Other members of the club to represent their county were Declan Sheehan, Dermot Deasy (All Ireland medal winner 1995)Tom Carr, Adrian Walshe, Paddy Christie, Ian Robertson, Davey Byrne and Darren Ducie.
Kickhams have also had distinction in management with Ballymun men, Val Andrews and Gerry McCaul nationally recognised as two of the better county managers in recent years. Success has also been achieved off the field.
In 1997 Kickhams opened new facilities which included a fine pavilion and grounds. Phase two, under the watchful eye of the aforementioned Val Andrews saw the development of a fully floodlight artificial pitch.
This project was completed March 2003 and with Ireland’s compromise rules team, several county teams and Dublin Inter-County teams using the facility, it is highly regarded and considered one of the finest playing and training facilities in Europe if not the world
Other members of the club to represent their county were Declan Sheehan, Dermot Deasy (All Ireland medal winner 1995)Tom Carr, Adrian Walshe, Paddy Christie, Ian Robertson, Davey Byrne and Darren Ducie.
Kickhams have also had distinction in management with Ballymun men, Val Andrews and Gerry McCaul nationally recognised as two of the better county managers in recent years. Success has also been achieved off the field.
In 1997 Kickhams opened new facilities which included a fine pavilion and grounds. Phase two, under the watchful eye of the aforementioned Val Andrews saw the development of a fully floodlight artificial pitch.
It has been suggested that with the huge effort developing our facilities we lost focus on what made the club great in the first place. Back in the early seventies the bed rock for developing a juvenile section in the club was the local school and the street leagues. Today it is again the schools, this time supported by a very successful nursery system.
At the time Ballymun Kickhams were planting the seeds of recovery at juvenile, there was always something that galvanized the club. There was the successful junior b team in 2003 followed by the ladies in 2007 (they would be so proud of what is happening today) and of course who could forget the hurlers of 2008. We were never that far from the news either. We featured very prominently the TV series Celebrity Bainisteoir followed a little later in “Pride of the Parish”.
Prior to the concerted focus on improvement at Juvenile there were revolutionaries at work. In 1996 Paddy Christie was emerging as a force on the field at both club and county level. He was also quietly putting together a management team and a group of very young and talented ten year olds that would help build something very very special down the road. Paddy and his team brought a new approach to panel development. This team stayed together all the way through to adult and became a huge feeder system to what was then an aging senior panel. There were other teams beginning to thrive at the time as well, in fact Dean Rock, James McCarthy, Ted Furman and Jason Whelan were one year into their senior career when players of the caliber Alan Hubbard, Eoin Dolan, Sean Curry and Philly McMahon and many more progressed to adult level from Paddy’s team. When he handed this group off to the adult section what did Paddy do next? He went back and started again. Took a group of under tens, kept them together and developed them. In 2011 this group of young men won the division 1 of the prestigious Feile competition, a first national title in the club’s history. The following year they won the county juvenile championship, again for the first time in clubs history. This team went on to win the county minor championship, and produced such luminaries as Paddy Small, Carl Keeley, Evan Comerford and Aaron Elliot, to name just a few.
With all this emerging talent Kickhams made the decision to invite an outsider into the club to manage our senior team. Paul Curran joined the club in 2011 and in 2012 Ballymun won their 3rd senior county championship and the first one since 1985. From there Paul took this team into Leinster and on December 9th 2012 Ballymun Kickhams won their first ever Leinster Senior Football Final, defeating Portlaoise, in Mullingar. The All Ireland semifinal was against Dr. Crokes of Kerry, the Mun beat them by 1-10 to 0-9. Our little club with the big heart was headed to the All-Ireland Final on St. Patrick’s Day in Croke Park to play St. Brigids from Roscommon. We lost by a point and although that was a very sad day we can all look back on that achievement with great pride. During that great run, the team time and again evoked the name Sean Andrews as a motivation for them. Sean was our Chairman for a few years but more importantly exemplified the pride and passion that makes our little club so special to us all. Sean passed away suddenly in 2011. Not long after that memorable St. Patrick’s Day in 2012 the club lost Chairman, Tom Donohue. Larger than life and cut from the same cloth as Sean Andrews some would say that run to the All-Ireland kept Tom alive longer than god had planned for him to be.
After a very satisfying and successful stint as senior manager Paul Curran stepped down from his position 2015. The club appointed Anto McCaul as his successor, Anto was succeeded by Paddy Carr, who was succeeded by the current manager Mr. Brendan Hackett.
As they say “a rising tide catches all boats” and that is plain for all to see at Kickhams. Our intermediate team went undefeated in the league in 2016 and was promoted to division 3. A very young junior team was also unlucky to miss out on promotion last year. The relationships with our schools continue to be strong and our nurseries are thriving. The ladies are playing a more and more important role in the club. There are two ladies currently on the club executive committee, the Gaelic4Girls project is booming and there are several very competitive girls juvenile teams competing every week. Their impact on the club has been very significant.
Meanwhile, the Dublin senior footballers completed the magnificent 6 in a row All Ireland titles, and not surprisingly, this team was backboned by 6 Ballymun Kickhams players. Evan Comerford, Philly McMahon, John Small, James McCarthy, Dean Rock and Paddy Small, were all significant contributors to the amazing run. We are a very proud club indeed.
And all the while, in the midst of the horrendous pandemic, our magnificent senior team rolled through to win the 2020 Dublin SFC, showing how tough it has been on the club having so many players involved in the great Dublin teams. As soon as they were solely ours again, they dominated every game in the 2020 Dublin SFC and romped home to win our club’s 4th SFC. A mighty shame that the county championship proved to be the height of that year, the pandemic prevented the inter provincial stage of the games. However, we were immensely proud of these incredible men and the team behind them.
A significant upgrade on club facilities occurred over winter of 19/20 when our artificial pitch was replaced with a state of the art new surface that remained unused for most of that summer due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
As mentioned briefly above, there are some members from recent decades who have passed away, and their fingerprints are all over the great success that is Ballymun Kickhams. We fondly remember and hold dearly the memories of Sean Andrews, Tom O’Donohue, Declan Small, Linda Parnell and Jim Woulfe. Members who were integral parts of our history. May they rest in peace.
As with all history, some of it is yet to be written…
