‘When we started out we had just five or six players’

Sometimes, when Josie McKeigue looks around and sees how times have changed, she could be forgiven for breaking into one of her familiar smiles.

How camogie generally has changed and evolved as a game nationally - and locally. How facilities have improved immeasurably. How her beloved Navan O'Mahonys have become a force in the game - because when she arrived in the Meath town back in the late 1970s there wasn't a camogie section at the club known for their famous blue and white hoops. There weren't many camogie teams in Meath. Full stop.

Josie or Josephine Dillon as she was known then, had arrived in Navan to continue her career in the civil service. She brought with her her hurling stick and her love for the game. A love that had been fostered in her native Galway and later in Kerry where she worked for a number of years.

She felt there should be an opportunity for girls and women in Navan and surrounding areas to play the game. She put the word out. More than that she went out with her hurling stick and a few friends for regular puck arounds. Others followed. More and more became involved.

"Marie Quirke was one of the first to join up, then there was Olive Byrne and the two Fennessy sisters, Ann and Denise. The word of mouth went out, the concept took hold and people got behind the idea, they gathered up. When we started out we had five or six players," she recalls.

"The club were very good to us from the start and always have been, the gave us the use of the pitch, they provided us with hurling sticks, sliotars and jerseys. Danny Fitzpatrick (local businessman) sponsored tracksuit tops and bottoms, Zhivagos too. With such help we were able to move on."

The time came when it was felt there was enough players to put a team together. A few challenges were played, a few hefty beatings endured but the project was now up and running and clearly the idea of an O'Mahonys camogie team was viable.

Not only that, O'Mahonys became a force in the game. Their first major breakthrough was achieved when they won a Junior championship in 1979, just a year after the team was assembled. A senior title was landed in 1984. They had really arrived. Josie pushed on herself with her own career. As a full-back she played until she was 45 and made a few appearances in the green and gold of Meath.

Yet what Josie remembers, and treasures most, is not the memories of the games, and who scored what or who won what. It is the laughs, the funny moments, the friendships that proved to be lasting. Some of her former colleagues in the trenches, have, sadly, moved on but most, thankfully, are still around to recall those days. The glory days.

"We made such great friends, some of us from the early O'Mahonys team still meet up, six or seven of us and we have such banter."

When the time came for Josie McKeigue to hang up her boots and hurling stick she helped out in other ways. "I was treasurer and club delegate at the Co Board meetings for years. I was Scrooge," she adds giving another of her smiles.

She's still very much involved in fundraising for the camogie section. Cakes sales, bag-packing in local supermarkets, raffles, they all help to generate the necessary funds.

She's delighted at how camogie has evolved in O'Mahonys. She points out, with a sense of pride, how in 2024 they won the Intermediate Camogie title? How they are once again operating in the top flight. Once more the Hoops are a real force to be reckoned with in the game she loves.

"Josie has given the best part of 50 years to Navan O’Mahonys, particularly the camogie section," Navan O'Mahonys PRO Colin O'Brien added.

"She was recognised for her dedication at the club’s 2024 AGM, when she was elected vice-president. Josie is well known from the youngest players to our oldest members and always has a cheery smile and a kind word for everyone. She represents all that is good about Gaelic Games." That sums it up all right.

JOY AND SADNESS

Josie Dillon grew up in Killimor, near Ballinasloe, one of seven children in her family, five boys, two girls. She was from a farming background. She attended a boarding school in Banagher run by a French order of nuns. The school is now closed. She played hockey at the school and enjoyed her five years there.

She was happy, but there were moments of profound sadness too. When she was only 14 her father, Jim passed away from cancer. He was only 55. "I missed him terribly, he brought me to every hurling game, Killimor was, is, hurling country. That's where my love of the game was nurtured, going to see the local team play.

"May father died in 1968 and my brother, the eldest, had to give up school to look after the farm and he did great, never drank or smoked, he's still running the farm. My mother, Kitty, passed away in 1976, she was only 56. A heart attack."

Josie feels the loss of both her parents early in her life fostered in her a strong sense of independence. She also learned from them the value of a strong work ethic and the sense that anything was possible once you were prepared to give a project your time and commitment.

After a spell studying in a commercial college in Limerick, Josie landed a job with the Civil Service. She was among the first public servants to work inside the Garda Siochana structure, as an administrator. She was posted to Tralee and played camogie with Castleisland. How she got around said something about the relatively innocent times.

"I used to hitch hike on my own from Tralee to Castleisland. I would hitch two days a week in the summer for training and a game at the weekend," she recalled. "I was later joined by two other girls. We never failed to get a lift.

Josie was transferred to Navan to work with the locally-based Gardai and one of the pieces of luggage she brought up her was her passion for camogie. It wasn't long until she started to put the idea of staring up a team at O'Mahonys into practice.

Life changed in other ways. She married Sean McKeigue, a Galwayman who landed a job as a maintenance fitter with Tara Mines. They settled in Balreask, Navan and went about the job of raising their family - Niall, Shane and Sinead, all of whom were to become closely involved with Gaelic games in one form or another.

Niall and Shane proved to be richly talented footballers who helped to turn Navan O'Mahonys into a formidable football force. They both played for Meath also, Niall as an ultra reliable, super tenacious back who curtained the influence of many of the high-flying forwards of his era.

Niall was a central figure in helping Meath win their last Leinster SFC title in 2010. Shane was a sharpshooting marksman at club and inter-county level and would have featured more for Meath but for injury.

PADDY O'BRIEN PARK

Josie gave up her career in the Civil Service and opened a famed B&B at Balreask. These days she enjoys going down to Paddy O'Brien Park to watch one or other of the O'Mahonys teams play, in hurling, football, and of course, camogie. Some of those teams include one or other of her grandchildren.

It's impossible to escape what the passing years have wrought and how camogie has altered.

"When he started out we had nothing. Now players have the gear, there's transport, players are coached much better, the standards are way up compared to our day. We focused more on ground hurling, now players can pick it up and score which takes a lot of skill. Even the sliotar was different back then, a heavy leather thing, big ridges, the hurling stick was much bigger too - and we didn't have helmets!

"Some things might have changed, but you still have to have the skills, that hasn't changed, and players are taught the skills these days, they are properly coached," she adds. "Some of the girls that started with O'Mahonys never hurled until they were 19 or so.

"Ann Fennessy, for instance, was a great runner and she turned out to be one of the best camogie players in the county but she never played the game until she was nearly 20. Imagine just how good she and others like her would have been if they had been coached from a very young age."

Josie McKeigue's heart is gladdened by the sight of so many youngsters now playing camogie in the blue and white of O'Mahonys. She can take a bow for her part in helping to start the whole thing. Her part in sparking a revolution.