CASTLEKNOCK, A WEST-Dublin club only in its late-teens is not the most likely candidate for supremecy in the highly competitive Dublin senior football championship.<\/p>\n
\n Source: Tommy Dickson\/INPHO<\/p>\n
And yet, remarkably, the club which finds itself nestled beside powerhouses St Brigid\u2019s and St Oliver Plunkett\u2019s is just one game away from lifting the biggest prize in Dublin club football.<\/p>\n
How did they get here? As is often the case in Irish life, a meeting in a local bar was the starting point. Johnny Corcoran, Fergus Hamill, and John Conway agreed in Myos Bar in April 1998 that the influx of young families to the area required a local GAA club.<\/p>\n
The once rural village in western Dublin experienced rapid population growth in the area with housing estates transforming the formerly green fields to a part of Dublin\u2019s suburban fabric.<\/p>\n
First, Corcoran, Hamill and Conway had to prove to the county board they wouldn\u2019t be taking players from the catchment areas of the concerned neighbouring clubs.<\/p>\n
Once an agreement was put in place, the members of the newly founded club were mobilized. Doors were knocked on and leaflets handed out to every household in the area.<\/p>\n
Twenty three kids showed up to the first training session on a green in the middle of a housing estate dubbed T\u00edr Na\u00a0n\u00d3g.\u00a0Among the kids in attendance that day were current senior stalwarts Graham Hannigan, Shane Boland and future two-time All-Star winner Ciaran Kilkenny.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is where we all started,\u201dsays Boland. \u201cWe have all been there from the first day that the club ever started. First training session, that is how long we have been around.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a few short weeks there were 130 local youngsters regularly turning up to training.<\/p>\n
The first time they entered an adult competition in 1998, Castleknock found themselves in Divison 10. From there, the ball started rolling.<\/p>\n
\n Castleknock’s Shane Boland at the Dublin SFC final media event.<\/p>\n
Source: Tommy Dickson\/INPHO<\/p>\n
Over the following 18 years, Castleknock moved up the ranks. Much of that was due to the groundwork with underage sides. For the likes of Kilkenny, Hannigan and Boland, success was a regular visitor at underage level.<\/p>\n
Boland continues: \u201cIt is kind of a weird one because my age group \u2013 we are the 1993 age group \u2013 and basically ever since we were six or seven, or whenever the club was founded, we have always been Division One.<\/p>\n
\u201c[We] have always been there or thereabouts every single year so when it came to adult, we had a mentality that we should be there or thereabouts. And that has stood to us as we progressed through the levels.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tom Quinn and Rory Corcoran are another two who represented the Dubs at underage levels. In 2007 that group won the All-Ireland Feile na nOg Division 1 \u2013 the top competition at the U14 grade in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe core group of this adult team is basically from that team, there is a lot of us that would have played on that team and would have played a lot of football and hurling growing up.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we won the minor football as well. Brian Fenton\u2019s Raheny beat us in the football Fe\u00edle as well.<\/p>\n