Looking back: The days of Emfa, Kilkenny City and Buckley Park

Emfa AFC was founded as a community-based soccer club, initially, largely confined to the Kilkenny City housing estates of Emmet Street, Fatima Place and Newpark.

The club took its name from the place where it was founded - Emmet Street and Fatima Place (Em-Fa). No, the title ‘Every Man a Football Artist’ was not the correct translation of the acronym of the letters Emfa - it was local wordsmith, Enda McEvoy who was accredited with having coined the phrase - while Gerry Moran came up with the name of the club, Emfa, almost 60 years ago.

The founding fathers included John Cleere, Jimmy Rhatigan, Gerry Moran, Paddy Phelan and Tommy McGrath. Some of the earliest players for the club included the aforementioned as well as Brendan O’Brien, S Lanigan, John Hennessy, Gussie Dullard, Tommy Gaffney, Murty McDonald, Martin Heffernan, John Dooley, a number of whom are now sadly deceased, amongst others. Nicknames were common currency of the time too with Sarge, Archie, Marbles, Mitch, Gort, Alfie, Garne, Bandy, Bugsy, Chicken, Hopper, Nanny, Shesh, Snowball, Tiny, Toots and many others.

The club came about in 1966, when a group of teenagers at the local Christian Brothers school at James’s Street were sitting around a desk. Having decided to form a soccer club, the students hatched a plan and pretty soon Emfa was born. Jimmy Rhatigan was appointed as the club’s secretary, a position he held for over 50 years through Emfa FC years and into the Kilkenny City FC era.

Initially Emfa competed in the under-18 Kilkenny Youth League under the management of Newpark man Donie Butler. Donie later served as Commercial Manager of the FAI during the Jack Charlton years, across the 1980s and 1990s. The club was unable to afford a new set of jerseys and so agreed to play in an all-white strip, the logic being that all the players had at least one white T-shirt or shirt they could wear. The club's colours changed to claret and blue when they entered junior soccer.

Jim Rhatigan recalls how passionate the founders were about the game.

“We loved football and we used to play morning, noon and night,” he explained. “We wanted a team of our own, there was none in our area. It was easy enough to do, you tell one lad he is the manager, another lad he has to organise fundraisers, I became the secretary and we just made it happen.

“We used to train on the green in front of our houses at Fatima Place. One of our friends was the manager so we always made the team.”

The Emfa under-18s team was backboned by local lads, Then, in the early 1970s, the group progressed to playing junior football in the second division of the reformed Kilkenny & District League (K&DL).

Rhatigan became their manager and they proved to be quite successful.

Kilkenny City players Brendan Rea, Pascal Keane and Richie Hale celebrate their side’s promotion following victory during their Bord Gáis National League First Division match against Waterford at Buckley Park in 1997. It was City’s first time in the top flight Picture: David Maher / SPORTSFILE

“It very quickly blossomed into an amazing experience. We ended up with 30 schoolboy teams. We won the K&DL Junior League, McCalmont Cup and Maher Shield titles without losing a match. It was wonderful to watch it grow and then when the success came it really added to it.”

Off the field, things were going well for the burgeoning club too. Emfa had been playing their games at St James’s Park, but managed to lease new grounds at Tennypark around 1974 which they eventually bought in 1979, thanks to several great loyal soccer men like Joe Walsh, Richard Murtagh, Patrick Henderson, Martin Buckley and Sean Bateman going guarantor as Trustees with the Bank for a loan of £16,000.

This was a major stride forward for Kilkenny soccer as Emfa became the first club in the history of the game in Kilkenny to purchase their own grounds. The grounds were later named Buckley Park in honour of a great servant of the game, Marty Buckley.

