for miles around, and the greatest possible interest in the match was raised by the public. Happily the general expectations of  a rattling days sport was fully realised. The sunniest of Gaelic weather, the largest of Gaelic crowds ( not less than 10,000 ) and the most exciting and masterly play on the part of teamsmen  made the meeting the most interesting and most successful held under Gaelic auspices in the South of Ireland.

The game having been started at two o’clock, the ball was carried to the Mitchels’ camp but their backs soon sent it into neutral ground. Both sides took the matter easy enough and at half-time, play was equal, backs having dominated throughout. Sides being changed, J.P. O Sullivan and Pat Teahan made a point each for the home side. This was followed by a goal by D.P. Murphy and then came the finest piece of play of the match. The Mitchels from the kickout, carried the ball to the Killorglin goal, where the play was at close, the hands being used for the most part. The ball was shot directly for goal three times and was at last sent down to neutral ground. When time was called the home side was declared the winners by 2  goals and 3 points to one point.

The return match was played on the following Sunday at Tralee at the Amateur Club Ground. Nobody could fail to perceive the vast strides that had been made, even in Kerry, both as regards discipline and the science of play, during the short time that had elapsed since the Association had been practically introduced  into the Kingdom. Laune Rangers defeated Dr.Crokes. the following year, 1890 Rangers travelled to Tralee to play John Mitchels in the County Final. The appointed referee failed to attend and a substitute was found. The rain poured down during the game. At one stage the referee left the field but play continued for a considerable time before the fact was discovered.

Another referee was found. The Rangers captain, on one occasion, gave a beautiful kick from the left near the goal-line and as the ball crossed the point post or near it a point was claimed. The Mitchels disputed this, saying the post was pulled out in a slanting direction by the Killorglin supporters. The fact that neither side was able to score as much as a point  is the strongest evidence of the close and exciting nature of the contest.

The replay took place at Molahiffe and Rangers emerged victorious. Mitchels however, took exception to the behaviour of the Killorglin supporters who consisted of four-fifths of the crowd. Claims of intimidation by blackthorn wielding  supporters were made and it would appear that no love was lost between the teams with Rangers’ Jeremiah Hayes and Mitchels Mike Pendy leading the hostilities.

Rangers captured their third Co. Championship in 1892 when they defeated Ballymacelligott on the score 3-7 to 1-7. They went on to defeat Dungarven in the Munster Final 0-12 to 0-1. In the All-Ireland final, however, they succumbed to young Irelanders of Dublin by 1-4 to 0-3. The 1893 county final involved Laune Rangers and Keel at Tralee and Rangers again emerged victorious on the score 1-1 0-2.

Football went into decay by the banks of the Laune for the next few years until 1900. In that year Laune Rangers again appeared in the County final and defeated Dr.Crokes 3-4 to 0-3. Laune Rangers reached the 1909/1910 County finals but lost to John Mitchels 3-4 to 1-4. However, they gained compensation in the 1911 final when they reversed the decision by 1-3 to 1-1. This final, coincidently, took place in Killarney on Sunday, June 30, 1912.

Laune Rangers Ride In

(The Sunday Tribute 17 March 1996)

103 years after their last All Ireland final, Kerry’s Laune Rangers are back, writes Dave Hannigan

Laune Rangers were born in 1888. James Coffey wasn’t present at the birth but his grandfather was and the family pub. Not the whole pub mind, just one of the doorways. One night, his grandfather, also called James, and three likeminded Killorglin men stood in the doorway and got talking about the new fangled Gaelic Athletic Association. They decided it was time the town got involved.

            First things first, though: they needed a football, and that required some money. A cap was passed around the pub and whatever coppers were available were caged in the street. Before the night was out, they had seven and six in the kitty. The price of a football.

            A couple of days later, James Coffey was dispatched on the train to Cork to buy a ball. He returned the same night. Nobody is quite sure how much later. His grandson takes up the story.

            “Nobody knows what time he came back but apparently they were kicking the ball around a field here ‘til the early hours of the morning.”

            “You see it ‘twas the first time that they had a leather ball, and they kicked it from the station at the other side of the town to, through the streets and right down the hill here, ‘cross the bridge and up the Adelaide road to a place known locally as the Doctors field. That was the start of it really.”

            Everything snowballed from there, a couple of teachers, who had been sent down from Dublin, decided to harness the enthusiasm of James Coffey and his friends properly. One was a Mr Cronin from Newmarket. The other was known locally as “Blackjack.” The source of the nickname, one of Blackjacks past-pupils: the present parish priest, Canon Keane.

            The enthusiasm of the locals and the expertise of the teachers gelled so well the in the first five years of their existence, Laune Rangers were county champions four times.

            Among their players was Ireland’s leading athlete. His name was JP O’Sullivan but he was known all over the country as “The Champion.”

