Kilclief: One parish – three finals

By Shaun Casey

THERE is a real buzz around Kilclief at the minute as the camogie team, the hurlers and the footballers have all been in flying form. All three teams have reached their respective championship finals in Down.

Unfortunately, the treble is out of their reach at this stage. The camogs just came up short in their championship final clash with Aghaderg, missing out by the minimum of margins.

Still, no club would turn down two championship titles. The footballers are up next this Friday night, and they face Ardglass while the hurlers will be front of house the following weekend, locking horns with Castlewellan, both in junior deciders.

Club secretary Karol Shields is right in the heart of it. “There are people contacting me, some people that I’ve never heard of, looking for flags and different things,” he laughed on the build-up to the county finals.

“We’re getting flags up around the village in Strangford and in Kilclief, there’s people that I didn’t even know followed the GAA that are getting involved.

“Even last week, there were players from all three of the teams up at local primary school in Strangford, St Joseph’s. Then some went up to Kilclief Primary School as well, they would be our feeder schools.

“There were three or four that went up to the wee pre-school, and it just gets everyone involved. Those pictures are all on the schools’ Facebook pages and the parents are all sharing it and sending good luck messages and everything.

“We’ve been inundated with people sending good luck messages, it’s hard to keep track of them all really. It’s one of those things, whenever we’re in three different finals, there’s such a buzz. You can’t walk up the street without somebody organising something.”

While the importance of the moment is clear as the place is covered in red and green, bringing everyone along with the club, especially the younger members, is just as important as trying to bring home some silverware for the trophy cabinet.

“It was organised for the youngsters to play in wee mini games at the camogie final last weekend, the u-10 teams,” Shields described. “This weekend, and I assume next weekend too, there’s a guard of honour with the youngsters.

“So, we’re getting all that together and trying to get as many people as possible involved in the whole build-up. The kids are all flying around the village and they’re all mad about Kilclief anyway.”

Like a lot of small communities, the three teams are mostly made up of all the same surnames. Shields himself has children on each of the three competing teams and there are siblings and cousins all competing together.

“I also have a nephew that plays football and hurling and I have another nephew that is coming home from Abu Dhabi to play in the football final this weekend,” Shields explained.

“I have a couple of nephews across the team and like any community, there’s lots of cousins right across the board. It’s just in the small community; we have a lot of relations throughout the teams.”

On the camogie team coming up short, Shields added, “They hadn’t been beat all year and sometimes that can go against you. I don’t know if the occasion got to them or what, but they didn’t play the way they can and maybe that was down to Aghaderg, they played well.

“The first touch just wasn’t there at key times unfortunately, but Aghaderg just played really well on the day and they’re a strong team, so it was just unfortunate.”

The footballers offer renewed hope for this weekend, however and while championship finals and medals weren’t the goal at the beginning of the year, Shields is optimistic about their chances on Friday night.

“Last year we finished in the lower half of Division Four, although we won the Division 4B but that’s not really where you want to be,” he continued. “We’ve known for the last number of years, we just haven’t had the numbers.

“We haven’t had minor teams and underage teams coming through but we’re starting to get them back through again.

“The realistic target for this would have been to get into the top end of the league and have a good run in the championship.

“To be honest, now they’re here and even in the last couple of rounds, there’s nobody really in this championship that they aren’t capable of beating while in previous years there would have been a standout team.

“If we don’t win it this year then hopefully, we’ll get another crack at it but they have as good a chance as any, especially with the team we have now, we have a real strong squad while in the past we’d have been scraping for numbers.”