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History
The Early Years
Clontibret football club was formed in
1910 when Edward Smyth, Joe McNally, Barney Smyth, John Andy Brennan and
Owen Sherry transferred from what was then a flourishing soccer team
called Clontibret Rovers. Edward Smyth, father of Eamon and Joe,
afterwards became captain and secretary of the club. Matches were played
from 1910 onwards but because of the initial lack of interest and the
opposition offered by the soccer club, affiliation was delayed until
1914. In 1916 the club had successes in a Monaghan County Board
competition, winning the Toal Cup. Thirteen teams took part and the
final was played in January 1917 in McNally's meadow, Clontibret and was
refereed by Eddie Duffy, Castleblayney. Clontibret retained the Toal Cup
for three more years but were not so successful in the championship.
They did reach the championship final in 1917 but were defeated by
Castleblayney. They were also defeated in the next two championship
finals by Carrickmacross.
Beginnings of Clontibret O'Neills
With the lack of success and scarce
finances in Clontibret, enthusiasm reached a low ebb. When it was
learned that neighbouring Tasson was affiliating a Junior team in 1938,
it was decided to drop out for a while. By 1943 Tasson was running out
of enthusiasm. At a meeting of the Clontibret Company L.D.F. in 1945,
some members such as Eamon Smyth, Pat McSkeane, Packie
McCully, Packie
McQuaide and Tommy Smyth met to restart football in Clontibret. When the
Emergency ended the L.D.F. had some funds in hand, which they handed
over to the young men who were forming a new team. From such humble
beginnings the modern Clontibret O'Neills club developed. A raffle
raised £8. £3 in rental was paid to Sonny Geoghegan for his field and
£3 was spent on a football.
The colour of the club's jersey was
chosen by Packie McCully who had earlier admired a saffron jersey worn
by a referee. Packie McCully was the person who got the fledgling club
off the ground and supervised its growth. He was a good footballer but
it was as secretary and treasurer that he will be best remembered. There
was also Eamon Smyth who saw it that the playing field was properly
lined out, flags in position, etc. Despite the many demands by his club,
Packie also served for many years as Registrar for the County Board. He
was on the Clontibret team that won the Junior Football title in 1947
and at left-full-back on the 1949 Senior Football Championship winning
team. He died suddenly in 1974.
Dressing room facilities as such didn't
exist and players changed in a remote corner of the playing field,
bundled their clothes in their coat and tied them in a bundle by the
sleeves. Later when the priest's house was built the players had the use
of the priest's garage as a changing room and visiting teams had the
privilege of using the nearby Parochial hall. During the forties
transport was a major problem especially if the venue was not within
cycling distance. The bicycle was the normal form of transport. Packie
McAdam's lorry was pressed into service to bring the Junior team to a
remote part of Currin. This for of transport was illegal and the players
had to get off at the Cathedral, walk through Monaghan town and rejoin
the lorry at the Clones road.
A big factor in the improvement in the
team was the arrival in St. Mary's of Fr. Pat McCormick as curate. He
was a man with great enthusiasm for Gaelic football and with the
potential in the area at the time; he brought about tremendous
improvements in basic skills and team discipline. Along with Fr. Larry
Marron and Fr. Tom Murphy, he devoted much time to training the team to
the highest standard. At Ballybay in November 1947 Clontibret became
worthy winners of the Junior Championship, beating Inniskeen by 2-2 to
0-1. It was during 1948 that the football field was renovated and new
goalposts erected.
The Glorious Years
In the early years of the century, the
Monaghan Senior Football Championship was played on a regional basis.
Separate championships were organised in North Monaghan and South
Monaghan with the winners in each region going forward to the Senior
County Championship Final. No trophy was awarded for the championship.
These regional championships were abolished in the 1930's but it was
only in 1949 that a trophy was introduced (Clontibret had only re-organised in 1945). Clontibret were the first holders of the
American Cup, which was presented to the County Board by a committee of New York
friends of Monaghan. It is of interest that two prominent members of
that committee were Clontibret men, namely Pat Joe Brennan, Customs and
Excise, New York and Jim Duffy, formerly of Cornabrandy. This was the
first Senior County Championship to come to Clontibret. They had held
the North Monaghan Championship for three consecutive years, 1917-1919
but had lost the County Final on each occasion.
The 1949 breakthrough by the O'Neills
must surely rate as their greatest ever triumph. It was won the hard way
in an unusual pairing against Carrickmacross on a scoreline of 0-11 to
2-3. It was almost impossible to score a goal due to the brilliance of
Carrick goalkeeper, Walter Durkan. Clontibret was forced to field
without their injured midfielder and captain, John Murray. Highlights of
the match were the solo runs of Hughie McKearney, the sturdiness of
McNally and the accuracy from frees by Tony Prunty. In the earlier
semi-final encounter against Castleblayney in Ballybay on one of the
wettest Sundays in memory, Clontibret was awarded the game after a 'Blayney
player refused to go to the line after an attack on Pat Clarke. One of
Clontibret's easiest wins was in the 1950 final, when Killanny fell by
2-11 to 1-2. Clontibret captain, John Murray, had to retire with a bad
facial injury in the first half, but returned to the field in the second
half. On a great all-round team, John Rice and Hugh McKearney stood out.
