Thirty years ago, Bailieborough Shamrocks were top of the pile in Cavan and a whisker away from an Ulster title. Adrian Lambe and Charlie Clarke were key cogs in their side. Michael McMullan went to meet them…

A WALK up the stairs of Bailieborough club house is whisking into their history. Photos and generations.

Charlie Clarke, man of the match in the 1995 final with Gowna, points out his grandfather.

Adrian Lambe, who played goalkeeper in his youth before becoming an attacking ace, links the faces in underage photos to their 1995 senior crop.

It’s a Friday afternoon and Lambe is getting ready for u-16 training. It’s a group he has helped nurture. If a handful go on to play senior, that’ll do him nicely. His job done.

And he’ll drop down for another batch. He has a hand in the county u-16s. A football man.

Clarke coaches a younger team. It gives him an identity. Keeps him in touch with the community. Both men love open football. No sweepers. Let the kids play. Let them find their way.

As they pose for photos on the pitch, the u-16s arrive. They question the photoshoot. Informed it’s a look back to when they were Kings. Ah, 1995, comes the reply.

Men like Lambe and Clarke. It’s their turn to give after being front and centre in their day.

Their underage production line won the lot, from u-12 to u-21. Sometimes multiples. Their group freshened up a senior squad that ended a 31-year vacuum.

Their underage journey was about playing. At collective training. In the schoolyard. The back garden. Wherever there was a ball.

Lambe’s father and uncle, Tommy and Pat, were goalkeepers. His son Evan the same. By minor level, between his teammates and coaches, Adrian was coaxed to the attack and stayed there.

For Clarke, he played a bit in defence. There was a stint up front before being moved to midfield.

Life at senior level was tough. Both men chat of needing their eyes peeled. The hatchet man always preys on the lively upstart.

“It was horrendous, the treatment that you got,” Lambe said. “You wouldn’t get away with it now.”

Clarke chips in with an incident where Lambe was sent careering into a fence. Taken out of it.

“I used to go down to the county,” Lambe adds. “It was probably worse there. They didn’t want to look bad because I was running here, there and everywhere.”

Places were up for grabs but, in the end, Lambe turned the tables. In was an era of hunt or be hunted. He’d learn to hold his own.

Clarke, a year younger than Lambe, came into the Bailieborough senior ranks a year later. His back had been giving him jip in the final year of minor.

“I probably grew into myself a little bit and got stronger,” he said. Junior and league football helped him on his path.

They weren’t on their own. Half a dozen young bucks displaced some of the old guard. Pace, fitness and a winning mentality. Quite the cocktail.

Bailieborough ended their absence from the top flight with 1988 intermediate glory. It was four years before they made a senior final.

Ramor United, with experienced campaigners, justified their favourites tag. But only just. The Shamrocks missed a free to win the game.

“We just didn’t know how to win it,” Lambe said. “We didn’t realise the position we were in in the last six or seven minutes.”

The 1992 title was left behind but they had already laid down a marker of sorts in their semi-final.

The previous year, before a game, Kingscourt were sending out soundbites they’d beat Bailieborough by a point a man. They were close, winning by 14.

“We then beat them in the semi-final of the ‘92,” Lambe said. “They were going for four in a row and apparently had t-shirts done out an all. They got the mother and father of all surprises that day. I’d say Ramor were probably surprised too to see them beaten.”

Bailieborough staggered for another two seasons. Youth came in but there was an indifferent 1994 season. Mullahoran marked their card. The darkness before the dawn.

***

When Cavan reached the Ulster final 12 months later, there was a Bailieborough core. More than any other club. It was their time to push the door harder.

“Nearly every player on our team had played under age for Cavan,” Clarke said of their playing pool.

There were key factors leaning on Bailieborough coming into the 1995 season. The belief of beating Kingscourt lingered.

In previous two seasons, their fitness had been ramped up. Combined with a youthful age profile, the engine was purring.

