Ross Celtic: A Native’s View

by Bluebeard

(first published in the June 2011 New Ross Celtic FAI Cup match programme)

New Ross Celtic play their first FAI Cup game tonight in the RSC. And, if I am not mistaken, this is the first time that Ross Celtic will have played League opposition in the Cup, and thus the first time the sides clash in a serious competitive game. As one can imagine, this will not be the first time that Wexford and Waterford have clashed in either Ross or Waterford. Indeed, if one goes back before the time of modern sports, according to one source, Waterford and New Ross have a long history of rivalry. When William Marshall, builder of the miraculous Bridge that established the port city of Ros Mhic Treoin in the late 12th century, decided that he wanted his new city to be the most important trading centre in the South East, supposedly he sent a force from New Ross to attack his rival. The very short war that followed eventually led to the trade concessions the town had enjoyed being revoked to protect Waterford’s port, but this didn’t stop its growth and success. I hope our visitors won’t hold it against us.

Why would I care to keep this odd ornament of local history so clear in my head. Well, I am kind of from New Ross. To be accurate, a few miles outside of Ross. We all called it Ross – the only people I ever heard calling the town “New Ross” were not from the area at all. In Ross I had my schooling, and there most of my (incredibly short) footballing career took place, largely at schools level. There is a chance that one of the men in the squad for Celtic tonight will have been someone I played with in a Wexford Wicklow Schools Cup final – when I say played with, he played; I think my sole contribution was to knock over one or two of the other team’s players. My manager for that match, and my PE teacher, was one John Michael Porter, a Ross Celtic legend, and this was how I came to know of the club. He had been imported from Raphoe in Co. Donegal, and played with Celtic for a long spell, and as well as with the Wexford Oscar Traynor Cup team on several occasions.

That was one of many very fine Ross Celtic teams through the years. It was a club that all of us in the Ross district could rightly be proud of. Until Rathnure changed districts in the early ’90s, there was no particularly successful hurling or Gaelic football club in the Wexford side of the district, and certainly none winning anything with any regularity. The Rugby club was not particularly successful at the time either. The other big success at the time was Jimmy MacDonald, who took part in three Olympics, finishing third in Barcelona. But Ross Celtic was the powerhouse of Wexford football, always challenging and in with a shout in all competitions.

Their progress was charted in the local paper, The New Ross Standard, alongside all other sporting matters. Generally amid the same pages that recorded Celtic’s progress, there were accounts of how various Wexford men were progressing both at home and abroad, in their attempts to make a few quid playing the beautiful game. There were mentions of the various trial periods with different English clubs, and long before ever I got to Kilcohan, I was regularly reading how the various Wexford players were getting on with the Blues. As the local League of Ireland team, traditionally, the Blues always managed to grab the cream of the crop of players from Wexford. Prominent among them were some of the finest of the footballing talent from Ross and the Ross district. The particular footballing star of the late ’80s and early ’90s from New Ross, and my Blues idol of the time, was Paul Cashin, an elegant midfielder, much sought after in the League at the time, and who is discussed in greater length elsewhere in tonight’s programme.

Of course, the focus of the paper is now much more on Wexford Youths, being in many ways the county team. But despite the advent of a Wexford team, and with a nod to the recent Kilkenny team, the Blues have remained the chief club in the South East, and the line-up has more often than not reflected this, with players from Tipp and Kilkenny, as well as Wexford. As we will likely see tonight, there is still a sizeable Wexford contingent in Blue. There are five yellowbellies expected to be in our squad tonight hailing from the county, all of whom have been starting or regularly being brought on. In recent years, Eric Bradley, from Adamstown in the Ross District, netted a hat trick against Sligo for us: last week, he was playing (as full forward) for the Wexford Gaelic footballers. Another recent striker of ours, PJ Banville from Horeswood, also in the Ross district, quit the Blues to concentrate on playing for the county Football team. He is currently back playing Junior football with Campile United, and scored twice to win the Wexford Cup Final nearly three weeks ago at Celtic’s ground, Butlersland. This would remind Blues fans that he scored in the last minute of extra time to put us past Rockmount in 2004, and into the Cup Semi finals.

Fan-wise, there were also plenty over the years who made their way from Ross to Waterford to see the Blues play. Most notably of late, Dáil candidate and Ross man, Seamus O’Brien is a regular face on the terraces. Back in my youth, I recall many occasions when various school friends and myself would borrow a car from one or other set of parents to drive down to Waterford on a Sunday afternoon for games. Mostly it was for Blues games, but on the odd occasion, it was other games had us travelling. At some stage we travelled to see a Ross Celtic game in Ozier Park, against Pike Rovers in the FAI Junior Cup semi final if my recollection serves me kindly.

There are more links though between Ross Celtic and Waterford. When they started off as a club, they played their first four seasons in the Junior League here in Waterford, before deciding in the late ’60s to move to the Wexford League. This was not the first time that there was a Ross team playing in the Waterford Leagues, though. An early League table from the beginning of the 20th century has a team from Ross participating in the local Leagues here.

The current team traces its ancestry to a team in the mid 1920s, and like many teams of the time, it broke up shortly after – Ireland of the time was a place where football was not a priority. Another iteration played up to the 1940s, but that disbanded too owing to the Emergency. In this, we have more than a passing resemblance, with our founding in the ’20s to play in the MSL and our first break from play in the early ’30s, and then our 1940s Emergency / player crisis meltdown too. It is almost over-egging the cake to note that one of their rivals in Wexford football is called Shamrock Rovers!

With only the odd lapse, they have dominated the Wexford Leagues for years, have won the Leinster Junior Cup in 1983 and often there or thereabouts in the shake up for the FAI Cup. Celtic will be no soft Junior League team happy to be up with the big boys, going home to say that they had their day out. They are a good example of the recent strength of Wexford as a producer of good young players. As a case in point they absolutely destroyed the Munster Senior League runners up, the aforementioned Rockmount, in Cork in the FAI Junior Cup semi this year. Their League season is over (finishing second to Shamrock Rovers), but they’ll hope to prolong their Cup run. We have a game on our hands tonight.