Sunday’s Corn Uan Uladh Senior camogie final between Cross and Passion, Ballycastle and St Patrick’s, Maghera was supposed to bring to a close the 75th title-race for Ulster Schools’ most prestigious camogie competition.
The draw after extra time means that the two have to go head to head again this afternoon.
The decision to start a provincial schools’ camogie championship in 1942-43 at the height of the Second World War with the restrictions placed upon travel was a courageous one.
Those pioneering teachers of the war years approached then National Camogie President Agnes O’Farrelly to donate a trophy and set about organising the first provincial schools’ competition.
Cavan native and academic, O’Farrelly was a founder member of UCD camogie club and Universities’ Ashbourne Cup some 30 years earlier, a founder member of Cumann na mBan and heavily involved in Gaelic League activities throughout her life.
She wrote under the pen-name “Uan Uladh” the name adopted for the new schools’ championship.
To put the championship into context, Leinster did not have a schools’ championship until 1961, while Munster and Connacht only came into line with the establishment of an All-Ireland schools’ senior championship in 1969, although there had been a Cork championship stretching back as far as the early 1920s.
Some ten schools participated in that first Ulster championship with Dominican Convent Portstewart and Sacred Heart Armagh topping the league and sharing the first title.
Sacred Heart won the title outright the following year and Dominican had to wait for the first of their outright wins in 1955.
Through the early years the game tended to be strongest in Belfast and in the Convent boarding schools, helped in no small way by All-Ireland senior titles for Antrim 1945-7 and 1956 and appearances in finals for Down in 1948 and Derry in 1954.
The schools also fed into the counties, with for example Peg Dooey on the first Antrim All-Ireland winning team of 1945, before captaining St Louis Ballymena to the start of their five successive titles in 1946.
Twin sister Kathleen was also on that first Ballymena team and then collected two All-Ireland medals with her sister in 1946-7.
One of the more notable achievements of the 75 years was when Máiréad McAtamney, already an Antrim senior player, coached, captained and top-scored as Dominican Portstewart won back to back titles in 1961 and 1962.
Máiréad went on to become Ulster’s greatest ever player, captaining Antrim to the last of their six senior All-Ireland titles in 1979.
Ballymena was the top school of the late 1940s, while St Dominic’s Belfast and Loreto Coleraine battled it out over the following decade, before the 1960s and early 1970s saw the emergence of St Michael’s Lurgan (4 titles), Sacred Heart Newry (3, including the 1971 All-Ireland title) and St Louis Kilkeel, who, under the guidance of Cork native Gerry Sheehan, would collect eight titles (1965-1981).
The establishment of Secondary Intermediate schools in the early 1960s led to a new competition – the Frank Cavlan Cup – catering for non-grammar schools. This lasted a decade before the decision was taken to amalgamate – a courageous move, given that the same did not happen for hurling and football until this current season.
Post Primary education was now changing with the decline of single-sex boarding schools and the emergence of co-educational day schools, sometimes all-ability schools – and so camogie also changed with the strength of the game in the locality having a more direct impact on a school’s fortunes.
There were exceptions and therefore those wins are all the more noteworthy – St Aidan’s Cootehill and Vocational Bawnboy took titles to Cavan in 1980 and 1982 respectively, while Loreto Letterkenny, under the guidance of former Kilkenny All-Ireland winner Anne Carroll, won three titles 1983, 1985 and 1986.
The game of camogie in either Cavan or Donegal would not have been considered strong then or since.
Another notable achievement was the 1984 title for St Mary’s Clady, under Rita Moran, despite the fact that the school didn’t have a Sixth Form
Letterkenny’s last two titles came at the expense of St Patrick’s Maghera who persisted to take their first title in 1987 and that came with a win over neighbours St Mary’s Magherafelt, the last year the final was contested by two schools each in search of their first title.
Since that final 30 years ago however, the neighbouring schools have dominated the championship – Maghera taking a record 16 titles and St Mary’s (incidentally under the guidance of Rita Moran, the only coach to win the trophy with two different schools) took the first of their 11 titles in 1993.
St Mary’s became only the second Ulster team to claim the All-Ireland (2007), although through the 48 years of the national competition, six different schools have contested 11 All-Ireland senior finals, the most recent being three seasons ago when Magherefelt lost 2-9 to 0-9 to Loreto Kilkenny.
St Patrick’s Maghera appear in their 24th final on Sunday, while opponents Cross and Passion Ballycastle won the last of their three titles in 2008, although they have contested six finals since their re-emergence as a force in 2006, losing three times to each of Maghera and Magherafelt.
This will be the 75th Ulster senior schools’ camogie final (first one was in 1943) and the 74 previous winners are:
St Patrick's, Maghera (16) 1987, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1994, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2016,
St Mary's, Magherafelt (11) 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2006, 2007*, 2009, 2014, 2015,
St Louis, Kilkeel (8) 1965, 1966, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1979, 1981
Loreto, Coleraine (6) 1948, 1954, 1957, 1959, 1977, 1978
St Louis, Ballymena (5) 1946, 1947, 1949, 1950, 1951
St Dominic's, Belfast (5) 1952, 1953, 1956, 1960, 1963
Dominican, Portstewart (4) 1943 (shared), 1955, 1961, 1962
St Michael's, Lurgan (4) 1958, 1967, 1968, 1969
Cross & Passion, Ballycastle (3) 1945, 1964, 2008,
Sacred Heart, Newry (3) 1970, 1971*, 1973
Loreto, Letterkenny (3) 1983, 1985, 1986
Sacred Heart, Armagh 1943 (shared), 1944
St Aidan's, Cootehill 1980
Vocational, Bawnboy 1982
St Mary's, Clady 1984
St Patrick's, Keady 1989
Armagh College Further Ed. 1992
