Stabannon Parnells' bid for the 2003 SFC crown came crashing around them at the quarter-final stage, but Martin King and his team-mates gave a good account of themselves up until then. Here, Martin reassures Gerry Robinson that even though Stabannon are in transition they're far from a spent force... Stabannon's championship year finished on a sour note when they were destroyed by St Patricks at Dowdallshill on Sunday August 10th. To dwell on that one result would be as futile as it is unfair, however. Under far-from-ideal conditions, the erstwhile kingpins of Wee County football had done brilliantly to reach the knock-out stage of the SFC in the first place. Some of their performances hinted at vintage Stabannon Parnells and, in particular, their two wins over the Joes sent shockwaves rippling through the county. This was the team that was ostensibly finished, apparently (if you were to lend credence to the doomsayers) destined for a brief stay in intermediate football on the way down to junior ranks! That's what the experts said, anyway... The manner in which Parnells' championship odyssey ended was strongly ironic. Nobody deserves a demoralising drubbing of that magnitude and it's unfortunate in the extreme that Stabannon's 2003 season will probably be remembered for all the wrong reasons. People will talk of how they conceded 7-21 in a senior championship quarter-final. They shouldn't. Though it was unquestionably a perfect performance from the Pats, there was still a freakish element to the scoreline and it doesn't even come close to reflecting Stabannon's championship efforts over the year. For a team in transition, a young and inexperienced side still learning their trade, Stabannon exceeded all expectations. Emerging from Group A of the SFC was an achievement in itself ... one from which a lot of encouragement can be drawn. Team stalwart Martin King (more renowned as a midfielder or half forward) slotted in at full back for much of the 2003 season to lend some experience to an otherwise frighteningly youthful last line of defence. Accepting that the year ended on a miserable note, he points out that things had been looking good up until the ill-fated quarter-final: "As we're going through a re-building process, we were delighted to get out of the group stage because it was a tricky group. We knew Naomh Malachi would be on a high after the success they achieved at intermediate level the previous year, while the Brides have come along a lot and are clearly one of the top sides in the county, having reached the 2002 senior final. The Joes are also a great championship team, so it was a very difficult group and we felt we did well to come out of it." Stabannon kicked off their Group A campaign with a 0-11 to 0-4 win over the Malachis at Ardee on June 15th but lost their next game to the Brides, 0-10 to 1-5, at Haggardstown on July 11th. They had to beat the Joes in their last group game to force a three-way play-off: two late points from Colm Quinn turned that game on its head and gave them a sensational 1-10 to 0-12 victory at Castlebellingham on July 18th. A three-way play-off followed. Stabannon had a chance to finish top of the group when they faced the Brides in the first play-off at Dromiskin on July 25th. However, they had a bad day at the office and fell to a 1-8 to 0-6 defeat. All was not yet lost: they would still come out of the group as runners-up if they could beat the Joes again in the second play-off. Once again, Stabannon saved their best for their Dromiskin neighbours, powering to a superb 1-12 to 1-10 win at The Grove to book a surprise place in the last eight. It was a wonderful accomplishment. Nobody had given Stabannon a chance of reaching the quarter-finals yet here they were in the business end of the county's premier competition. Alas, the celebrations were quickly silenced when St Patricks dismantled the Green & Golds with a masterful display at St Brigid's Park, subjecting the hapless mid-Louth men to a 33-point drubbing, 7-21 to 1-6. Martin reflects: "We went in against the Pats and we knew Peter Fitzpatrick had them flying. We felt there wouldn't be much in it if we played well. We thought we had a chance of maybe sneaking it by a point, but we also knew we were facing a bit of a thumping if we didn't perform. Worst case scenario, we thought that if things went pear-shaped we'd maybe lose by six or seven points ... we never dreamed in our worst nightmares that we'd get a pasting like that! "On the night, everything went 100% right for them and everything we tried to do went completely wrong. I don't think it would happen like that if we played them again a thousand times, but it was a disastrous end to our championship. It's a scoreline we'll remember forever. For a team like Stabannon, with such a proud championship tradition, it really hurt." It was a far from fitting end to Stabannon's '03 championship crusade. As Martin explains: "We'd worked so hard to get out of the group and had done so well considering that we're re-building. If everyone had played well and we'd lost, then we'd be happy enough but it'll take a lot of character to come back from the beating we got. You can't pick any positives out of it. Our year ended on a complete and utter downer." Martin King knows a thing or two about Stabannon tradition. His grandfather Peter Lynch was on the first Stabannon side to win the county SFC in 1949, while his uncle, Frank Lynch, played for the club and has been heavily involved at backroom level for the past decade and more. Martin himself joined the club from St Kevin's in 1998, winning a Cardinal O'Donnell Cup that year, a SFC in '99 and an ACC Cup in 2000 (when Stabannon also lost the county final