            In March 1893, Laune represented Kerry in the All-Ireland final against Dublin’s Young Irelands. It was a time when a single goal was worth more than any number of points. A time when crowd control wasn’t what it is now.

            James Coffey has told the story before, “Laune were winning going into the final minutes but the Dublin supporters came around the back of the goals with furze bushes in their and frightened our goalie, a fella by the name of Sheehan, and when the Ball came in, he was afraid to move towards it.”

            Pat Sheehan was the goalie that day. It was the best part of a week before he was prepared to set foot in Killorglin again.

            Football in the town never quite recovered from that. There was another county title in 1911 but in the years after that, football started to wane a little. Killorglin was a garrison town, loyalties divided easily and from about 1916 onwards, people had more important things than football on their minds.

            By the 1930s and ‘40s, football was still relatively important to Killorglin, but Killorglin was no longer important to football. A senior team existed and competed – that was about the size of it. Still, when the current club treasurer, James Coffey thinks about growing up in the forties, he remembers the Gaa’s place in the life of the Coffey family pub.

            “I remember being in here on Sundays when there was a match on the wireless. They would have being very few wirelesses in the town and, of course, it was illegal to be in a pub on a Sunday  then, but the place used to be packed. There wouldn’t be a sound, though. Only Micheal O hEithir.”

            That sort of thing is bound to leave a mark. By the time James Coffey was doing the Leaving Cert in 1952, he and his friends had set up the Laune Rangers hurling club. For a bunch of schoolboys, they were organized pretty well. Paddy Foley noticed as much. Foley had played on the 1911 county championship-winning team and was struggling to rustle up enthusiasm for football in the town. Willing workers were short in the ground. James Coffey’s first love had been hurling but Foley cajoled him into becoming assistant-secretary of the football club. Coffey has been everything and more in the club since.

            He’s currently joint-treasurer, Mid-Kerry board delegate and chief folklorist. “Nobody is sure where the name Laune Rangers came from. We know that they were either a gang of poachers of bailiffs in these parts around the 1850’s. The only thing we know for certain is nobody liked them very much.”

            The footballing Laune Rangers proved a mite more popular. “ I remember when we started out it was great, we’d be going down there to play a team called Keale. We’d go by bike, often two or three on each bike. Cycle as far as the river Maine. A man called Dan Linehan would bring us across then in his boat with us holding the bikes out the side. Out of the boat, back on the bikes and on to play the match. Those were great days.”

            As time moved on, though Laune Rangers needed more sophisticated forms of transport. Money was needed for that, and for securing their pitch too. “’Twas the late fifties and there would’t have been much money around, but we ran a draw. We called it the silver circle. Every house in the parish gave a shilling a week for 20 weeks.

            “Jeez, ‘twould be like asking for £500 now. We had a great priest called father Murphy who went around with us collecting it. He was a saint in their eyes, they’d give anything when he was with us.”

            That was the fifties, a time when James Coffey wouln’t have dared to dream that Laune would even win another county championship. Halfway through the ninties, there in an All Ireland final and James Coffey is still up to his neck in it.

            “I used to be more involved but one day I just decided I’d have to give up a chairman. I was driving back from a meeting and I turned to a fella in the car with me and said, ‘I’ll step down if you’ll take over.’ I knew he could do a good job. His name was Jerome Conway.”

            Jerome Conway is a teacher. There were two teachers instrumental in getting Laune Rangers off the ground. Other teachers have been taking up the baton ever since and Jerome Conway is only the latest. Wednesday afternoon in Scoil Mhuire, Killorglin, and Laune Rangers are all over the school.

            Jerome Conway is in his office. School principle, club chairman, u-16 trainer and fan. Down the hall is, Tommy Woods is at the top of the classroom. Schoolteacher and club secretary. In another class room stands Declan Falvey. Teacher and basketball guru but unofficial head of Laune Rangers supporters club. Elsewhere in the building is the most popular teacher of all: Conor Kearney, Laune Rangers full forward hero.

            Jerome Conway was in sixth class when Laune Rangers were turning the town greyhound track into JP O’Sullivan Park. “ We used to get half-days every Friday to go up and pick stones out of the field when they were trying to reclaim it.”

            A few years later, Conway’s first teaching job out of collage was in Kildare. He put down a few years there before going home to teach in Killorglin. It was 1970.l

            Eighteen years after the re-organisation of the club and Laune were no nearer their dream of another county title. “I was secretary, sure everyone gets roped in. We decided the only way forward was with a youth structure.”

            An under-12 team was started and the seed of the future crops were sown. They won the under-12 championship in 1972, ’73, and ’74. Developing the young players was one thing, holding in to them was another. Four of today’s starting 15 played on those teams.

            It took 19 years of nurturing of youngsters before a senior county title was finally won in 1989. There have been two more since and now, today, comes the chance to redress the All Ireland defeat of 1893.

