St Finbarr's v Carbery Rangers: Cork GAA Jersey Wars semi-final

WE want to know what your favourite GAA geansaí is.

From here until Saturday, 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 and we're now down to the last four stage. 

Full details of the competition are here.

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

ST FINBARR'S

ONE of the most iconic jerseys in Cork GAA is the blue of St Finbarr’s, with the club’s supporters tending to wax lyrical in French with their, “Allez les bleus” chant.

The origins of the choice? The story on the club’s website, which is acknowledged as being unverified, comes from a letter written by Johnny O’Herlihy to Con Neenan in the 1970s.

Johnny had played with the Fr O’Leary Hall hurling team but transferred to the Barrs in 1910 and his father Patrick had played for the club in 1870s. Back then, players often competed in their work clothes, with sashes or caps used for identification. Patrick’s wife happened to be walking through Paddy’s Market on North Main St one Saturday and bought a blue jersey for him for the price of one shilling and sixpence. The following day, he wore it to Cuffe’s Field near the Lough where a decision was being made as to the club’s colours and they were so taken with his blue hue that it was adopted.

Seán Beecher’s book ‘The Blues’ notes that there has also been a suggestion that because the Lough parish church is called The Church of the Immaculate Conception, blue was chosen because blue is always associated with Our Lady.

Of course, the Barrs also played an indirect role in Cork wearing red as, in 1919, when the Fr O’Leary team merged with the Togher outfit, their old red tops were donated to the county board in the wake of their original set – blue and saffron – being confiscated or destroyed by British troops, who had raided the board offices on Cook St.

The Barrs’ blue, trimmed with gold, has enjoyed lots of success, with the club the only one in Ireland to have won All-Ireland senior club hurling and football titles. There is one outfit distinction between the two codes, though – white shorts are favoured in hurling while all-blue has prevailed in football since the 1979 county final win over Castlehaven. Previously, football jerseys had a harp whereas hurling ones did not.

For the most recent All-Ireland club title, the 1987 football win, the Barrs were up against Roscommon’s Clann na nGael, who also play in blue and gold and a white set of jerseys was worn. However, after the victory in Croke Park, team captain John Meyler donned a traditional top for the presentation of the cup.

Nowadays, gold jerseys are the second choice – in a modern style compared to the first-choice jersey, which remains unsullied by any superfluous designs. Across the chest is the club name in Irish along with the harp – a sponsor’s name has never appeared on the jerseys in a top-class game, though Ryan’s SuperValu in Togher do enjoy a close relationship with the Barrs and sponsored the off-field gear when the 32-year wait for an SFC title was ended in 2018.

CARBERY RANGERS

A house on the site now occupied by the Celtic Ross Hotel hosted the first meeting of Carbery Rangers in November 1887.

According to the club’s website, “some of the earliest match reports give the name Carbery Rangers or in some cases Rosscarbery Rangers. This title was changed briefly in 1890 to the name Michael Dwyer in response to a request that all clubs should adopt patriotic names. As to why the name Carbery Rangers was chosen in the beginning we just don't know, but it can be assumed that it had connotations of athletic ability, durability, and fearlessness in the Rangers part of the title and the Carbery part obviously came from the title of the local barony.”

A report on a monster meeting held in Ross early in 1888 referred to members of the newly formed club being dressed in their “orange and green uniforms”. By the time the club was reorganised in 1900, green, white and gold/yellow hoops was the design chosen and it is one that has lasted to the present day.

First winning the Carbery junior football championship, the club were triumphant in the division on eight more occasions without claiming county glory, but in 2003 they went all the way and that was the key to unlocking a huge amount of potential.

Reaching the intermediate final in their first year, they lost to Nemo Rangers but, because the Munster club championships were not open to clubs’ second teams, Ross represented Cork and claimed the All-Ireland title. Buoyed by that success, they went a step further in the intermediate in 2005 and soon set about establishing themselves as a force at senior level.

Regular semi-final appearances led to an appearance in the final in 2014 and, while they lost to Ballincollig, they were back two years later as the roles were reversed, Ross lifting the Andy Scannell Cup.

In both of those games, Ballincollig opted to wear a change strip but Carbery Rangers have rarely if ever had to change – even games against Valley Rovers (green/white hoops) have seen both sides in traditional tops.

Like a growing number of sides in Cork, Ross are now clad in McKeever kit and they benefit from the fact that goalkeeper Ronan Milner is the area sales executive for the Armagh firm. For 2020, he designed a new jersey, with the full logo of sponsors the Celtic Ross featuring for the first time.

‘I got two jerseys done up and sent them on to the chairman, Johnny Murphy,” he said, “and suggested that we go with something like that going forward and thankfully the Celtic Ross thought it was a brilliant idea.”