The population of Lurgan was around 28,000 at the last census.
Within that figure there’s around 50pc from a Unionist background with less inclination to gravitate towards Gaelic games. So, in broad terms, that leaves the potential GAA population at around 14,000, give or take. Yet Lurgan could justifiably claim to be up there with the most ‘concentrated’ towns, from a GAA perspective, in the country.
Tomorrow its most successful clubs, 14-time winners Clan na Gael, from the south of the town, and three-time winners Clann Éireann, which has traditionally drawn from the northern part, will meet in an Armagh senior final for only the third time.
Before that St Paul’s, another Lurgan club not far from Clan na Gael’s base, contest the Armagh intermediate football final against Carrickcruppen, their fourth final at this level in five years.
Win it and that will ensure three clubs from Lurgan contesting the 2025 Armagh SFC, a throwback to another time when all three clubs won Armagh titles between 1949 and 1954. Beyond this trio there are two other clubs that identify Lurgan as their catchment area. St Peter’s are located in close proximity to Clann Éireann while Éire Óg are based in nearby Craigavon. Within reach there is also Sarsfields and Wolfe Tones.
To have such a concentration of clubs, and successful ones at that, operating out of a town is rare. Some of the biggest towns in Leinster, for instance, are largely served by one club.
With Austin Stacks, Kerins O’Rahillys, John Mitchels and the emerging Na Gaeil, Tralee can lay claim to having the strongest football footprint of any town but Lurgan makes a strong case too.
“Lurgan’s problem has always been dilution of their talent,” says Jimmy Smyth, Clan na Gael stalwart and Armagh captain when they contested the 1977 All-Ireland final, losing to Dublin.
“Even Sarsfields and Wolfe Tones, there’d be parents who would have played with those clubs taking their kids back out to the mother club. The more teams in the town, the easier it was to pick them off.”
But competition has driven standards. Clann Éireann have focused hard over the last two decades on better underage structures and Clan na Gael have followed. Clann Éireann are the current Armagh minor champions, succeeding Clan na Gael who have won the last two. All of this against the background of the Troubles and how it depressed the town for decades.
Smyth remembers a time in the 1970s when he took charge of training the Armagh players from the north of the county in Lurgan, while Gerry O’Neill, then team manager, took everyone else in Carrickcruppen for security reasons after one of their players was followed home. But Lurgan is a different place, with much more cross-community activity accelerated by the impact of Covid and the collaborative response to it.
For Smyth, the parallels with 1968, when the two Lurgan clubs last met in a final, are evident everywhere.
“Clan na Gael had won three minor titles between 1965 and ’67, we had come up from intermediate three years earlier [Clan na Gael also won the Armagh intermediate title in 2020] and we beat Crossmaglen in the semi-final in ’68 [as they did this year too]. And Clann Éireann had won a senior title a few years earlier [1963, while they were Armagh senior champions in 2021],” he adds, noting how “everything moves in circles”.
For a time, when Crossmaglen’s dominance was at its peak and showed no sign of abating as they won 19 from 20 titles between 1996 and 2015, loose conversation around Lurgan would turn to pooling resources. It was only ever “pub talk”, acknowledges Smyth.
But as Crossmaglen has been weaned off that dominance there has been a very definite pivot to the northern half of the county. Maghery, close to the Lough Neagh shore, have been county champions in 2016 and again in 2020, before Clann Éireann’s 2021 success.
Even the make-up of Armagh’s All-Ireland-winning squad this summer had a strong north county identity, eight from Lurgan alone.
Tomorrow, Clann Éireann’s Barry McCambridge, Conor Turbitt and Tiernan Kelly, together with extended squad members Seán McCarthy and Daniel Magee, will be in opposition to Clan na Gael’s Stefan Campbell and Shane McPartlan.
In the curtain-raiser, Andrew Murnin will feature for St Paul’s. Include the other northern clubs and the numbers rise to 12 with Aidan Forker, Ben Crealey and Ciarán Higgins from Maghery and Oisín Conaty from Tír na nÓg.
“A rising tide lifts all boats,” says Brian Turbitt, father of Conor who is originally from Tyrone but has been involved with Clann Éireann since the early 1990s.
To illustrate the nature of the rivalry, both Turbitt and Smyth reference the presence of Clann Éireann players in the Clan na Gael clubhouse on the night of the 1968 final and how that was reciprocated 53 years later when Clann Éireann won a third title.
“Séamus McConville, who was playing for Clann Éireann, came down with friends to the Clans for a drink that night in 1968,” recalls Smyth. “I was talking to Aidan Patterson, our man of the match in ’68 with 1-4, and he went over to Clann Éireann [in 2021] all those years later, sought out McConville and bought him a drink for the gesture in 1968.”