The junior team was making its way in Kilkenny soccer with great community people like Sean Keogh, Paddy Cummins, Michael Knox and Michael Fahy all of whom played key pivotal roles as Chairmen of the club. Many others followed like Paddy and Eamon Cleere, Jim Carew, John Dollard, Peter Walsh, Ger Phelan, Billy Fahy and Frank Morrissey and many more. The older generation of Marty Buckley and Paddy Henderson were shrewd advisors to have in your corner. Jimmy Rhatigan was Honorary Secretary for the 19-year lifespan of Emfa FC in the Kilkenny & District League.

On the playing front Emfa won promotion from Division Two of the Kilkenny & District League to Division One in 1972. They had seven lean years before winning one of the K&DL majors as in the First/Premier Division title in 1978. This was then followed by rapid success when winning 10 majors like league, cup and shield in the next eight seasons. The club had now become the standard bearers on and off the pitch, for the K&DL.

The foundations of the unparalleled success at this time was their investment in the schoolboys and youth structure within the club. They broadened the intake base of schoolboys from all areas of the city. The club organised teams from the age of under-nine right through to under-18. It attracted parents and junior players as coaches and team managers within this structure. A young Fatima Place man, Michael Walsh, was appointed general manager of this section. Like any good house it was built on solid foundations. Emfa swept all in front of it over the 10-year period before 1985.

By now Emfa was providing players for the Leinster FA team and the Republic of Ireland junior international squad with the likes of Chris Bateman, Milo Breen and Michael Walsh all capped for their country. Jimmy Donnelly and others were now making their way in League of Ireland soccer. Former Emfa Junior players to play in the League of Ireland with Emfa were Chris Bateman, Milo Breen, Michael Walsh, Jimmy Donnelly, Jimmy Leahy, David McDonald, Peter Murtagh and Seanie Roberts. John Coleman, Paddy Geoghegan, John Croke, Tommy Bambrick and Michael Reddy were others to follow.

On the operational side the club was progressing too. It had a group of determined individuals at the helm and in 1984 it was decided that senior soccer and League of Ireland football was next on the agenda.

In 1985 Emfa competed in the First Division of the National League. The club welcomed Derry City to Buckley Park for their first game in the League and finished 10th that season. It’s estimated that over 3,000 people attended that first game.

However, it was a pity that the club could not afford to retain its schoolboy, youth and junior sections of the club structure following entry into the League of Ireland. The schoolboy section was at the very heart of the local community aspect of Emfa AFC.

Former Kilkenny City manager Alfie Hale was a legend of Irish soccer. Picture: Sportsfile

The building blocks were already in place and it meant that the club retained its natural fan loyalty base which had been painstakingly built up over two decades. This sector could have been the Emfa Academy for developing local players aspiring to play League of Ireland football as well as keeping its natural fan base.

This alternative approach largely led to many of the club’s players now coming from Waterford with a small sprinkling of locals including players from Tipperary and Carlow making up the numbers. However Emfa’s core fanbase remained fairly loyal for a good period of their 22-year journey in the League of Ireland.

In 1987, the club had its first taste of success when it won the First Division Shield. Finn Harps were the opposition for the game in Oriel Park, which Emfa won 4-2. The win was a huge milestone in the club’s development and, on reflection, in their history too. It was good for the team to win something because people started to stand up and take note and the city began to get very interested. Interest also stemmed from further afield in County Kilkenny and surrounding areas too like Carlow, Tipperary, Wexford, and Laois.

Four years later, in 1989, Emfa changed its name to Kilkenny City. Along with the name alteration, the longstanding claret and blue colours were traded for the more traditional Kilkenny colours of black and amber as the club’s officers wanted to enhance the appeal of the club to a larger audience both locally and nationally.

A huge boost was the arrival of Tom Cantwell of TC Tyres on the scene. Bringing strong business principles, a new dynamic now prevailed. Kilkenny City was going places. The business community of Kilkenny began to embrace the direction that the club was going in. Much of this was down to the respect and esteem that TC, as he was affectionately known, was held in by commercial concerns in Kilkenny City and county.

