The Eightties
Those Crazy Festival years
The idea of an outdoor festival was nothing new. It had been mooted in the Club years before but nothing ever came of it. Everyone back then could remember the outdoor ‘Carnivals’ of the swinging sixties when all the big showbands of the time had played in every parish up and down the country often in makeshift marquees erected during the summer months. But that was before the outbreak of the ‘troubles’. Since the ‘Miami Showband’ murders of 1979, very few top class bands would travel north and except for the disco scene there was very little good quality live entertainment in the north during the 1980’s. But that did not deter one very enthusiastic club member from keeping this dream alive. Ciarán Crilly had already got a taste of the entertainment scene with the opening of the social club in 1976, and shortly afterwards was asked to take charge of the club entertainment. Ciaran achieved some remarkable success in persuading reluctant southern based acts to travel north for cabaret nights that he had arranged for the social club, and to him the formula was simple. If you can secure top acts, regardless of the cost the entertainment-starved punters will pay the asking price.
This proved true as all these acts played to packed houses and the club was reaping the reward. However the social club only held 300 punters whereas a marquee would take 2000 people to fill. Everyone knew of course that there was one group in Ireland then that would have no trouble filling the marquee and that was of course the popular ballad group the ‘Wolfetones’. Oliver Barry was their manager then and he was unimpressed when approached by Ciarán in 1984 about the Castlewellan concert. He said at the time that even if you flew them in and out by helicopter they still wouldn’t be playing a northern gig. The relentless Ciaran told him that that didn’t present any problem for the club and from then on negotiations took on a different light as the promoter seen that the club meant business. It took a further two years of persuasion beforeBarry finnally relented, and a deal was finally struck when the ‘Wolfetones’ agreed to play their first northern gig in 10 years. Finding a suitable size of a marquee was another huge problem because strange as it may seem now there just wasn’t any business for marquee hire firms in the north during the seventies and eighties. After a lot of enquiries the Fahy family from Co Galway were tracked down. They were then the biggest suppliers of outdoor marquees in the south of Ireland, but for obvious reason did little business north of the border.
Nevertheless they agreed to supply and erect the marquee for the weekend of 19th and 20th July 1986. When all the festival costs were totted up including the cost of the acts it was announced to a nervous committee that the total cost for the venture amounted to £15,000. This was a huge figure indeed (the cost of a semi-detached house in the mid eighties). The club was then in financial debt of over £80,000 and if this failed, to quote one committeeman of the day ‘ it would put our lights out altogether’. But the committee held their nerve and all human resources in terms of club members rallied together to ensure that this venture would be a success. Bagatelle another big Dublin based group (‘remember that summer in Dublin…’) were booked to play Saturday 19th and the ‘tones Sunday the 20th. As it turned out both concerts were a huge success both financially and in terms of crowds attending and all the other logistics. Of course even after the tones had agreed to play they still had to be ferried over the border from Dundalk and back again after the show. That was hairy enough back then and Ciarán’s biggest fear was been stopped either going or coming with these four ‘subversives’ by a UDR, or RUC checkpoint and spending the week-end in Gough Barracks.
The annual week-end festivals continued with increasing success for a further three years until 1999. Each year the top act was the ‘Wolftones’, and other acts that also played included the Furey Brothers and Davie Arthur, Stockton’s Wing, and Joe Dolan. A monster bingo session was also held on the Sunday afternoon of the weekend festival and a kiddies disco was also added to cater for all age groups. The festival numbers grew each year also and in what was to be the final year 1989 there were almost 2,500 people at the Wolfetone concert. By this stage the club was well out of debt and had a healthy credit bank balance for the first time in more than twenty years, After the concert there was some trouble involving the RUC and rubber bullets were fired at the crowd. The committee felt then that this could lead to further trouble and possible injuries if the concert was to continue the following year. For this reason the successful outdoor festivals were shelved. It was to be another eight years before another outdoor festival was held by the club in 1997. This time it was totally open-air in the beautiful setting of Castlewellan Forest Park between the castle and the lake. The artistes that appeared on that occasion were Sharon Shannon, Dolores Keane, Bagetelle and Eleanor McEvoy. This concert was again hugely expensive to put on but only enjoyed minor financial success, so sadly it was felt to be too great a financial risk to repeat on an annual basis.
So ended the Clubs flirtation with concert promotions. But like other fund-raising ventures undertaken before and after by the club it did prove financially rewarding, great fun for all the participants as well as a great club-bonding exercise, as it involved every member of the club from the very young to senior players and committee men and women. Other Clubs in the locality have learnt from the Castlewellan experiment and they too have run successful festivals bringing in much needed finance to their club coffers as well as adding greatly to the summer entertainment scene in this part of County Down.
Back on the football pitch success continued when Mickey Keown and Liam Sloan took up the senior team management baton, after Danny and Anthony stepped down, and in 1982 the town lifted their eighth SFC beating Clonduff in the final. During that same period the town won 3 All-Ireland sevens competitions (Kilmacud’s in 1978 and 1981, Belfield 1980). Also in 1980 the town team were the first winners of our own All-Ireland sevens competition that commenced in that year.
After Liam Sloan and Mickey Keown stood down from senior management and many of the older and more experienced players retired, Dessie Farley and Gerry Dougherty held the reigns for a couple of years 1984/85. Then Colm McAlarney took over the job as player manager, and during the rest of the eighties Colm, Barney McAleenan and Leo Flanaghan worked at rebuilding a team. Colm continued to play on the club’s senior team until he was 44 years old, and in 1991 when he played in his last championship final, his son Colm Og was also on the team. This remains a special memory for both men, and is probably the first time in Down Club football that a father and son played in a senior county final together. Also just as the decade was coming to a close our senior Scór team who one the County and Ulster titles in the Ceilie Dancing section made it to the All-Ireland final where they were just beat by a few points. A great achievement for the Club team. They were Caroline Duggan, Mary Gallagher, Cathy Hardy, Ciara Warnock, Fergal O’Kane, Conal McQuoid, Shane McQuoid and Anthony McKay. Anthony McKay and his wife Geraldine had a long association with both the Club and the town itself as they had a very successful Irish Dancing School ‘McKay Shool of Irish Dancing’ in the Parocial Hall and then in the Clubrooms for close on twenty years from the early seventies right through to the late eighties. Their dancing school won many team and individuals competition both at County and National level and travelled all over the Country with their faithful band of followers made up mostly from the parents of the young dancers. The Club bus was the mode of transport for many of their weekend trips.
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