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In 1910, a turf cutter discovered an ornate sliotar made from hair in a bog in Toornageehy, County Kerry. A young woman made this sliotar to give as a token of her love to a young hurler ahead of the Mayday celebrations and hurling contests. Carbon dating confirms that it is nearly 700 years old. Kerry people and hurling share a long history; their claim to the sport is as strong as any hurler from Tipperary, Clare, Cork, Waterford, or Limerick.

 

 

“Just a mile or thereabouts,

From the lordly Shannon mouth,

There's a spot to which none other I'd compare;

It's a village, not a town,

Though her sons have gained renown,

For the Boys from Ballyduff are always there.”

 

— The Boys from Ballyduff, written by P.J. Sheehy on the occasion of Ballyduff’s victory over Wexford’s Crossabeg in the 1891 All-Ireland Hurling Final.

 

 

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Two boys swing around Paddy Carr’s Bend in the Clahane townland in North Kerry, near the village of Ballyduff. Hurleys rest on their shoulders as though they are soldiers marching with rifles in formation. Further on down the road, the boys jump over a gate and begin pucking a sliotar back and forth to each other at a distance of 20 metres.

 

To stumble across this sight anywhere else in Kerry would be rare enough, so obsessed is the county with Gaelic football and the pursuit of the Sam Maguire Cup. Not here, however. Because here hurling runs deep in the blood, stretching back far beyond the foundation of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in 1884, a little pocket surviving in the traditional powerhouse of Gaelic football.

 

These boys owe their sporting inheritance to the Ballyduff team who won the All-Ireland Hurling Championship for Kerry in 1891. A plaque outside the Ballyduff GAA grounds records the names of the players who reached the promised land 12 years before the Kerry footballers won the first of their 37 All-Ireland titles.

 

 

 

 

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Ballyduff won their first Kerry Hurling Championship in May 1891, defeating the previous year’s winners Kilmoyley by 1-0 to 0-2 in the final. For their Munster campaign, Ballyduff took advantage of a rule allowing them to select players from other Kerry clubs. As such, they bolstered their ranks with players from Kilmoyley, Ardfert, Ahabeg, and Dromartin. One of the players selected included Ahabeg’s Maurice Fitzmaurice, great-grandfather to Kerry All-Ireland football winning player and manager, Éamonn.

 

By the time the Munster Hurling Championship started the country was in turmoil with the news of Charles Stewart Parnell’s adultery and subsequent split in the Irish Parliamentary Party. And it is against this political storm that Ballyduff now represented Kerry in the Munster Championship.

 

Ballyduff faced the heavily fancied Blackrock of Cork in the semi-final. In the end, Ballyduff trounced the Cork side 2-7 to 0-3, sending them on to face Treaty Stone of Limerick in the final. However, Parnell was now dead at 45, with the strain placed on his fragile health by the political and personal scandals proving too much for him. At his funeral in Dublin, 1,000 men with hurleys draped in black crepe paper marched behind his coffin.

 

Charles Stewart Parnell’s funeral, October 1891, Dublin.

 

Special trains from Killarney were organised to bring supporters to the Munster Hurling Final of 1891, played in Newcastle West, Limerick, on 1 November. The game proved to be a controversial and bitter affair, with Treaty Stone defeating Ballyduff 1-2 to 1-1. In the aftermath, Ballyduff protested the result, believing they had scored an equalising point prior to the referee’s final whistle.

 

Even though the referee’s timekeeping didn’t favour Ballyduff, the decision of the rule makers did, with the GAA Central Executive eventually ordering a replay in Abbeyfeale for 31 January 1892. Ballyduff were in no mood to mess around a second time, winning easily by 2-4 to 0-1.

 

Once again, controversy followed Ballyduff into the All-Ireland Final, played in Clonturk Park in Dublin on 28 February 1892. Before the game, Ballyduff objected to the appointment of a Mr Larkin from Galway as referee, possibly down to an ill-tempered challenge match between Kerry and Galway the year before. Eventually, the teams agreed that Dick Tobin, the GAA secretary, should officiate.

 

The All-Ireland Hurling Final of 1891 between Kerry’s Ballyduff and Wexford’s Crossabeg is considered to be a classic of the era. With two Gaelic football games also on the programme, a massive crowd of 2,000 turned up to watch all three matches. In the first game of the day, Dublin’s Young Irelanders defeated the brilliantly named Cavan Slashers in the All-Ireland Football Semi-Final before togging out again in the third game, defeating Cork side Clondrohid in the All-Ireland Final.

