History of Kiltormer GAA Club

By Paddy Goode

When Kiltormer entered senior ranks in 1976, the All-Ireland Championship was its infancy. Sixteen years in 1992 later Kiltormer the 15th club to win the coveted title. A dream had come true. Kiltormer has a long and proud tradition dating right back to the founding of the Gaelic Athletic Association. In the early years of the G.A.A., the area that now encompasses the Kiltormer club could boast four different hurling teams, and three football teams. Kiltormer, Laurencetown, Clontuskert, and Ganaveen all had hurling teams, while Klitormer, Laurencetown, and Clontuskert fielded football sides. Kylemore are also recorded as having a football team around this time. The first recorded game involving teams from the area was in 1887, and appropriately it involved Laurencetown and Kiltormer in a hurling game. This the time of the big tournaments, and Kiltormer hosted some of the biggest with huge attendances.

In the 1900's, Laurencetown footballers were to the fore as hurling declined. Through the twenties and thirties, it became a struggle to field teams, but the great Gaels of those years preserved, and their Trojan efforts were eventually rewarded. Clontuskert hurlers held the spotlight in the forties, and they finally won the East Board Junior Hurling title in 1943. Their success was repeated in the fifties when Kiltormer won the same title in 1959.

The history of Kiltormer G.A.A. changed dramatically in the early sixties following the appointment of the late great Fr. Jack Solan as curate. Within a couple of years Kiltormer had a beautiful new pitch and dressing rooms that were the envy of the rest of the county. By the end of the decade Fr. Solan had moved on but the seeds of success had been firmly sown, and his legacy was to reap rich dividends.

The 1990 Kiltormer Senior Hurling Team, the
winners of the County Cup Semi-Final 1990

The seventies saw the arrival of Kiltormer as a major force and the winning of minor, U-21, and intermediate county titles culminated in the winning of two senior titles in a row at the first attempt. Success followed success and two football county titles were added to the list. The eighties continued to be as fruitful with another county senior title in hurling and the footballers causing a sensation by reaching the county senior quarter-final in their first year. In 1991, the club became the first team to win two consecutive county titles, since they themselves had their famous victories in the mid-seventies. But all of this success pales into the shadows compared with the winning of the All-Ireland Club title in 1992. It had been a long hard road, but worth the wait. That never to be forgotten victory in the birthplace of the G.A.A. in April 1992 was as much for all those people who had toiled without success since the 1980's as it was for all those who executed the greatest win in the history of Kiltormer G.A.A. To complete a unique treble the club have also won the All-Ireland 7-a-side title (twice), and the All-Ireland 11-a-side. The rise of the Kiltormer hurling in the seventies coincided with the upsurge of the county. This was no coincidence. Since Galway won their first All-Ireland hurling title of modern times in 1972, Kiltormer have been associated with all the great championship wins. 25 players have won All-Ireland medals with Galway, beginning with Andy Fenton and the Campbell brothers in 1972. A total of 29 All-Ireland county medals have come to the club during the past 28 years. The honour of being the first medal winner from the area rests with the late Josie Curley from Ballagh, Clontuskert who won with the Galway junior team in 1939 as a member of the Cappatagle club.

Conor Hayes, Ollie and Tony Kilkenny have all won All-Ireland senior hurling medals with Galway, and Conor and Ollie have been honoured with All-Star awards.

Conor Hayes is the most celebrated Kiltormer hurler of all time and holds a special place in the history of G.A.A. In captioning Galway to their two in a row successes in 1987 and 1988 he became the first Galway hurler to achieve such an honour. More importantly perhaps he became the only other hurler since the legendary Christy Ring to receive the McCarthy cup on two successive occasions. Conor is the last consecutive player to date to captain two All-Ireland winning senior teams in either football or hurling.

Apart from these latter-day heroes, Kiltormer had a representative in the very first All-Ireland hurling final, as Patrick Larkin, credited with formulating the first rules of hurling, had moved from his native Killimor to live in Kiltormer, and history records him as being a member of Kiltormer G.A.A. club on that historic occasion. Patrick Larkin also represented Kiltormer as the first secretary of the county board, a tradition which is carried on to this day by his namesake Laurence as longstanding vice-chairman of the County Hurling Board. In recent times, the younger members of the club have been ensuring the future of Kiltormer hurling with a number of county successes at juvenile level.