SOON after the first set of GAA playing rules were finalised in 1887, a special excursion train was laid out of Schull to take interested Gaels from the Mizen Peninsula to Skibbereen where they witnessed their first Gaelic game.
Football teams were soon set up in Schull and in Ballydehob, the latter of which named itself the Ballydehob Parnell’s in honour of Anna Parnell, who was leader of the Ladies’ Land League and who had visited the village in 1881.
Early teams did not enter any official GAA competitions but played ‘friendly’ test matches among themselves with team names such as League of the Cross, Erin’s Hope and the Rough and Tumbles. How fortunate that the powers that be eventually settled on a sensible name like Gabriel Rangers.
It would be more than another hundred years before the ladies would have a Gabriel Rangers team, but they were very quick off the mark with an All-Ireland win in 2003.
The first evidence of a serious adult hurling team in Ballydehob dates to 1919. Though short-lived, it established a tradition of hurling in an area more noted for football. When Cork won their first two All-Ireland minor hurling titles in 1928 and 1937, there was a Coughlan from Ballydehob on each team – Dan Joe and Dan Matt. In 1972, Jim O’Sullivan from Airhill in Schull repeated this feat.
More history and pre-history of the Gabriel Rangers GAA Club is featured in the club’s 50th anniversary souvenir publication In the Shadow of Mount Gabriel. The 400-page hardback is packed with interesting facts and nostalgia,
Eugene McSweeney
