2010 has already been a year of celebration for St Gall’s.

The Belfast club is marking its centenary with a year-long programme of events which have been complemented by some superb performances on the field.
The Milltown-based club have already had one visit to Croke Park this season, when their hurlers reached the All-Ireland intermediate final, where they lost to Kilkenny side Freshford.
In the big ball game, St Gall’s have now reached four Ulster football finals since 2001, the start of their current run of dominance in Antrim football. In the same period, the county’s footballers have won the same number of Ulster Championship matches in total.
Why then have St Gall’s been able to break the mould in terms of Antrim football, and why do they dominate the football scene within the county?
The answer is complex, but there are four key areas that St Gall’s pride themselves on, and through which they have developed their current batch of champions.
Underage development, a strong sense of club unity, a mix of different managers and an openness to outside influences have all come together at the Milltown club.
Sean Kelly Snr, whose two sons Sean and Mark play senior football for the club, has coached teams of various ages at St Gall’s and he currently assists Senior football manager Lenny Harbinson.
Sean points to the ground work laid by the St Gall’s juvenile committee in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a key part of the development of the team that has won eight of the last nine Antrim senior Football Championships.
“We were ground breaking at that stage. Not many clubs had the Saturday morning club going and once we had the players on the pitch kicking a ball, the skills came through,” said Kelly.
“As they got older, they benefited from the coaching of the likes of Harry McDonagh, Sean McGourty and Mickey Gribben.
“But we were also blessed with a generation of great players. They really were a great bunch of kids which also helped them bond.”
The players enjoy a strong bond today, many calling the St Gall’s club a ‘brotherhood’. This has built on strong generational family ties. Liam Stewart, Mickey Gribben, Sean Kelly, Brendan Gallagher and Sean McGourty were all involved in the Saturday morning club in the 1990s and have sons in the current football squad.
Others families like the Bradleys, the Maguires, the McDonaghs, the Sheehans and the Healys have links to several generations of club members.
But while St Gall’s can be pleased with their ability to regenerate (only four players link the 2001 Championship winning XV to the 2009 Champions) they have also been aided by outside influences.
Over the years the likes of Gary McGirr and Ciaran McCrossan (Tyrone), Mark McRory and John Rafferty (Armagh) and the Gallagher brothers Ronan and Rory from Fermanagh have played for the club, while Rafferty joins Paul Duffin (Castlewellan) and James McCartan (Burren) as ‘outsiders’ who have managed the club.
“It’s been more luck than anything else,” said Kelly.
“Those guys have come to us but they were all living and working in Belfast. They were teachers, doctors, students who moved to Belfast and they wanted to play football in Belfast so they came to us.
“But they’re all 100 percent St Gall’s men now. Gary McGirr takes training on a Saturday morning, Ciaran McCrossan sends his wee lad to the club, Mark and Ciaran were both involved with coaching the senior team. They weren’t just in and out, and we were just lucky to have them.”
In terms of managers, St Gall’s have kept the position at the top changing, for various reasons. Mickey Culbert went on to manage the Antrim county side, John Rafferty left to work with Joe Kernan at Armagh and James McCartan’s brief spell as St Gall’s manager ended when he left to manage Down.
St Gall’s have taken influences from all their managers over the years, each one bringing something different to the club.
But despite the number of outsiders who have come through the doors at the Milltown club, it’s a core group of players who remain at its centre: the McGourtys, Ciaran and Aodhan Gallagher, Andy McClean, Anto Healy, Karl Stewart, Terry O’Neill, Sean Burke and Sean Kelly.
“They are all very close,” said Sean Kelly Snr.
“If you find one of them, you find them all. Conor McGourty and Anto Healy both said they treated their team mates like brothers and maybe that’s the key to our success over the years. The players are willing to put everything on the line for their club but most importantly their team mates.”