IT is the sporting highlight of my life,’ Margaret Coombes beams, without hesitation.
Thirty-nine years have passed since that magical bank holiday Monday in October 1986 when a young team from the fledgling Ilen Rovers LGFA club took on the might of Ballymacarbry in a Munster club senior semi-final, yet the memories feel fresh and vivid.
‘I think it was the best game we ever played,’ Coombes muses.
‘This was a pure David and Goliath game. They were the reigning Munster champions, the All-Ireland senior runners up.’
In 1986, Ilen’s ladies football club was only three years old, while the Waterford outfit, the oldest ladies football club in the country (set up in 1970), had contested the All-Ireland senior club final in ’85. Ilen’s trailblazers didn’t read the script and on that magical jazz weekend in 1986, they moved to their own beat in an incredible 2-11 to 2-8 win.
Ilen had trailed by seven points at the break, but their second-half performance is the stuff of local legend.
‘I will never forget that half-time talk and we were absolutely buzzing for the second half. We had the wind, and scored two great goals from Mary Walsh and Joan Whooley, as well as six points, while Ballymacarbry only scored two points in the second half,’ Coombes says.
‘That was the greatest day out we ever had,’ she adds, though Castleisland burst Ilen’s balloon in the Munster final. Still, Ilen will always have that win against the odds over Ballymacarbry. Stories like this from 1986 – the most successful season in the club’s history as Ilen ladies teams won county senior and minor crowns, and the West Cork U21 title – will be regaled at the West Cork Hotel in Skibbereen on Saturday night when Ilen Rovers Ladies Club holds a dinner dance to celebrate 40 years.
The Ilen Rovers panel that won the 1984 county junior A title. Back from left, John O'Mahony, Denise Collins, Anne Hurley, Regina O'Donovan, Margaret Cadogan, Bernie Leonard, Mary Margaret Lewis, Ann-Marie Minihane, Mary Walsh, Joan Whooley and Ida Shiely. Front from left, Gretta Burchill, Yvonne Lyne, Lorraine Shanahan, Eileen Moynihan, Gretta Whooley (captain), Deirdre Minihane, Anne Fitzgerald, Ann Whooley and Kay Whooley.
It was those local pioneers in the early days that laid the foundation for the club that exists today. The Ladies' Gaelic Football Association was only formed in July 1974, and the ladies’ football scene in West Cork was a world away from what exists now.
‘In West Cork, there was Bandon and St Endas, who were Ballineen and Enniskeane, and then we came along,’ Margaret Coombes explains.
‘It was extraordinary really. It was a huge part of our lives. The only type of ladies football played in the 1970s were these novelty games at festivals; I played in one of those in 1973 as part of an Aughadown team that played a Castlehaven team at the Union Hall Festival.’
The opening of Ilen’s Church Cross pitch in 1982 played a role in what was to come, too. Deirdre Minihane, who lived nearby, had played in those festival matches, and would take her three kids to Church Cross for a kickaround. In 1983, Deirdre and her sister Ailish had the idea of setting up a girls’ football team. Crucially, the club backed this – Ilen Rovers now had a ladies’ football club.
Ilen built it, and they came from all over. Such was the response locally that Ilen immediately had the numbers for underage and adult teams. Wearing green jerseys with white collars, donated by Ilen Rovers founding chairman Pat Sheehy, Ilen ladies teams hit the ground running – they contested 14 county championship finals in the club’s first 14 years, at senior, intermediate, junior, U21 and minor grades.
‘In that era women were very involved in GAA clubs, like now, apart from playing, so this was ground-breaking that women and girls could play the game,’ Coombes explains.
‘Girls and women from within our own parishes and from outside just flocked to Church Cross to play football because the option wasn’t available in any other clubs apart from Bandon and St Endas. There was never a sense of people being from outside, everyone was totally welcome, and the entire club and parishes got behind the women’s team.
‘Going back to our time and the people who started us off, there were a lot of women who got 100 percent behind us and without them it would never have happened. It’s the same today, it’s all about volunteers, people who are willing to put the work in. There are great numbers playing ladies football with Ilen Rovers now, and all the clubs around. It’s tremendous to see.’
Tremendous, too, was how Ilen’s early success was immediate – they entered the 1984 county junior championship, and won it. Twelve teams entered this knock-out championship and Ilen triumphed, beating Ballingeary in the final thanks to a last-minute Eileen Moynihan goal.
‘It was huge to bring a county title back to the club, unbelievable, that was the start of it,’ Coombes says.
‘It’s very unusual to go from zero to 100, and what helped us was the club was really supportive, we had great supporters and we trained against the U14 boys which was great fun!
‘It was extraordinary to win that county title. Once we won that county, the floodgates opened.
‘A friend of mine said to me lately that it was way more than sport because this was a new thing for women. I was one of the older women on the panel; we went from 14, 15 up to mid 20s. The craic we had was unbelievable. We were as fit as fiddles, our trainer John O’Mahony came from a tug-of-war background so we used to run laps and laps of the pitch at Church Cross.’
Great times, Coombes adds, and she is thrilled to see Ilen Rovers Ladies Club going strong today. There was a hiatus between 1996 and 2002, but the club rebuilt again, and now fields underage teams up to adult. Ilen players have also lined out for Cork teams, from underage up to senior. This Saturday night’s 40th celebrations offers the chance to reflect on the journey Ilen ladies have had; from a festival team in the 1970s, the vision and hard work of local women in those early years created the ladies club that exists today. And also created countless memories for every young girl who has pulled on an Ilen jersey in the past 40 years.
