Clare Island are champions on the double

Clare Island champions / Clare Island Abú


Áine Ryan

WALKING ON WATER. That’s what the two victorious Clare Island teams could have done on Sunday night last as they sailed back to their Clew Bay outpost – double winners of this year’s Féile Peil na nOileán – the All-Islands Football Tournament.
Bonfires, flags, champagne, fireworks all greeted the ebullient Men’s and Ladies’ teams who earlier in the day – on the Aran Island of Inis Mór – beat off stiff competition from other island teams.
Shortly before 9pm on Sunday night the pier on Clare Island was awash with the colours of the two teams – green white and gold and yellow and black, as well as the green and red of Mayo – when the two ferries, carrying the celebrating young islanders, berthed to roars of Clare Island Abú
Founded by Clare Island’s Development Manager, Donal O’Shea in 1998, each autumn the annual competition ensures a mass evacuation from Béara in County Cork to Arranmór in Donegal.
Islanders from Brussels to Coventry, Dublin to Cork return for the iconic weekend that is always given priority as the busy summer season comes to a close for the rosary of rocky gems that surround our coastline.
Speaking to The Mayo News yesterday, islander Oliver O’Malley said: “You know when everything can go wrong. Well this weekend everything went right for us. The men’s team won it before but the women never did. I never visualised that it would happen together.”
Eventhough, the GAA does not fund the event, Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Éamon Ó Cuív has been a loyal supporter and source of funding since its inception. In fact, he has, when needed, donned the linesman’s white coat and run up and down a windswept pitch on Inishbofin during the blustery  blitz  some years ago.
For 17-year old Gráinne O’Malley, the Ladies captain, the reception that greeted both teams when they sailed around the head of the pier, aboard The Island Princess and The Very Likely,  was ‘amazing’.
“I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life. All the girls couldn’t wait to get home. And when we got there we felt so proud to be Clare Islanders. When we came round the end of the pier, standing on the bow with the cup, and the reception was amazing,” said Gráinne, a fifth year student at Sancta Maria College, Louisburgh.
“All the islanders, who hadn’t travelled to the competition, were there with champagne and a trailer and flags. I’ve never experienced anything like it,” added Gráinne.