            Most of that ’93 team worked building the railway between Killorglin and Cahersiveen. Garnering gainful employment locally isn’t as easy now. Laune Rangers are proud that only five of their squad are based outside the town, and three of those as based in nearby Adare.

            “That’s something you have to work at. But we will always try hard to get a fella a job if he needs it. We have to. The big challenge facing us now is holding on to last year’s successful minor team.”

            Last years minor team won the county. It registered only a blip on the Laune Rangers success monitor. The adult teams won the A,B, and C senior counties. The Under 21’s won their county, and the under 12’s too. Real success. The kind that only breeds more.

            On Tuesday evening, 50 under-12 turned up for  the first training session of the season. They were five mentors looking to get involved. Jerome Conway can still smile at the way things have changed.

            “There was a senior championship game back in the late seventies. We didn’t even have 15 players. Noel O Mahony was the coach and he had to put his boots on under his pants and stand in to make up the numbers. Ten years later we won the county, he was still coach.”

            Its been a busy week to be chairman. Two trains have been chartered to bring the towns folk to Dublin. There are two more planeloads flying from London. The excitement is everywhere, but it’s a costly business.

            A weekend for the team in Dublin will set the club back £7000. Costs must be met. To this end , the club held a fashion show in the CYMS hall on Tuesday night.

            Four hundred women paid £5 each. Another £500 was raised through a raffle. As the clock ticked past midnight, there were 20 club members still in the hall disassembling the fashion ramps. Jerome Conway thought of another night in the hall.

            “This was the early seventies now. I was standing at a bloody dance hall door down there in the town and 13 people came to the dance. The band were The Zulus. I presume the were a country and western band or something but they were dressed up as Zulus. Zulus’s I’m telling you, those were bad days.”

            These are better ones.

  B

Birthplace of Laune Rangers GAA Club

Memories and Dreams

-James Coffey

When I consider what prompted me to become so involved in the Gaa I think back to hearing my father debating in our bar the relative greatness of past Kerry teams and players. I was about 7 years old when I first me the past Laune Rangers, John Phil Murphy, Jimmy Doyle and Patsy Begley and it was they who informed me of the legendary feats of JP O Sullivan and other early Laune Rangers. It was also from them that I learned that the Laune Rangers Club was founded in my house in 1988 and that my grandfather Seamus Coffey, was its first secretary, having also brought the first Gaelic Football into town. Hearing customers in the bar such as Denis Corkery (Taylor), Patie O’Reilly, (Shoemaker), John O’Riordan (who sold many footballs), my uncle Danny Clifford, Jimmy O Leary and Paddy Foley recounting great stories of their playing days enthralled me so much that I was already sucked in. Later I learned that my father had also been Secretary of Laune Rangers, and though I must have annoyed him with all my football questions, he never failed to provide the answers to satisfy me.

My first involvement with Laune Rangers was in 1950 when the great Laune Rangers man Paddy Foley asked me to help fundraise for the club by selling cards for a stopwatch competition. Hardly a day went by that I didn’t call to Paddy to hear about his great times with Laune Rangers and Kerry. At this stage I was hooked and when the Club bought the land from John A. Foley I was asked to become a fundraiser. I remember collecting 1/1 per week for 20 weeks for the silver circle in my allotted areas; no easy job I assure you!

Following a few years of demanding fundraising, expertly co-ordinated by the late Tod Mulvihill and his wife Kathleen, Paddy Crowley (current President of Laune Rangers) & Paddy Foley, the debt on the Jp O Sullivan Park was cleared and within a few months I was assistent Secretary of the Club. I was later to follow in the footsteps of my father and grandfather by becoming Club Secretary. Probably the greatest highlight for me around this time was when Laune Rangers won the Mid Kerry Senior Football Championship for the first time in 1958. I’ll never forget the sense of achievement in the club, not to mention the celebrations!    

The many great friends I made in the Gaa from other countries still call to see me when in Kerry and we enjoy a jar together. There was great loyalty in the Gaa in those early years of my office-ship and during my serious illness in the early 70’s the Laune Rangers and Mid-Kerry team gave me great support in my bid for recovery. I will never forget the Mid-Kerry players led by Board Chairman Pat O Shea coming into my hospital room with the Bishop Moynihan Cup within an hour of winning the County Senior Championship. It lifted me so much that I was on the mend within hours.

Laune Rangers have achieved a great deal in the 80’s & 90’s, including All Ireland glory, and while the new millennium has not yet been kind to us there is still a century ahead in which many more great achievements will be recorded. I hope that when I am serving my last rounds of drinks in the Laune Bar, the old memories will still be on our lips while we dream of more successes to come. And dream we can as we congratulate Liam and Mike Hasset and Mike Frank on their achievements with Kerry in the new millenium.

Killorglin Credit Union and Laune Rangers

A History to be Proud Of