The Rheban stalwart that won a Championship in 1996 and still starts to this day

Rheban’s Kevin O'Shaughnessy offers a unique insight into his club’s past, present and future due both to his longevity and continued involvement with the club.

The club legend began his career in 1995, in goals no less, at 15 years of age for the senior side and continues to operate further out the field to this day.

Rheban GAA was founded in 1929, meaning the born and reared Kilberry man has been playing senior football for the club for around 30% of its existence.

Rheban are in a rebuilding phase currently, which the man himself is certainly a part of. However, when Kevin broke onto the team in the mid-'90s, they were at the beginning of a huge upward trajectory.

A strong crop of minor footballers coming through, including Kevin who was on the county minor panel at the time, brought about a boom period for the club. A boom that saw them win the Kildare Junior and Intermediate Football Championships in back-to-back seasons with Kevin between the sticks. A feat the club had also achieved in 1969 and ‘70.

“You look back now (on Championship wins) and it’s massive. I also didn’t think I would be playing for another 30 years without winning anything,” Kevin said.

“You thought it was a given that you were going to win because we were coming off the back of another fairly successful minor team as well. At that time, we often won a Minor ‘B’ Championship and our U16s won an ‘A’ Championship in ‘96, so we were competing at under-rage fairly well too.”

The straight knockout system of Kildare football in the 90s meant that Rheban went nearly two years unbeaten on their meteoric rise, beating Kilcullen 0-11 to 1-6 in the Junior final and Castledermot 2-14 to 1-6 in the Intermediate.

“You look at some of the Kildare clubs now and the success they have had, and you think god I would have loved us to have a crack at a Leinster Championship. It would have been great to see how far we would have gone, and who knows, we might have got a Leinster or even better, because definitely we had the talent. It would have been a great legacy for that team to add a Leinster or All-Ireland win because we ended up being competitive in the senior ranks until about 2003,” Kevin recalled.

“We lasted at Senior level for four or five years, and began to fall back then. A lot of the older lads moved on and we lost people to America. Now we are back at Junior ranks and like any rural club we are in a constant battle for numbers.”

Early 2000s
Rheban had a strong run in the early 2000s mixing it at the top table, regular high finishes in Division 1 and a near miss for an enormous upset of Clane in the first round of the Championship were all great signs for the team. Relegations would come in the years that followed and the club has now been at Junior level since 2010.

“It hasn’t all been bleak, we were beaten in the Junior final (vs Milltown) in 2018, probably one that we felt we left behind as well. It took us a while to get to one before that, we were beaten in semi-finals in 2015, ‘16 and ‘17. So we were there or thereabouts,” Kevin said.

“We are going through a little bit of transition at the minute, I am finding myself hanging on there waiting for the next bunch of young lads to come through. But I am still able to compete and be injury free so I am happy enough to play on.”

The reason for Kevin’s “hanging on” as he refers to playing at the age of 45 is partly down to his role as a coach of an underrage club team, which he and his friends have been managing since they were little more than toddlers.

“We have taken a team from nursery right through to our current U16 team. Next year we'll then field a minor team for the first time in a big number of years. That will be the first time we can field a full complement of underrage teams again,” Kevin explained.

“The future looks bright because there has been a great emphasis put on underrage. We have a good number of coaches and great work is being done from nursery the whole way up. If we can bring it forward to the seniors, the club will be competing for Junior (Championships) and hopefully beyond that.”

There is of course an added personal reason for Kevin to keep lacing his boots for another couple of years, the team he has been a part of raising also has his son Caoimhín at the heart of it.

“I’m playing with young lads now that I would have played with or against their fathers. My own young lad is 15 and it would be great for me to take the pitch with him. That’s the plan at the minute, but it’ll be another two years … unfortunately,” Kevin smiled.

“It would be great to say that I brought up that current crop of U16s from when they were three or four years of age. And then played a senior game with them after bringing them the whole way through. I think I can step away then and look back with the other lads and say that we brought them from nippers to seniors.”

Kevin broke through in what was definitely a golden period in Rheban GAA’s history, but instead of looking back, it is clear to see that his focus remains on building the next one.

He concluded, “In a club like Rheban, you are not going to win Championships every other year or compete at the top always, but it’s the heart of the community in Kilberry.

“There are people there at committee level who have done incredible work. We have a start of the art astro-turf that I’m sure is the envy of many big clubs. That is down to the hard work done behind the scenes by committee members and the great people in such a strong community-based club.”

Love of the Game series

The Leinster Leader will be doing a feature article from every club in Kildare over the coming weeks and months as part of the Love of the Game series.

If you have a suggestion for an article on someone from your club, a legendary player, selfless volunteer or an idea of your own, send them to daragh.nolan@leinsterleader.ie.