Kilcullen's Fergus Aspell central to club's success in late '90s

Kilcullen GAA had perhaps their finest hours in the late 1990s with consecutive Junior and Intermediate Championship wins, not to mention lifting the inaugural Leinster Junior Football Championship in between.

However, that boom period would be preceded by the loss of four Junior finals in six years.

Fergus Aspell was a member of the senior panel at 16 for the first final loss of the sequence in 1991 against Eadestown, and remained throughout the club’s greatest glories.

“Nothing went wrong necessarily. I remember some of the older players who were coming towards the end. Brendan Kelly, Anthony Lambe and a few others that were well into their 30s and never got to win a Championship,” Fergus explained.

“Myself and a couple of the Cahill’s and a steady flow of the younger lads phased out the older lads. There was a better blend of lads in their mid-20s with a few younger coming through. Our time eventually came.”

After final defeats to Kill (1992), Maynooth (1995) and Rheban (1996), Kilcullen faced Ellistown in the 1997 Junior Championship final. The Rags would emerge as 0-14 to 1-5 victors and an incalculable weight was lifted from the collective club consciousness.

“We got a run on them, got on top, and thankfully came out the right side of it,” Fergus said.

“At that stage when we won Junior A, we were playing Division 1 football. We were playing at a high standard, so after we finally got that win everything took off from there. It all gelled together and we had great comradery. You go back to the town afterwards with the wives and girlfriends and there was a great bond between the whole panel. We had a good run then for the next six or seven years.”

The pain of previous seasons would of course inform the reaction of the club and its fans, as they finally escaped the grasp of the Kildare Junior Championship.

“The town went mad. I wouldn’t have been a big drinker or going out the whole time, but you couldn’t not be involved. Anyone who had been involved at all with Kilcullen GAA was out and it was like everyone unbottling years of frustration. We just had the best of times,” Fergus recalled.

“There was such a great relief. We had a lot of people wondering whether we were going to bottle it again, but we never thought that way and we got over the line thankfully. We probably enjoyed it more in the week after than when the final whistle blew.”

Kilcullen would follow up the win with a thrilling come-back victory against Moorefield to lift the Jack Higgins Cup. After not winning a trophy since 1971, The Rags now had a second in quick succession.

“We were three goals down after 10 minutes (against Moorefield). Mick Spencer was in goal and we used to slag him because Spencer had a woeful kickout. Two of them goals he may as well have gifted the full-forward the ball. We ended up 11 points down and managed to come back and win it by a point,” Fergus laughed.

“I would have trained under some really great club men. Kilcullen men through and through and to see their reaction and the reaction of everyone who had been involved since '71. We had a celebration recently and both the '71 and the '97 team were honoured. It was brilliant.”

Next up for the high-flying Championship winners was taking aim at provincial glory. 1997 was the first year of the Leinster Championship at Junior level and few in Kilcullen were aware or even interested in the competition until it suddenly got going.

“We didn’t even think of it. To be honest, we may have actually not been aware there was a Leinster tournament. I swear to god. It was all of a sudden that we heard about this Leinster tournament in its first year, sure we were too busy celebrating,” Fergus recalled.

“I think our first game was down in Wexford and we were hardly even going to go to it. But then of course you win a couple of games and things change. But we hadn’t trained for it really initially, we went from celebrating straight into it. It was a fairly quick turnaround too.”

Kilcullen’s provincial final win occupies a peculiar place in Gaelic football history. The first winners of the competition were also subjected to an experimental rule set for their Leinster final showdown with Dublin side St Vincent’s.

“They had a screening of that game up at our Dinner dance recently and I was watching it going ‘what a load of shite’” Fergus said.

“You could pick the ball clean off the ground, but could only have one play of the ball. So it looked like the finals in the 70s where lads would just catch a ball and kick it. There were no lads going on solo runs because you couldn’t, even if you had 50 yards in front of you. It just didn’t look right, but we won and we didn’t care then.”

Fergus, the Kilcullen captain, would lift the cup and the club became the first ever holders of the Leinster Junior Football Championship.

The Rags would maintain their tremendous momentum into 1998 as they won back-to-back county titles, lifting the Inter-
mediate Championship that year.

Fergus missed the season due to injury and Danny Cahill was tasked with leading the team and lifting another cup for Kilcullen after they beat St Kevin’s 2-11 to 0-10 on the final day.

Fergus remains an enormous part of the Kilcullen GAA set up, where his children Tom and Molly now proudly don the black and white colours.

“When Molly was 10, myself and Trevor Howard took over the under-age girls side (12 years ago). I’d like to think we were a small part in kick-starting the women’s under-age football in Kilcullen that is now thriving,” Fergus said.

The Kilcullen legend has also stepped away from coaching his son Tom recently to “let someone else shout at him for a while.”

The Leinster Leader will be doing a feature article from every club in Kildare over the coming weeks and months as part of the Love of the Game series. If you have a suggestion for an article on someone from your club, a legendary player, selfless volunteer or an idea of your own, send them to daragh.nolan@leinsterleader.ie.