Portarlington players from left Rioghan Murphy, Ronan Coffey and Jake Foster celebrate after the AIB Leinster GAA Football Senior Club Championship Quarter-Final match between Portarlington and St Loman's at MW Hire O’Moore Park in Portlaoise, Laois.
By John Harrington
When the Portarlington players run out onto the Croke Park pitch for tomorrow’s AIB Leinster Club SFC semi-final against Kilmacud Crokes, it’ll be a homecoming of sorts.
It’s the first time the club has played a competitive match at headquarters, but their distinctive jersey was once a regular sight there.
That wine-red geansaí with a green sash was once proudly worn by the players of the Hibernian Knights football club in Dublin who were formed in 1906 by a group of shop-assistants and bar-men working in the city.
Back then Croke Park was known as Jones Road, and it was the Knights’ home pitch until they disbanded in 1916.
Two Portarlington men, Pat and Peter Finlay, were involved with the club and it was thanks to this connection that Portarlinton came to borrow a set of jersies from the Hibernian Knights.
The Laois men must have liked the colours, because they quickly decided to adopt them as their own and have used them ever since.
One of the oldest GAA clubs in the country, it’s believed that a Portarlington team was created shortly after the GAA was formed in 1884, but they didn’t become officially affiliated until 1888.
In their long history they’ve won 14 county senior titles but never reached a Leinster Final.
It would be fitting if they could create history on the day their distinctive jersey returns to Croke Park for the first time in over 100 years.