The final piece of the jigsaw was new manager Seamus Bonner, Donegal’s 1992 All-Ireland winning selector who lived in Dublin, a friend of club sponsor and hotelier Austin Kelly.

Bonner was very quiet. When he first met the players, he was unknown to them. They even questioned his credentials but he fitted like a glove.

“It was just his approach, we wanted to play for him,” Lambe said. “He was so kind and generous and soft-spoken. We realised he really believed in us.

“We used to go to the pub after every game. We were called the pub and sandwich team by our own,” Lambe added with a laugh.

Bonner would take a load back to Dublin in his Volkswagen Jetta. The students and those who worked in the capital. More bums than seats.

“He had a good way with,” Clarke chipped in. It was a two-way street; Bonner got the best from the group. A focussed bunch. Ambitious and used to success, yearning the biggest prize.

Chairman at the time, Paddy Kelly, was part of the mix. So too were Enda Sheridan and Joe Reilly, men who played into the forties.

“Anything you needed, you got it,” Lambe said of the setup.

There was honesty too. Players held each other to account. Grudges didn’t exist. No huffing. The team came first.

“I could tell someone in the middle of a game that they were shit but they took it,” Lambe added. “We had good leaders around the field. You took it on board and done what they said.”

Training was tough. A top up from previous years. Forest runs and trips to Bettystown beach.

There were challenge games against top teams. Up to Crossmaglen, across to Meath to take on Skyrne or into Dublin with a joust with Ballymun.

“We were matching all of them. We knew we were there or thereabouts,” Lambe backed up.

While there was promise, the disappointments of 1994 still sat prominent.

“We were poor against Mullahoran in that semi-final,” Clarke recalls. “There were expectations. We had a lot of good players but there is a difference between having good players and winning.”

There was the added bonus of the Cavan players coming back in after the Ulster final in tip-top shape.

“We played damn all league matches,” Lambe said of the county players. “All the lads pulled their weight when we weren’t there.”

It was enough to a secure a league play-off and help secure the double.

But it was all about the championship. Two wins in the group stages set up a quarter-final with Cavan Gaels.

Clarke remembers the Gaels’ midfield making decoy runs, pulling him out of the centre before their ‘keeper kicked into the vacant space behind.

Bonner let him know as much at half time but after a tweak, they were back on track.

Clarke scored their only goal of a tight semi-final with Mullahoran, with top scorer Roy Brennan and Lambe chipping in with points.

Gowna hammered Crosserlough in the other semi-final and were favourites to take the title.

Going into the final, Bonner didn’t deviate from the usual routine. It was the same focus. Match up with the key men and focus on Bailieborough’s game. He’d again tell them of the need for two pairs of boots – studs and mouldies.

“To this day, we remember him always telling us Breffni Park would take a stud,” Lambe joked.

At the time, the Bailieborough players didn’t fully appreciate his attention to detail. After a Friday training session, there would be a quiet word for any individual role. And not overkill.

“He’d be relatively calm,” Clarke remembers. “A few times, he raised his voice if a point needed made.” It wasn’t that often.

Gowna slotted home an early penalty but Bailieborough eventually reeled them back in. Clarke and Aidan Connolly got a hold of the middle third.

Despite an ongoing groin problem, Lambe stoked over the frees with Brennan hitting seven points in a narrow win. After 31 years, Bailieborough were champions again. For a fifth time.

The minors, trained by Lambe, were beaten in the curtain-raiser though he jokes at their half-time lead and how it went south afterwards.

Minor player Brian O’Callaghan was corner forward on both teams but after a failed attempt to the switch the minor fixture, his senior jersey was passed to the next in line.

“I remember just the relief,” says Clarke, sitting in their clubhouse, 30 years on. “It was unbelievable to win it. You’d be dreaming about winning.

“We’d grown up looking at Kingscourt, our neighbours, winning it more or less every year.”

It sparked off the week of celebrations. Sunday night was Bailieborough. Clarke remembers waking up the next morning, stiff as a poker. If it wasn’t the knock in the final, it was from carrying captain Glen Crossan on his shoulders at the homecoming.

