New book celebrates half a century of Davitts GAA

Long before compiling a book documenting half a century of Davitts GAA Club, Joe Reapy visited the Nou Camp to watch Manchester United beat Bayern Munich in the Champions League final.

But another team in red had already captured his heart and mind.

Speaking in the clubhouse down the road from where the Davitts GAA story began, it’s clear that Reapy has always held the club close to his heart and feet.

His earliest memory of the club is walking to Ballindine to watch them play as a ten-year-old. He’s been involved in some way, shape or form ever since.

“It was about two miles to the pitch. There was nothing I liked better than going down on a Sunday afternoon and watching a game. I thought I was at the Nou Camp,” Reapy tells The Mayo News.

Joe Reapy literally grew up with Davitts GAA Club. But football had been played around the Galway-Mayo border long before his time, with teams representing Ballindine and Irishtown from the Civil War onwards.

Then one day in 1973, a meeting took place in the parish hall in Ballindine, where it was agreed that Ballindine and Irishtown would join forces. The new club’s name was a homage to Michael Davitt, who drew tens of thousands to a Land League meeting in Irishtown on April 20, 1879.

The rest, as they say, is history - fifty years and counting.

The walls of Davitts’ clubhouse are bedecked with pictures of hundreds of champions who’ve worn the black and red over the years; square-jawed studs from the early 70s, lightening-quick corner-forwards, iron-willed half-backs, towering midfielders and plain and simple hardy hoors.

The girls feature more prominently in the newer photos, reflecting the blossoming ladies club which won their first-ever junior county title in 2021 with Mayo defender and future All-Star nominee Eilis Ronayne.

THE PARISH HALL

Davitts' earliest heroes were men like Ger Kirrane, Pa Kirrane, Norman McCarthy, Eugene Griffin, Tommy Griffin, Martin Connolly and Eddie McLoughlin. In 1975, they won the South Mayo Junior title with teenagers togging out.

“Winning the South Mayo junior was just huge, absolutely huge,” Reapy says. “I think they had a few close shaves. Irishtown in ‘71 and ‘72, were knocking on the door with a fairly old team. These were young, most of them were young players.”

The year the club was founded, eight future Davitts players were on the Carras team that won the South Mayo Minor A championship. Three years later, they won the county U-21 championship in brand-new black and red stripes.

The success kept coming. Former Mayo Minor and U-21 Frank McGrath took on the training, bringing a professionalism that was a step above other teams at the time.

In 1978, Davitts lost the county intermediate semi-final. They made the final in 1980 and did the league and championship double the following year.

In 1983, they clashed swords with Knockmore in a senior county semi-final that they were ‘possibly a bit unlucky to lose’.

“Twelve minutes to go we were winning by five points,” recalls Reapy, “and a lack of experience, really, probably cost us.”

LOVE OF THE CLUB

Between 1984 and 1986, three county U-21 titles went south to a club that today is, in some ways, unrecognisable from what it was back then.

Colm Boyle, Fenton Kelly and Mickey Conroy and the heroes of the future all tog out in state-of-the-art dressing rooms crowned with a viewing area you wouldn’t get in the Dublin Docklands. A far cry from the 70s, when Joe Reapy, Martin Connolly and company togged out under a bush.

“We didn’t know any better. It’s the way it was in a lot of clubs. But it was great,” smiles Reapy.

They are so far south they could literally throw stones into Galway, so Davitts take particular pride in their county players.

They include David McDonagh, Pat Coyne, Paul Carey, Ronan McNamara, Alan Roche (an All-Star nominee in 1999), Michael Conroy, Fenton Kelly, and of course, the Crimlin crusader himself, Colm Boyle.

“One thing about Boyler, he’s a brilliant player and a brilliant clubman. He’s an absolutely brilliant clubman,” says Reapy. “But you’d be so proud. It’s hard to believe the club would be able to produce someone like that.”

In 2012, the entire club packed into Croke Park to watch their gallant men contest the All-Ireland Intermediate Club Final.

That’s a lot of history to get into one book. Thankfully, Reapy had help from 28 willing contributors. The result is a 260-page compendium featuring numerous photographs and reports on approximately 380 games.

“You can just see what the club means to them all,” says Reapy, who has served as club PRO for over 30 years.

“I’ve read over it a few times, and even recently. You’d almost get emotional looking at some of them, it’s nice looking back remembering the old times.” “If some other club had this book, I’d love to buy it,” he adds. Whoever will be tasked with writing the centenary book will have a very tough act to follow.

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Davitts: Ballindine & Irishtown - 50th Anniversary History of a proud Mayo GAA Club is on sale now for €30. A limited number of copies are available for purchase via the club’s website, davittsgaa.com. The book is also on sale in the Spar and Centra shops and Healthcare West Pharmacy in Ballindine and in Daly’s Newsagents, Hillside Service Station and Supervalu in Claremorris.