This Naas CBS Hogan Cup team will never play together again after St Patrick’s day and according to their manager, Longford man Cormac Hughes, that’s what’s driven them on all year.
It’s do-or-die, it’s cut-throat and when it comes to schools GAA, it’s rare that you’ll get a second chance. As a school, having lost the 2019 final, Naas have earned theirs’ but as a team, this will be the one and only Hogan Cup final any of these boys will play in.
Hughes started teaching here in 2018 and, with the school having competed at ‘B’ level before then, he’d have done well to have anticipated the success that was around the corner. He’d hardly have been thinking about trips to Croke Park every second year.
But talk to anyone in Naas or Kildare and they’ll tell you that, with the GAA taking over, with a good crop of young lads coming through, things were about to change around here. You only have to open your eyes to see that they weren’t lying.
The Naas club had an incredible year in 2021, winning an All-Ireland intermediate hurling title not long after they’d won their first county senior football title in 31 years. Jack McKevitt was one of the players who was drafted into the club’s senior football panel for their Leinster campaign and even though he’s just 18 years of age, it wasn’t long before he’d make his senior debut against Shelmaliers in Croke Park.
By that stage he’d already watched Naas CBS win two Leinster ‘A’ titles, and it wasn’t long before he won one of his own, captaining them their third Brother Bosco Cup earlier this year. The wheel has certainly turned in Naas.
One of McKevitt’s most vivid memories of schools GAA will have come in 2019 though, when, as a third year student, he watched his school lose to St Michael’s of Enniskillen by a point in the All-Ireland final. McKevitt and his class-mates will be hoping to right that wrong this Thursday, when they take on St Brendan’s of Killarney in the decider.
“Our lads would have been in second or third year then, They were all at it,” Hughes says of the schools’ agonising loss at this stage in 2019.
“They’ve been in Leinster finals since, they’ve watched older lads win Leinster finals and that’s what’s inspired them. The culture has changed hugely in the school and GAA is such a huge part of it now. You’d have to thank Ronan Joyce, Shane McGuinness and Alan Cullagh for that because they were the management team back then and they set the ground-work for a lot of this.”
And on a week like this week, it’s only GAA talk in the CBS.
“Everyone’s asking about the team, asking about the lads. You’re meeting the lads in the hall in school every day. There’s something in the air.
“You know these lads so well, they know you so well and you spend so much time with them. They come from different clubs and while, with club and county, there’s always this idea that you can go again next year, with your school it’s do-or-die because you’ll never play with those lads again.”
“All you’ve to do is look at the lads last year it was desperately frustrating for them lads to miss out on this because of Covid because this as enjoyable as it gets in terms of football. A lot of them lads have brothers playing this time around, or cousins involved so they’ll be up again.”
“They’re all great friends but at club level, they’re huge rivals,” he adds.
“A lot of the clubs we’d be pulling from are competing for the minor championship and the whole way up they have been. Once they could all focus on the one thing that unified them – that they all wanted to win – it was easy to build them into a successful team then.”
There’ll be bus-loads heading up to GAA HQ on Thursday, the CBS will be empty – Hughes and his management team of Padraic Cribbin and Eamon Fitzpatrick are just hoping that there’ll be a happy ending.
“To have it in Croke Park is huge. I think the competition deserves it, it’s some competition and for the effort the boys have put into it, they deserve a big day like this and to have it on a day like St Patrick’s day, such a huge day in the calendar.”
