Pat Dunne on Prosperous pride and Caragh's dazzling 1990s

Pat Dunne came through among the first great crop of Prosperous talent to play for Caragh GAA in the modern era. Success had been few and far between for the area with a mixture of lean populus and defections to nearby Raheens. However, there was never going to be another home for Pat.

“My father was deeply involved in the club. My earliest memories were going down to a relatively new pitch built in the 70s and we would have gone down to mark and mow it every weekend. We just did it with handheld lawn mowers at one stage,” Pat explained.

“Back then our first team was trying to win a Junior ‘C’ Championship and eventually got one. There was hardly a first team there at all and we then set up at underrage level in the early 80s.”

Not long after, in 1989, the fruits of that labour began to bear with an U16 Caragh side competing in an ‘A’ Championship final.

“We played a Sarsfields side who had never been beaten. We ran out in Newbridge that day and we looked like children standing beside them. We drew with them the first day and thought we had missed the boat, my father and Sean McCormack were over us at that stage,” Pat recalled.

“The following week we played them and beat them by a point. The finals kept coming then, so that group had gotten used to playing at that level.”

The core of that team and others like it would make up the great Caragh team of the 1990s that ascended through the Kildare ranks. The first major step on that ladder was in 1993 and their tackling of the Junior ‘A’ Football Championship.

“The club brought in Tommy Carew in ‘93. We were all still kids really. I was playing full-back at 19. We needed somebody that would put his arm around us and walk us through it and he brought us a brand of football that nobody could stick with. We needed his expertise and we won the league and Junior Championship that year,” Pat explained.

Caragh beat Ellistown 2-11 to 1-8 in the 1993 JFC final and the legendary Clane man in charge had brought that young and exciting team to Intermediate level with his first attempt.

“There was also a guy called Paddy Hayden, I think Tommy may have gotten him to play with us and he was around 40 then. Paddy very much minded us all. If there was any trouble or nonsense on the pitch, Paddy would be standing beside you and you felt indestructible beside Paddy Hayden. He allowed you the freedom to play and we blitzed everybody that first year,” Pat recalled.

The newly christened Intermediate side had their sights set on back-to-back titles in 1994 after Championship promotion, a far more achievable prospect in those days.

“It was knockout football and we played a very seasoned St Kevin’s team in Clane and they beat us in the first round by a point or two. That was a big kick in the teeth for us and probably the best thing that ever happened to us because we got a reality check. Although we had come from Junior, we were a Senior team in our own heads,” Pat said.

It was back to the drawing board for Caragh, who were still very much on the rise. Ahead of the 1995 season, there was a new man at the helm with the arrival of another Clane man, Tomás O'Connor.

“He came in to manage, but also played too. We were hurting after being beaten by St Kevin’s the year before, but we all had it in our heads that nobody was going to stop us. It was a perfect scenario for him to come into, but he was very different to Tommy. He ws no-nonsense. I loved playing and listening to him because he would put pressure on you to go out and do something. He expected you to do it too,” Paddy recalled.

After another stellar year, Caragh faced the team that had taken them out in the first round the year before, meeting St Kevin’s in the 1995 Intermediate Championship final. It was sweet revenge on the final day for Caragh, who finished the game as 1-11 to 1-4 winners.

“St Kevin’s were unlucky too, they had a guy sent off in the first half, but I think if St Kevin’s played with 20 players that day we would have beaten them. We felt we were going to beat whoever stood in front of us that day,” Pat said.

“We won Division 2 as well that year and went unbeaten.”

The ascension of this young team was all just part of a journey as they saw it. This group had their sights set on the top of the mountain, but perhaps unbeknownst to themselves, they were bringing Caragh to rarely seen before heights.

Caragh’s 1993 JFC title win was the first Championship win of any kind on the male side of the club (Camogie in ‘66) since 1949, with their Intermediate win two years later being their first Championship title at that level for 64 years.

“It was absolutely incredible. Prosperous is a village now, but at the time there was nothing really in it. There were a couple of petrol stations, two shops and some pubs with a similar amount of housing states. We did nothing else but play football and we all grew up very tight together. It had all come from that underrage structure,” Pat explained.

It was now time for the Senior Championship that this team felt they were ready for and in 1997 they made their first real run at top-level glory.

“We got to a semi-final against a very strong Sarsfields team. In the quarter-final that year, a good friend of ours Frank Gorry had died at our match and his son David was playing for us. I think we buried Frank next Friday and had to play Sarsfields on the Saturday,” Pat said.

“The county board would not give in.They refused to give us a few more days and none of us were ready to play that game. David was playing corner-back that day and they beat us by five-points I think. A lot of people thought that was our chance, but the following year was definitely another one.”

In 1998, the Caragh side looking for another crack at the latter stages met the Kildare club side of the 90s, Clane. The reigning champions had also won titles in ‘91, ‘92 and 1995.

“That was an extraordinary Clane team. They had six county seniors and anybody who wasn’t one could have been. Clane luckily got out of Newbridge that day, we kicked the game away and to me that was the strongest we had ever been. A lot of people mention the Sarsfields semi-final, but I think in ‘98 we were extraordinarily strong,” Pat explained.

That campaign would be Caragh’s last stand at the sharp end of Senior football as their brilliant group began to disperse due to age and injuries. Pat’s career would come to an end much later following a leg break and knee injury in 2005. Despite making it back to the field afterwards, he had accumulated enough miles on the clock to bring a great career to an end.

“They were the two years (‘97 and ‘98) that I think there was a county Championship in us. It is kind of disappointing, but the injuries devastated us after that. We had our day in the sun and we didn’t quite get there, but we were definitely good enough to beat and mix it with anyone on our day. We were confident we could do anything,” Pat recalled.

“I finished playing intercounty football at 23 with knee injuries. Club football was as much as I could manage training-wise so I did well to play until 2005 I suppose.”

The end of a great playing career was never going to be the end of Pat Dunne’s involvement in Caragh GAA. Manager in 2014 and chairman for a period of time not long after, he remained firmly embedded in his club.

Pat concluded, “It embodies everything people love about the GAA and there is probably a touch of parochial madness about it. I was a shy young fella and I didn’t know anybody outside of football. Football gives you everything, the confidence to speak to people. You speak in dressing rooms and later that gives you confidence to talk in meetings at a professional level. I love everything about it.

“Prosperous is a unique place and we were always reminded how special of a place we were from, and that always fed into the pride of us competing with the massive teams in the county.”