Fr O'Neills on song as Premier Senior comes into view

Often, a team will adopt a well-known song as a hymn to herald victory but Fr O’Neills are lucky that they can call upon something indigenous and organic.

This year, Ballymacoda/Ladysbridge club will operate at the top tier in Cork hurling for the first time, having worked their way up since winning the county JAHC in 2005. Each step on the journey has been marked with rousing renditions of the battle cry – “Fr O’Neills, our club Fr O’Neills – Fr O’Neills gave me the best years of my life, oh yes it did.”

The song was penned by Ger O’Leary, who was a member of that side that claimed county, Munster and All-Ireland junior glory.

“I wrote the song after we won the All-Ireland in 2006,” he says.

“I was young at the time and sometimes I think that some of the lyrics can be a bit naïve. I did an interview recently on the It’s All Music podcast and they said to me that, in the moment and in the time, I meant every word of it.

“No matter where we were going or what we’d be at, I was always messing around with songs and music.

“The song was actually written in a night. The opening lyrics are can actually come across a bit harsh at times, but I went to see a friend of mine who had been diagnosed with cancer at a young age and that’s what he said, ‘Some will die old and some will die young but the wheel has been spun.’

“It was the night after I met him that I went home and wrote it and that’s the opening line to the song. It just took off from there, then – the song itself is about what the place locally means and the whole journey from the first round of the championship in East Cork, all the way to the All-Ireland final.”

Any work of art is a unique thing – what is conceived in the creator’s head may not necessarily take hold in the outside world. O’Leary’s song resonated though, helped by the fact that further successes followed in quick succession.

“No, you’d never think anything like that when you’re writing it,” he says.

OVERWHELMING

“It was just in my head what we had achieved at that time. “Fr O’Neills was such a big part of my life growing up – all I had, really – and it’s an overwhelming feeling, winning an All-Ireland with your club.

“I met that lad one day and this song poured out of me that night. I played it for the lads at the time and made a copy on a CD for all of them.

“I said, ‘We’re after achieving something great here and there’s a little token for it.’ That was it.

“Only for the success of the club, it wouldn’t have got half the airing. The juveniles were going well too for a while, we had a savage minor team for a few years and they took it on then.

“They had huge success and it was blaring all those nights as well. The wins the club has had have driven it on and made everybody know about it and it’s gone down through the generations now, too.

“They know that it’s there and they play it all the time.”

While O’Leary’s playing days are now over, the song remains and he is more than happy to sing it when asked.

“The best feeling I ever got playing it was the homecoming last year when we won the senior A,” he says.

“Myself and Mike Carey, a friend of mine – we’ve an original duo going at the moment, we’re called Dark and Lively – played it and it was some buzz.

There was a crowd of 250-plus in the hall in Ladysbridge and the whole place was signing it – we would have even had to sing it, they’d have sung it for us.

“We’ve a nice shortened version that doesn’t go through the All-Ireland-winning year, it’s more involving for everyone.

“There were kids there singing it and, before the lads took the cup to Kilcredan NS, there was a bit of teaching of the song going on. You get a great kick out of that.

“As long as there’ll be success, it’ll be sung. It’s crazy, really – we did a gig in Rochestown Park recently for a UCC PE ball and there were people requesting it. It was after taking a life of its own, from where I don’t know!”