Cork GAA Jersey Wars: Carrigaline v Newcestown

WE want to know what your favourite GAA geansaí is.

From here until the end of August, your votes will decide the best design in our Cork GAA Jersey Wars competition.

Our resident jersey expert Denis Hurley compiled a list of 32 clubs, based on those involved in the senior tiers and a selection of wild cards. We put them in alphabetical order and paired them up, number seven versus 26, which is Carrigaline-Newcestown, and mapped out the path to the final. 

Full details of the competition are here.

Voting will run from 8am each day for 24 hours on the link below:

CARRIGALINE

BLUE and gold are the Carrigaline colours, the jersey in the Tipperary style of blue with a gold hoop, though the blue shorts help to give the overall kit a unique look.

While the colours have been the same since the various townlands clubs in the parish amalgamated, the current layout of the jersey is a fairly recent development, however — introduced in the late 1970s or so.

Courtesy of John Dineen and Thomas Maye, we are informed that one one of the most notable hurling clubs in the area was Kilmoney, who played in black and white jerseys, while Hilltown were known as ‘the Baa-Baas’ but, while you might assume they also had those colours like Barbarian RFC, their choice was blue and yellow. Kilnagleary was another club, though their colours are not recorded.

When everything came under the Carrigaline banner, blue and gold were chosen, but four-inch hoops, and this remained the look for much of the mid-20th century. In the 1970s, games against Carrigtwohill resulted in colour-clashes and so a back-up set in the Clare design — gold with a blue hoop — was procured, before landing on the opposite to that as the first-choice strip.

It was in the blue with gold hoop that Carrigaline made the push from being a dual junior club in the early 1990s to where they are now. After opting to re-grade from junior to intermediate football at the end of 1992, they made a quick impact, reaching the final in 1996 and doing so again in 2003 and 2007 before finally pushing through to premier intermediate in 2009.

While there was a brief flirtation with relegation, 2015 brought victory in the second tier and a place in senior football, where they still reside. On the hurling front, it was also a case of going close at intermediate before scaling the heights, losing the 2006 final and then winning in 2008.

In the mid-2010s, the wheel came full circle in a colour sense as a change jersey was developed for senior football matches against St Finbarr’s. With the Barrs having gold as their second jersey, the Carrigaline players were canvassed as to what they would like to wear as an alternative and the consensus was for a black jersey — trimmed in blue and gold — which recalled the colours of Kilmoney from all those years ago.

The current Carrigaline jersey is a clean and classy O’Neills offering, featuring a gold crew neck, CUFFS and three stripes along the shoulders, with the gold hoop housing the logo of main sponsor, Barry Collins’ SuperValu.

NEWCESTOWN

IN 2017, Newcestown held a reunion to mark the 50th anniversary of the club winning a Carbery junior and hurling and football double, with the footballers going on to county glory.

At the special Mass for the teams, parish priest Fr Bernard Cotter ruminated on the club colours and his early misconception of same.

“I was appointed to Newcestown in 2012 and, unfortunately, I missed out on the Jimmy O’Mahony induction seminar because, for the next five years, I was under the incorrect impression that the Newcestown flag was red and yellow.

“Red I could understand — the colour of passion, commitment, courage – but yellow suggested jaundice to me, or worse, cowardice. It wasn’t till I was reading through the club website recently that I realised that the flag is actually red and gold, a far more powerful and symbolic combination. Because red indicates not just blood but the heart — red is the colour of love, kindness, compassion, tolerance. And gold signifies the beautiful, a treasure, something worth holding on to, something divine.”

As another Newcestown club member put it more succinctly, red is the colour of sacrifice in terms of the blood spilled for the club, while gold represents victory and, though small in number, they have certainly over-achieved on that front since formation in late 1958. From 2016-19, the club was the only non-city side fielding at the top grade in both hurling and football

There had been a club in Templemartin back in the 1860s while the club website notes that Olamh Fodhla took part in football competitions from 1918-23 and Farnivane affiliated from 1931-33. St John’s were formed in 1947 and won the West Cork JBHC in 1949, but that proved to be the club’s penultimate year.

Patrick O’Mahony had been chairman of St John’s and in 1958, frustrated by the fact that the talented youngsters in the area were playing for clubs elsewhere, corralled a few and challenged them to set up a new club in the parish.

That eventually led to the first meeting of Newcestown GAA Club. St John’s had played in red jerseys with black collars and cuffs and there was a preference for that to be the dominant colour but O’Donovan Rossa wore red and there were others with red and black so red and gold hoops were chosen from the point of view of uniqueness.

In modern times, clashes with Mallow, Éire Óg or Youghal have resulted in change kits being required and black has tended to be the alternative colour of choice for Newcestown. Adult sides currently wear jerseys produced by Masita, with car dealership Finbarr Galvin providing the shirt sponsorship.