In the 1950 campaign, they beat Donaghmoyne and Inniskeen in a replay.
Hughie McKearney was on the Ulster Railway Cup team that brought the
honours to the province in 1950. It is difficult to believe that another
of Clontibret's easiest-ever victories in a County Final was in 1951
when they defeated the mighty Faughs convincingly by 5-7 to 0-3. John
Rice who capped a great display by scoring a goal directly from a '50'
dominated this final. In this championship campaign, the O'Neills scored
a total of 11 goals 29 points to the opposing teams' total of 2 goals
and 6 points.
In November 1952 in Ballybay,
Clontibret defeated Inniskeen by 1-6 to 1-3 in that year's Championship
Final in one of the best finals for many years. The real turning point
of that game was a typical Joe Smyth goal just before the interval, a
great tonic at a crucial stage in the game. John Murray, Packie McQuaid,
John Rice and Joe Smyth excelled in the game. Murray lined out at
midfield but often dropped back to relieve the defence in the second
half. McQuaid had an excellent game, often bursting through to clear his
lines. Once again Rice was stalwart in defence at centre-half back and
along with McQuaid took much of the sting out of Inniskeen's forwards.
Smyth was a great tactician on the '40' and always constituted the
biggest danger to the Inniskeen defence. In the '52 Final, Hughie
McKearney was nursing a leg injury and he only came on in the second
half. Clontibret's reign had come to an end and the big crunch came when
they went under to Donaghmoyne in the 1953 semi-final. It is interesting
to note that a Clontibret minor team competed that year.
Click
here to see the lineout of the
great 'Four in a row' teams from 1949 to 1952.
New Era
After their defeat by Donaghmoyne in
the 1953 semi-final, Clontibret O'Neills came back stronger than ever
and those were the years when the O'Neills and Ballybay Pearse Brothers
dominated the Monaghan scene and provided some of the best club football
ever seen in Co. Monaghan. There was never more than a kick of the ball
between them and a Clontibret-Ballybay decider was always a crowd
puller. The rivalry between them was tremendous and those were the years
of the clash of the cousins, Hughie McKearney and his cousin, Paddy, who
was a key player in the Ballybay defence. In the 1954 final it was quite
a feat for Ballybay to beat Clontibret by ten points, considering that
the former had six or seven men playing on the county team. However,
emigration had taken its toll. Fr. Tony Prunty had gone to the missions
in Kenya. Packie McQuaid, Seamus McMullen and Peter McSkeane were in
England, Eamon Smyth was in hospital and Packie McCully and Pete Gormley
were no longer on the team, but new men like Macartan McCormack and Pat
Murphy were now wearing the Clontibret colours with distinction.
1955 was another great year for the
O'Neills, winning not only the Senior Championship but also the Owen
Ward Cup. The clash of Clontibret's right half-back Jim Woods and
Ballybay's Francis Noel Duffy was one of the highlights in this final,
while Pat Clarke's goal was the clincher. In the 1956 Championship
final, corner forward Sean Duffy scored the winning goal with only four
minutes to go. The final score was Clontibret 3-8 Ballybay 3-6 and the
O'Neills had won their sixth senior final. In 1957 it took two memorable
meetings between Clontibret and Ballybay before the latter relieved
Clontibret of the title but the following year Clontibret defeated
Donaghmoyne by 0-7 to 0-4 in a tough, hard hitting final. They could
have won much more comfortably but for faulty finishing. Clontibret had
already beaten Threemilehouse and Monaghan in the 1958 campaign. A new
Clontibret name, that of Benny Mone, had now hit the headlines. His move
to mid-field during this game was an inspired one. Sean and Brendan
Woods were now very much part of the new Clontibret outfit. Still
holding his place on the team was the third Woods brother, Jim, a
veteran of the 1949 team.
Clontibret had to wait ten years before
the Championship returned to its old familiar surroundings for the
eighth occasion. In the meantime, Ballybay defeated them in a replay in
1959. During the sixties, Scotstown won both the 1960 and 1961
Championships and Ballybay won in 1962. In 1962 and 1963 Clontibret won
the Fr. Hackett Cup. In 1965 Castleblayney beat Clontibret by 1-5 to
0-3. In 1967 came one of the greatest County Finals ever played,
Castleblayney again defeating Clontibret by 2-9 to 1-0. Clontibret were
again to the fore in 1968 and showed great promise when their Junior
team defeated hot favourites Inniskeen to win the Brennan Cup for the
first time. Also in 1968, the Senior Championship title returned to
Clontibret although it looked as if it would be Scotstown's title but
poor finishing was their ultimate downfall. Trailing by four points from
the fifth minute of the first half, a brilliant goal by Sean Woods, who
had been given a perfect pass by Joe Smyth early in the second half
transformed the game. A feature of this game was the winning of a
Monaghan S.F.C. medal by the Offaly All-Ireland star, Kieran Claffey.