 

Sandwiched in between the two football games, players from Ballyduff and Crossabeg contested the hurling decider. Neither side had played a semi-final as teams from Connaught and Ulster had not participated in the hurling championship. Ballyduff wore grey jerseys with “Up Kerry” printed on them together with their everyday trousers. The hardy North Kerry men, playing in their bare feet, led at halftime, 0-2 to 0-1.

 

The first score of the second half was a Ballyduff goal to extend their lead to a healthy four points. Ballyduff maintained this lead until, with eight minutes remaining, Crossabeg scored a goal and then an equalising point in a remarkable three-minute burst. The momentum had firmly shifted and Crossabeg had victory in their gunsights when the referee awarded them a late free to sink the side from Munster. Crossabeg stuck the ball between the uprights to win the All-Ireland for Wexford, or so they thought, because, in an almost identical scenario to the Munster Final, the referee whistled to end the game before the sliotar had gone over the bar.

 

The All-Ireland Hurling Final of 1891 is significant in that it was the last played with 21-aside before the switch to 17-aside a year later, and also that it is the only final to have gone to extra time. While Crossabeg should have felt aggrieved about their late disallowed free, it was Ballyduff whom officials had to persuade to again take the field. Reports from Kerry newspaper The Sentinel suggest two reasons. First, the Ballyduff players believed one of their points had in fact been a goal and so they had won the match. The second reason argued that the Crossabeg goal was illegal as the sliotar had passed through the Australian Rules-type posts before a spectator kicked the ball back out, thus leading to the Crossabeg goal.

 

Either way, Ballyduff took to the field and outscored Crossabeg 1-01 to 0-03 to secure the All-Ireland, with Jim McDonnell scoring the decisive goal from 30 yards. Crossabeg unsuccessfully appealed the result to Central Council later in the day, leaving Ballyduff as champions.

 

 

“All retired well satisfied and proud of the victorious champions.”

 

— Report from the celebrations in Ballyduff, published in The Kerry Sentinel after Ballyduff’s All-Ireland success.

 

 

Ballyduff, Co. Kerry.

 

 

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After spectators had chaired the winning players from the pitch, the team immediately made for the train to Kerry. Paddy Carr recalled later that as the train did not arrive in Tralee until three in the morning the players went for a drink in then chairman of the Kerry County Board Tom Slattery’s pub on Rock Street, staying until the first train left for North Kerry eight hours later.

 

The team arrived into Lixnaw at 11.30 and went to finish the day’s work, although the Ballyduff band did greet the players at the station. That evening the celebrations included a torchlit procession to the main bonfire outside the village. In the surrounding hills bonfires abounded while the dancing continued on until a late hour.

 

But this joy soon turned to disillusion. The players had put forward 16 shillings of their own money to cover expenses — the equivalent of two months wages — with the understanding that the county board would later reimburse them. However, they never saw those 16 shillings again.

 

Ballyduff defeated Causeway in the 1892 Kerry Hurling Championship Semi-Final, but this would be their last appearance in the championship in the 19^th century. The Kerry County Board had intended to present the All-Ireland winning players with their medals ahead of the final against Kilmoyley, but Ballyduff stayed home in protest, handing the title to Kilmoyley in a walkover.

 

Curiously, Kilmoyley invited ten Ballyduff players to line out with them in the Munster Semi-Final against Redmonds of Cork, and even gave the captaincy to Ballyduff’s Jim McDonnell. The Kerry Sentinel reported a half-hearted performance from the Kerry side in a 4-3 to 2-5 defeat to the eventual All-Ireland champions.

 

 

Kerry, All-Ireland Football champions 1903,

the first Kerry team to achieve the honour.

 

 

“Say, young fellow, what about the hurlers? We were the first, you know — in 1891.”

 

— Paddy Carr O’Carroll, veteran of Ballyduff’s All-Ireland winning team, speaking from the crowd to the GAA President at a dinner to celebrate the golden jubilee of Kerry’s first All-Ireland football title.

 

 

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In the 129 years since Kerry’s only hurling All-Ireland, the footballers have gone on to win 37 All-Irelands, making them the most successful county in Gaelic football’s roll of honour. But Paddy Carr is correct. This is the one thing they have over the footballers — they got their first. And the people of Ballyduff and North Kerry are still here, as they have been for centuries, hurling all before them.