BIG READ: 'Booters legends go back in time to club's foundations - Kilkenny Live

Freebooters and its role in the lives of so many Kilkenny sportspeople is one perhaps some take for granted today. But, little do they know how the seeds were sown for a club, that for a considerable period in Irish history, was shunned for promoting the game of our former colonisers.

From the trailblazers who secured the club’s very first McCalmont Cup title in 1955, to the heroes of '99, 2002 and 2008, who reached the holy grail of winning the Leinster Junior Cup, it’s certainly been a rollercoaster for the boys in blue.

As generations of teams move on, 2025 marks a significant anniversary as the club celebrates 75 years in existence, with euphoric highs and excruciating lows sprinkled across the city club’s decorated history, with memories created by founding visionaries like; John Roberts, Dean Dooley, Terry Cullen, Mick Mooney, Joe Doyle and others.

Doyle, still held in high esteem locally, reflected fondly on those early days when he sat down for a cuppa with good friends Noel O’Sullivan and John Brennan in recent weeks. An afternoon full of laughs, old yarns and many fond memories.

But, for all their success, the team were far from 'Galacticos' in those formative years, shaped from a team of postmen who entered the league a year earlier.

"We were hopeless, really," Doyle admitted.

"You see, none of us had ever played soccer before, we had never seen it on the television. The only soccer we saw playing was in Pathé News and things like that which used to come on in the cinema," he explained.

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"We were actually playing Gaelic football without the hands."

At the time of the club’s inception, football was just rising to its feet again after years of false starts. The World War II years, 1939-1945 were difficult for sport in general in Ireland due to fuel and food rationing and the game struggled as a consequence.

However, a bright new era dawned for the game in 1948 with Kilkenny AFC being reformed and a local league established. The door had firmly opened for the birth of Freebooters.

By 1950 the club had been founded and despite some rocky days in their inaugural years, a sleeping giant had taken refuge in Kilkenny...

For Joe, it’s been a lengthy journey with the club, serving as a player, manager and member of the committee. In the formative years particularly, old school public attitudes certainly had a bearing on players, with many secretly playing both GAA and soccer.

"You were looked down on," Joe explained.

"The idea that you would play soccer before hurling just wasn’t accepted at all, reciting somebody enquiring about him in the post office who commented at the time, ‘oh yeah Joe Doyle, he’s a nice fella alright, but he got mixed up in that soccer crowd.

"There was an atmosphere at that time that showed up that," he remarked.

On the pitch, after a mixed opening to their history, Joe blissfully recalls trips to the St Mary’s Club in Cardiff, which formed lasting friendships and a tight knit bond between players.

By 1971, the club was making waves, as they finally found the lease to their forever home, the Fair Green.

"It was the first time that Freebooters had a pitch," Noel commented.

"The grass was very high so we all got in and started cutting the grass. So, we got it clean and it took off in 1971 and it was going so well in that season that there was an awful lot more that wanted to play for us so we decided we’d have a second team," he added, noting, within three years they had two junior teams, a youths team and eight schoolboys teams.

Playing host to two junior teams didn’t come without criticism, as players fought hammer and tongs, vying for a starting place in the A team.

"In the 70s, we were a very, very good team," John added.

“We were running for honours nearly every season. We got to the cup final. We won the league, we won a double with Joe (Doyle), a double with Ber Scott and back in the 60s, the lads won a double as well in Joe’s time," he recalled.

The club’s founding members could hardly have thought their endeavours would have led to such glittering success and growing playing numbers, with some of those special days with Joe as the gaffer.

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"Joe was strict (as a manager), if you weren’t playing well, you were gone," John claimed.

"Individually, they were very good players, they weren’t brilliant and we never planned different moves," Joe remarked.

"The secret with junior football is that if you were fit enough and you had a modicum of defence that you’d do well," he claimed, but despite some memorable days on the line, worry was Joe's ultimate feeling.

"Instead of worrying about yourself you had to worry about eleven others.

Looking ahead, as numbers expand, could Joe ever envisage a day 'Booters would ever leave the Fair Green?

"I can’t see it happening in the future but I mean progress is progress, things move on so I wouldn’t look back.

"It’s only football, let them at it."

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