to the Blues). The 2003 team was trained by Monaghan legend Nudie Hughes, with the management triumvirate of Frank Lynch, Ken Reilly and John Cunningham handling team affairs. "We haven't a big pick at the best of times," Martin notes. "In 2003 we only had a panel of 19 or 20 at most, with a few long-term injuries and a couple of lads away for the year. This left us pretty thin on the ground and we couldn't even field a Junior 2 team for the championship. In that context, it's a great testament to the club and the people involved that we had such a good run last year. It was a great achievement. "We brought three seventeen-year-olds into the team this year - Cathal Sweeney, Cathal Halpenny and [county minor] Padraig Lynch. They all did really well in the league and held their own in the championship as well. They came up against some great players in their first year senior, and acquitted themselves very well. "Even though we still had Pat and Nicholas Butterly and Ken Reilly, we are rebuilding and it's mostly an inexperienced team. If we can hold on at senior for the next two or three years, and manage to rebuilt as a senior team, then we'd be chuffed. A lot of teams tend to slip back through the grades when they're rebuilding, so it would be excellent if we could avoid that." When people write Stabannon off, the players tend not to take too much notice. After all, football followers the length and breadth of the Wee County have been predicting the demise of the Green & Gold since time immemorial! Says Martin: People have been writing Stabannon off since I joined [98] and even going back to the mid-nineties - but they've won two senior championships since then, a senior league and a winter league. And we're still senior. "Even though the panel is tight and small, we're bringing players in and I think Louth people would have to say 'Fair Play' to the people involved in the club because there's a lot of behind-the-scenes work going into keeping the club up and running. There are so many phone calls made behind the scenes, a lot of organising done, serious amounts of unseen work invested in the club to ensure that Stabannon remain strong. Another point worth mentioning is that the current crop consists exclusively of players from Stabannon. The club has come under fire in the past for fielding players from outside the parish, and even outside the county, but this is no longer the case. "We now have a full Stabannon contingent with no outsiders," Martin confirms. "That's what we're sticking with and that's what we're going to work with for the future." Considering their limited resources, what were Stabannon's aims at the start of the 2003 season? Did they actually harbour hopes of winning the Joe Ward Cup? "Stabannon have a proud tradition in the championship, so we always set our sights high and then do our best to achieve those objectives. We knew we had less of a chance than we've had sometimes in the past, but the senior championship was still our goal. We have the tradition and that's what we fight for. We've done it before when nobody was really giving us a chance..." Perhaps the highlight of the year was those two wins over the Joes. In those games, lifted by the fierce rivalry that exists between the two clubs, Stabannon showed their true mettle. The Dromiskin/Darver outfit had been flying prior to then - where did Stabannon find the reserves of strength from to gun them down twice inside a fortnight? "There's a wonderful rivalry between ourselves and St Josephs. When it comes to championship football, there are always great games between the two of us and there's never much between us at the final whistle. There's never been anything between Stabannon and St Josephs and that was the case again in 2003, but fortunately we shaded both games. "Of course we were happy with how we played against the Joes but against the Brides we just didn't perform at all in either game and that was disappointing. Our biggest problem over the year was inconsistency. We had so many inexperienced players on the team, and I suppose this will always cause a slight lack of understanding, so we blew hot and cold. Every time we played well, we seemed to follow it up with a poor performance." This certainly holds true if one looks at the sequence of Stabannon's six championship games - win...defeat...win...defeat...win...defeat. Uncanny. Forgetting for a moment the Pats game, were Stabannon happy enough with how things went in 2003? "Yes. As a team, we still have a lot of learning to do and we did well to hold our own. There was a time there for ten or twelve years when no ordinary player could get onto the Stabannon team and that caused a gap, which we now have to fill. The players who were sitting on the bench but are getting their chance now are listening and are learning quickly, while the younger lads are adapting well too." What can this team achieve next year? "We have a couple of players coming back who missed the 2003 season through injury, Shane Sweeney is coming home from Australia, and our three youngest players have a year's experience now. We'll be hoping to take it a step further and go a step closer in the championship. "At the very least, we want to stay in the grade of football we're in. When we set our goals again at the start of the year, I'm sure the Joe Ward Cup will be mentioned as usual. The dream hasn't gone away and we'll continue setting our aspirations high. If we get that Stabannon hunger back, there's not a lot of teams that can live with us." The message coming out of Stabannon is loud and clear: if you're waiting for someone to roll over and die, then look elsewhere! Tweet

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