By Shaun Casey

MOST small, rural clubs would be delighted to get one or two minors through to the senior team each year. How about 15? The story of Granemore’s 2005 championship winning season is all about the youngsters.

One special group of talented players, that knew nothing else but winning, helped change the course of the club’s history, both at underage and senior level. That group provided the spark that has kept the club in the Senior Championship ranks for 20 years.

They won Granemore’s first-ever Division One U-16 Championship. Two years later, the same team repeated the feat at minor level, defeating a Crossmaglen side that featured the likes of All-Ireland winners Paul Kernan, Paul McKeown, Kyle Carragher and Johnny Hanratty.

That was in 2004. It wasn’t long before that group made their impact in the senior team.

By the time the 2005 Intermediate final arrived, eight of that minor side were in the starting team. Two more entered the fray during the decider.

An unprecedented breakthrough. Brendan Rafferty was the skipper that year and became Granemore’s fifth-ever championship winning captain, following in the footsteps of Mickey McParland, Charlie Doyle, Barry Rock and Damian Nugent.

“Myself and Martin Murphy had played in the Junior,” recalled Rafferty two decades on.

“We joined the team when we were 16 or 17 and played Division Four football. In 1998 we won the Junior Championship, so we came in at a good stage.

“The team started to progress, and the intermediate team was made up of a lot of our minors that had just won an u-16 county championship for the first time and then the same team won a minor championship.

“The following year, those guys all came into the senior team, so you had the experienced guys and then all these young fellas.

“Granemore underage teams growing up were used to getting beat by all the bigger teams, but these guys were used to winning everything.

“They brought that into the senior team. Every year you’re lucky if you get four or five minor players coming through and that year, I think we had 15 coming through to the senior team. It boosted the numbers at training and the competition for places.”

One standout moment of the entire journey was when the team landed back to the club to celebrate with the cup.

“Back then, there were probably about eight of those lads that didn’t even drink!” laughed Rafferty.

“After the game we went back to Granemore hall to celebrate and Chrissy O’Connor (who hit 1-5 in the county final) got the bus back to Coleraine the next day (for university), alcohol wasn’t even in their thoughts.

“We had five county minors that won Ulster in ‘05 (Kieran Toner, Tony McClelland, Jason O’Neill, Declan Doyle and Jonathan Fahy). Normally it takes a year or two to come into the senior team, but they were straight in and pushing for places.

“You get that with your small country clubs, it’s all about the community. Jason O’Neill was actually a sub in ’05 but his service for Granemore, he’s finally hung up the boots. Kieran and Tony, they’re still trying to play but injuries won’t let them.

“They owe Granemore absolutely nothing. They were playing intermediate in 2005 and now in 2025, there’s not too many club players that can say they played senior football for 20 years.”

Paul McShane was the man that led them to the Promised Land. The Silverbridge clubman would guide the Armagh minors to All-Ireland glory in 2009, for the second time in the county’s history, and he brought that same winning approach to Granemore.

“Paul came in the year before, we were Division Four, and we nearly went unbeaten all year. I think we lost one game when we’d already won the league and Paul was probably the first outside manager that I had.

“He came in and the professionalism, the training methods, the level of fitness, we were up training at Carna Forest. Paul just got us to a different fitness level and obviously the quality came through as well.

“You knew Paul was always going to go on and do good things. He ate, slept and drank football. He had a good bunch of players, but you need the captain of the ship to point it in the right direction.”

A stroke of genius from McShane got Granemore to the county final against the odds.

With everything stacked against them versus Wolfe Tone in the semi-final, starting on the front foot was going to be crucial.

The showpiece was the same. Whitecross had already beaten Granemore convincingly in the league, twice, and were expected to get their hands on the Atty Hearty Cup, but 2005 was all about Granemore.

“We were underdogs all year,” Rafferty added. “In the semi-final we played Wolfe Tone, we were Division Three and they were in Division One. We had no chance, the Tones were going to win the championship, everybody else was just playing until they met Wolfe Tones.

“We worked on a set move from the throw up and we got a goal off it and from that, Wolfe Tone were never really in the game.

“I remember a guy Barry Og McKeown who played for Whitecross, they beat us by over ten points in the league, and he told us to keep our heads up and that we weren’t as bad as that.

“But with the minors and injuries and stuff, the county final was the first time we had our full team. Through the league we were missing an awful lot, and it was the first time we had the best 15 on the field and that stuck with us.”

That faithful day in 2005 was Granemore’s last at intermediate grade.

For the last 20 years, they’ve competed at the very top level in the Orchard County and look likely to extend their stay for another while.

Granemore reached the Senior Championship final for the first time in their history back in 2022, but like a lot of clubs, Crossmaglen ruined their shot at glory. Rafferty was long retired by the time the green and white flag fluttered on county final day.

He still holds regrets about his own playing days. They’d reached a couple of semi-finals but just couldn’t get over the line and make the decider. Had they got there, the all-conquering Cross team lay in wait, but Rafferty would have relished the challenge.

“We had the gala last year and a few people said that Crossmaglen and Granemore are the two longest serving teams in the Senior Championship,” he continued. “Granemore haven’t won underage championships so to maintain that; they’re punching way above their weight.

“We did get to a few semi-finals and were just unlucky back then, but the lads finally made that breakthrough to the county final in 2022. We have the Junior and Intermediate and you’d hope the Senior will come sooner rather than later.

“It’s something I still think about. We played Dromintee up in Crossmaglen in a semi-final and they had Shane Caroll sent off in the first half and we were the better team, but they had a wee bit more experience.

“We were a point up at half time and they had a man less; we should have went on and won that game. Audi Kelly came in another year and brought the level up and we thought we were going to win the championship; it wasn’t about getting to the county final.

“I remember we played Cross in the league, and we had a load of injuries, and we rested players and sent our B team up because we knew we were going to get Cross in the final.

“There were a couple of semi-finals where I still believe that Granemore were the better team but just couldn’t get over the line and if we had of got to the final, I would have been confident enough that we would have given Cross a real run for it.”

While the crowning moment of a Senior Championship hasn’t arrived just yet, the memory of that 2005 triumph will live long in the club’s history. The final whistle will never be forgotten.

“You always remember the final whistle and the crowd at Silverbridge running onto the field and when you look back now, there were grown men crying, which I’d never seen before,” Rafferty reflected.

“I was young enough at that stage, I was 25 but what it meant to them more so than us, when you reflect on it, that was the big thing. The only time I’d seen people cry before was at wakes, so it probably shocked me more than anything.”