In 1991, the club went on a fantastic FAI Cup run with Joe McGrath as manager. City reached the semi-finals, where they were eventually beaten by Shamrock Rovers in front of over several thousand fans at Buckley Park. It was a great boost for the club to show what it was capable of and also to give the club a realistic goal of competing with the biggest clubs in the country.

Over the following years City held their own in the League of Ireland, but the 1996/’97 season was a real breakthrough. Alfie Hale, an Irish soccer legend, was the manager and his star status ensured there was a real buzz around the club.

Kilkenny won the First Division title with 11 points to spare over Drogheda United and earned promotion to the Premier Division - Kilkenny City had arrived at the top table of Irish domestic soccer. In 1996 the officers of Kilkenny City FC formed the club into a limited company and established a very small board of directors.

“At this stage we had a real belief in the club; we felt it was really coming,” said Rhatigan. “Alfie lit the fuse. We would have crowds of over 1,000 people at our Sunday matches. It was great to see it.”

However, their stint in the top flight was short lived, as City was relegated that same season back to where it began. A couple of years later they gained promotion again but it was a similar story for the young club and they couldn’t stay up, their progress was halted once more.

The report from Emfa’s first League of Ireland game in 1985

In 2005, Pat Scully took over and he gave the club a much-needed boost. It went from bottom of the table halfway through the season to fourth by the end of it. Scully’s success attracted the attention of Shamrock Rovers and he departed by the beginning of the next season. During all of this time the stadium was being developed. Two stands had been erected, Tennypark House Stand could hold 600 people and the City End stand catered for 1,000 fans. A TV gantry and floodlights had been installed. The pitch had been railed off, car park created, shop, hospitality rooms and additional turnstiles installed.

There are many treasured memories of a former farmer’s field at Tennypark, Derdimus, otherwise known to you and I as Buckley Park today. The first major occasion at Tennypark was the playing of the FAI Oscar Traynor final in 1976 between the Kilkenny & District League and the Dublin Amateur League, when the Kilkenny side won a men’s national soccer title for the first time.

This was followed by the first Kilkenny Youths side to play in a national final in 1980 against the Cork AUL, while the FAI Cup semi-final versus Shamrock Rovers in 1991 has been already referred to. Many other inter league games took place at the venue also.

Derry City made their inaugural League match debut in the League of Ireland at Tennypark. The venue has also hosted a number of underage international games involving Republic of Ireland teams as well as cross-channel clubs like Chelsea, Brighton & Hove Albion and St Mirren in preseason friendlies.

In the period that followed several managers came and went. Finances were an issue for the club, as for many sides around the country. By the end of 2007, it was clear that things were coming to an end. Kilkenny City played its final League of Ireland game, losing 3–1 at home to Finn Harps. In January 2008, Kilkenny City resigned from the League. Since then some junior clubs in the K&DL have leased the grounds from time to time since 2008 such as Freebooters, Fort Rangers, Newpark and Castlewarren Celtic.

The game of soccer in Kilkenny will forever be indebted to Jimmy Rhatigan, not just in bringing his dream to fruition with senior soccer arriving in Kilkenny, but also for the massive role he played as a journalist as the soccer correspondent of the Kilkenny People from 1967 until 2005. Along with his great friend and fellow director Tom Cantwell, he built a senior soccer team and a stadium at Buckley Park.

And what of Buckley Park? The once home of Kilkenny City is barely recognisable, the grounds largely lying silent.

I have no doubt that with the goodwill of all Kilkenny football people, the Buckley Park trustees, the FAI, the Kilkenny & District League and Local Authority, a new Buckley Park could be developed as a regional community centre of soccer excellence for Kilkenny Carlow and Laois, a facility which is so badly required today by the soccer playing girls and boys of the community in our region.

With the 60th anniversary of the foundation of Emfa AFC just around the corner, what a lovely anniversary present it would be to have Buckley Park as a thriving soccer stadium once again.