As was tradition, they had a few jars with beaten finalists Gowna. There was a night in Dublin and an on the whim night in Galway. Lambe struggles to know the reason. A good idea at the time.

“We didn’t go to sleep at all that night at all, I remember coming home in daylight,” Clarke said of the Sunday night.

“We had a farm, but obviously I didn’t get up to milk the cows that morning.”

Close to midday, there was a holler upstairs. Chairman Kelly and skipper Crossan were in the hallway. It was day two. The cup needed taken to the local school before another day of partying.

Kelly now pays tribute to the winning team, how it was a privilege to be involved and also recognised all the players who pulled on the jersey since their 1964 success.

“Those of us involved in running the club were delighted with their achievement because we had watched this team develop over a number of years where they had success in underage
competitions.” he said.

“We knew they were a very talented group, and it was important that they got the chance to prove themselves at the highest level.”

***

Adrian Lambe’s groin was saying no. Hundreds of free kicks every week was taking its toll. It had been lingering. He should’ve pulled the pin by this point but he didn’t.

It took time to properly warmup. Enough to get him through until surgeon Gerry McEntee’s knife eventually put him right the following year. An early Gilmore’s groin patient, Lambe has total respect for anyone with such an injury.

The Shamrocks would give Ulster a crack. Lambe expresses how they weren’t afraid of it.

After beating first-time Fermanagh champions Derrygonnelly, it took two games to get over a Ballinderry team in the early steps of a climb to the 2002 All-Ireland.

Two Charlie Clarke goals had Bailieborough in the driving seat before they had Aidan Connolly sent off 12 minutes into the second half.

Just like he did against Errigal Ciaran in the previous round, Raymond Bell hit two Ballinderry goals before a late Brennan point earned Bailieborough a draw.

Connolly lost his appeal to the Ulster Council before the replay. A setback, but Brennan and Lambe shared seven points as they booked an Ulster final spot.

“The Ballinderry games were absolutely draining,” Lambe said. “The hardest games we’d ever played.”

It also afforded Mullaghbawn a second peek ahead of the final and the Armagh champions raced into a nine-point lead.

Goals from Lambe and Crossan pulled Bailieborough back into contention. Three points down, three minutes into stoppage time, they had one final throw of the dice.

After Benny Tierney saved a close range free, Brian O’Callaghan instinctively finished the ball to the net. An equaliser? Bailieborough thought so but referee Pat McEnaney ruled it out.

Sitting, 30 years later, watching the footage on his phone, it still sticks in Adrian Lambe’s throat. A big call.

There is also the regret of not backed up their Cavan title. A litany of near misses followed.

Off the field, they were also hit with the hammer blow of the sudden death of captain Glen Crossan the following May.

“It hit us hard,” Lambe said. “It probably had a psychological effect over a couple of years.”

Like Lambe, Clarke also paid tribute to their captain.

Manager Seamus Bonner passed away in 2012 and, two years ago, they lost another cog from their winning team, Finbarr Clarke. A gentleman and leader.

“He never took a backward step on the field and was always at the front when anything needed to be done in our club,” Lambe said of his former teammate.

“He is greatly missed by all his teammates and also his mother Rita who worked tirelessly for our club for decades.”

As the club looks back on the magical moments of 30 years ago, their facilities have grown.

The existing clubrooms is now a thriving gym to tune the young players they hope will strive to follow the men of ’95.

There are two pitches and an excellent pavilion. The next generation have all they need.

Eileen Clarke, the current chairperson, speaks of all the youth, those born since 1995.

“The impact that the victory had on our town is immeasurable,” she said.

“While we look back with pride, it also serves as inspiration for our future, as we continually strive to replicate that success.

“Some of the players from that era now have children playing for our senior teams and are involved in coaching, volunteering, and leadership roles, strengthening our community.”

As the February daylight fades, Adrian Lambe flicks a switch. The floodlights beam over the Bailieborough u-16s. Where will the season take them? Lambe hopes it’s a step to senior. The cycle continues.