All our Laois GAA club championship coverage is brought to you in association with Mulhall’s SuperValu, Portlaoise
‘The Future Looks Bright!’ is the only text on the photo.
How right it was.
In some ways the image is no different than countless others that have been taken in O’Moore Park over the years: a Laois club team celebrating a county final win.
But for Arles-Kilcruise (and they were still known as Arles at the time) it was a particularly significant moment.
1995 – 30 years ago this year – was the year they got back on their feet.
In 1994 they hadn’t played a single competitive game of football after the bitter split in the original Arles club. They survived on a diet of practice matches, primarily in Carlow and Kildare.
By 1995, they were up and running and entered into the Junior ‘B’ championship.
The Arles-Killeen side played under the parish name of St Michael’s in 1994, 1995 and 1996 before taking on the Arles-Killeen title fully in 1997. Though it was that side that took on the new name and a new jersey, they were officially recognised as the original club and retained ownership of the grounds in Rossena.
Arles became Arles-Kilcruise a couple of years later to acknowledge they were the new club and only moved into their permanent home in 2004. They continued to wear the original maroon colours, however, and for those first couple of years continued with the Arles name.
1995 was the start of a really special run and after the distraction of the previous year, they were only thrilled to be in the thick of it again.
“Remembering back, we were mad for football and were delighted to play games,” recalled Lar Wall Junior in 2022 in a LaoisToday interview. “When we got up and running in 1995 we were rearing for it. “Looking back it was a great way to start out, it was the ideal journey.”
The club’s championship life got off to the most unimpressive of starts, scraping a draw with Crettyard’s second team in the opening round on the old Killeshin pitch.
An interesting aside to that year was that there were 34 teams entered into the Junior ‘B’ with a ‘football’ side and a ‘hurling’ side. One team emerged from each section to meet in the final.
Arles – who also could have played in the Junior ‘A’ championship that season but opted against it – were too strong for everyone else they faced with a 7-9 to 0-1 win over St Joseph’s and a 1-16 to 1-5 success over The Heath among their victories en route to the final.
Emerging from the ‘hurling’ side was Mountrath but they were no match for Arles in O’Moore Park in late October. Chris Conway got 1-8 while Eoin Mooney and Lar Wall got 0-3 apiece.
‘Glory days back for Arles,” was the headline in the Nationalist a couple of days later.
“To many this might be only a junior title but to Arles it marks the return to winning ways,” added the report, which also had a sidebar with the headline ‘Something special’.
“One sensed that this title meant something special to Arles,” wrote their reporter at the game.
“Last year we were destroyed,” said captain James Conway. “Today we have bounced back. We are on the way forward.”
He was spot on. That was the first of five county final appearances in a row, in three different grades.
The following year they won the Junior ‘A’ title, beating St Manman’s in the final.
The year after, Arles-Killeen beat them in the intermediate final. St Manman’s then beat in the 1998 intermediate final before Arles came back to win the intermediate title in 1999.
By 2003 they were senior champions, completing a sweep of Laois championship titles in a whirlwind 10-year spell. They contested further senior finals in 2009, 2010 and 2012, losing to the all-conquering Portlaoise side on each occasion. It was some going for an area that was largely working out of a primary school with about 40 pupils.
Another sign of how keen they were was how they gobbled up league titles in those years. The grading system was different and having playing nothing at all in 1994, they were all able to play at two levels in the league in 1995.
Thus they won both Division 3 and Division 4 in the same season with largely the same team. Another Division 3 title followed in 1996 and Division 2 in 1998. They later won Division 1 in 2002 and 2003.
With the second team following on with Junior ‘C’ and Division 5 titles, it meant the club won every possible competition in those formative years and there are a handful of players with every medal going.
Gradually they slipped back into the back at the top level and relegation came in 2020 after 21 years at senior.
Though they got to the intermediate final in 2022, where they were well beaten by The Heath, they failed to get to even the semi-final of the championship in either of the past two seasons, and were even in the relegation final two years ago.
This year they have recovered from a six-point loss to Park-Ratheniska in the opening round to show all the battling qualities that are deep in the club’s DNA. They beat Portlaoise by a point in Round 2, Mountmellick by two points in the quarter-final and Kilcavan by a point – kicking the last seven points of the game against a stiff breeze – to reach the final once again.
Thirty years may have passed since that breakthrough success but a look at that photo from that day in 1995 shows many familiar faces. James Conway was team captain on that occasion and is manager now.
A 12-year-old Ross Munnelly is over Paudge Conway’s shoulder. Kevin Meaney, Mick O’Shea and David Conway were all young boys then and are now in the club veteran stage of their careers.
Eddie Mulhall, who was centre forward that day and scored two points, has two sons playing now, Cialann and Eoin. Ken Kealy’s son Darragh is playing too.
The three club stalwarts in the photo are Lar Wall senior, who was over them right throughout those years, as well as JJ Conway and the late Jim McDonald.
The Arles team that won the 1995 Junior ‘B’ title is as follows: Conor Kelly; Tom Wall, Mick Wall, Jim Wall; Mick Mooney, James Conway, Paudge Conway; Kevin Kealy, Niall Kelly; Chris Conway, Eddie Mulhall, Lar Wall; Francis Tully, Eoin Mooney, JP Conway. Subs: Matthew Bolton, PJ Fenlon, John Michael McDonald, Eoin Kelly, Ray O’Kelly, Philip McLoughlin, Edward Warren
This year’s Laois intermediate football final between Arles-Kilcruise and Park-Ratheniska takes place this Friday, September 26, in O’Moore Park at 7.30pm
All our Laois GAA club championship coverage is brought to you in association with Mulhall’s SuperValu, Portlaoise
SEE ALSO – Check out more from our County Final Memory series here