Monaghan Harps surprisingly eliminated Clontibret in the first round of
the 1969 Championship. Clontibret again reached the final with 'Blayney
in 1970, 'Blayney winning by 1-10 to 0-9. At half-time 'Blayney led by
1-6 to 0-3. A great second half recovery by Clontibret redeemed the game
but it never lived up to the 1967 standards. In 1971, O'Neills again met
Castleblayney in the Senior Championship Final but again 'Blayney took
the honours. Nearly every Ulster Railway Cup team for the twenty year
period from the late forties to the late sixties included a Clontibret
player:- John Rice, Hughie McKearney, Francie McQuaid, Benny Mone and
Sean Woods - an almost unique contribution from any club, surely!
Recent Years
After a lapse of twenty-six years the
Senior Cup returned to Clontibret in 1994. In the first round of the
Championship the O'Neills defeated Carrickmacross 3-11 to 0-12. In the
quarter final they recorded a two point victory against Emyvale 1-6 to
0-7 and in the semi-final they had a facile victory over Castleblayney
on a scoreline of 1-15 to 0-9. They defeated Donaghmoyne in the Final.
Rory Mone, Fintully, who had played on the minor team, was introduced at
half-time in the 'Blayney game, scoring six points. He was again
introduced at half-time in the final and this time he scored two goals.
He became a regular with Clontibret throughout the Ulster Club
Championship campaign, playing particularly well in the semi-final
against Armagh champions Clan na Gael in Newry. They had already
defeated Down champions Castlewellan in a game in which Kieran Lavelle
scored three goals. They were defeated in the Ulster Club Championship
Final by one point by Bellaghy from Derry. In this campaign, Kevin
Carragher, who returned to midfield after injury, was a steadying
influence. The youthful McShanes, twenty years old captain, Barry, at
full back and Padraig at centrefield also made significant
contributions. In the 1995 Championship, Clontibret defeated Drumhowan
in the quarter-final by 1-11 to 1-9 on a July afternoon in Ballybay and
again at Ballybay in the semi-final, Rory Mone excelled, scoring 2-5 to
help the O'Neills to a convincing victory over Carrickmacross 2-13 to
3-2. It took a replay before Castleblayney beat Clontibret to clinch the
'95 Senior title.
However, Clontibret hadn't long to wait
for success to return because in 1997 they defeated Castleblayney Faughs
in the Championship Final. Man of the Match, Gerard Moen - all 6 feet,
14 stone of him - proved quite a handful, knocking over 2 glorious
points in the first fifteen minutes. The final score was Clontibret
0-11, 'Blayney 0-8. In the first round of the competition, Brian
McSkane's late goal rescued Clontibret to make an amazing recovery and
clinch a draw against Monaghan Harps. In the replay goals from Declan
Brennan and Kieran Lavelle ensured victory for Clontibret. In the
semi-final against Carrickmacross, Mickey Hughes, Ciaran McShane and
Kieran Lavelle all scored goals to clinch victory after withstanding a
lot of pressure and a missed penalty. Despite a goal from Niall Magennis,
seven points from Declan Brennan and an outstanding performance by
Ciaran McShane, Clontibret were subsequently beaten in the first round
of the Ulster Club Championship by the narrowest of margins by Tyrone
champions, Errigal Ciaran. The club went on however to win the Senior
League, defeating Carrickmacross 3-10 to 1-9 and thus 'do the double'
for the first time since 1958. On the same weekend the Clontibret minors
also completed the double when they defeated Scotstown on a scoreline of
1-17 to 1-5 to retain the Fr. Maguire Cup. It that wasn't enough
Clontibret went on to win the Division Three League defeating
Castleblayney in a hard fought final at Scotstown.
1998 was a year of mixed fortunes for
the O'Neills. The senior team lost by a three point margin to 'Blayney
in the championship
final in Clones. They denied 'Blayney a double, however, by beating them
in the league final
(2-3
to 0-6) in Ballybay. All all-round good team performance coupled with a
real hunger to seek revenge for the Championship Final defeat, meant the
O'Neills retained the Owen Ward Cup. A poor year at younger levels in
Clontibret meant no trophies for the minor or under 16 teams. On a
promising note however, the under 16 team, captained by Mark Rooney,
reached the championship and league finals.
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