The GAA is built on tradition, and there is nothing more traditional in Gaelic Games than great family dynasties.

Trace the history of any county team in Gaelic Football or Hurling and you’ll see the same surnames consistently reappearing as you move back through the decades.

In our series – The GAA Gene – we profile the families that have given outstanding service through the generations.

This week we focus on the Downeys of Ballyragget, Kilkenny.

By John Harrington

For a while, Ann and Angela Downey would have been known as Shem Downey’s daughters, but not for long.

Well before their stellar camogie careers were over, Shem’s sporting fame was overshadowed by theirs and he became the Downey twins’ father.

Shem was a good one himself in his day, of course, winning one All-Ireland senior medal (1947) and three Leinster senior medals.

That haul was somewhat overshadowed by the medals his daughters accumulated, though, a combined total of 24 All-Ireland senior titles, 18 League titles, and 13 All-Ireland club titles.

Unless you were there to witness it, it’s impossible to convey just what sort of an impact the Downey twins had on camogie.

They were camogie. The two key-figures on an all-conquering Kilkenny team that brought the game itself to a new level as a sport and a much higher profile in the public consciousness.

They might have passed Shem out in the end, but they wouldn’t have become the players they did were it not for him.

He passed on his passion for the game and then facilitated theirs by ensuring they had every opportunity to become the best they could be.

“He was a huge influence,” Ann Downey told GAA.ie. “At the time they had us involved in sport basically to keep an eye on us and keep us out of trouble.

“It was a real family affair on a Sunday. We'd all get into the car and head off to whatever match we were playing whether it was in Dublin, Wexford, or Kildare or wherever it was.

“It was all to keep us out of trouble, but by the time we were done he was in more trouble than we were!”

The Downey twins had the best of both nurture and nature when it came to sport, and Shem was only one half of the equation.

Just as influential was their mother Brigid. Her own branch of the family tree also provided a well-spring of natural talent because her father Martin Dwyer was a noted hurler himself in his day.

She encouraged her five children to pursue sport as a hobby in the time-honoured way of Irish mammies – by ordering them to get out from under her feet and into the fresh air.

“My mother was fairly strict, you'd be put out and that was it,” says Downey. “You entertained yourself and then you were called in for the lunch.

“You went out and made do with what you had outside in the field or the yard which was mainly hurling.

“The five of us were always mucking around and you'd have the neighbours coming in.

“Ballyragget was a quiet village. We would have been out on the road when we were allowed with our next door neighbour Tommy Roberts belting ball off the wall. Then we'd be out at our house and he'd be down the road at his house and we’d be belting the ball (up and down).

“And we'd only have to stand in once in a while to let the car pass. It was a pass time, having the games in the back garden and trying to entertain ourselves.”

All of the Downey siblings were handy with stick and ball but Ann and Angela had the obsession you need to turn good into great.

Their sisters Olga and Maria played in school but didn’t thereafter, while their brother James was more into soccer because he wore glasses that weren’t as conducive to playing hurling.

Angela and Ann’s spark for camogie really flamed into life when it became a competitive pursuit at schools level with Presentation Castlecomer and St. Brigid’s College Callan, and also at club level with St. Paul’s in Kilkenny city.

“We started playing for St. Paul's because there was a man named Paddy Conway who would give Daddy a hand,” says Downey.

“He would see us in the back-garden playing and was heavily involved in St. Paul's at the time. He persuaded us to join St. Paul's in the city.

“In St. Paul's we met up with a lot of girls from different parishes who didn't have camogie in their parish. After '74 when Kilkenny won the first All-Ireland, that's when camogie really took off in a big way in the small parishes. After winning that All-Ireland it mushroomed.”

Both Ann and Angela were there for the first shots of the Kilkenny camogie revolution, winning their maiden All-Ireland medals in 1974.

That was Ann’s first year in the team, whereas Angela’s precocity had seen her called up two years previously in 1972.

They were different sorts of players. Ann was a commanding defender and a very fine hurler in her own right, but Angela’s speed, skill and scoring ability in attack would eventually see her commonly regarded as the greatest camogie player the game had ever seen.

Some people were less than kind when comparing the two twins. Ann can still remember the day when a man walked into her father’s butcher shop and, looking at her, enquired, “Well, Shem, is this the good one or the bad one?”

Back then Ann didn’t realise there was any perceived difference in their ability, but it wasn’t long before she’d lose that innocence.

It can’t be easy when your twin sister is placed on that sort of pedestal that overshadows your own considerable ability, but Ann never resented all the plaudits that came Angela’s way.

“They did (put her on a pedestal) and even to this day people would mistakenly call me Angela rather than Ann,” says Downey.

“For a long time in my own mind I thought that I was as good as Angela, but, sure, I wasn't a patch on her.

“The things she could do with a ball, especially if the team was in trouble. You could nearly always rely on her to get a point or a goal.

“Eventually when the penny dropped and I would have realised that she was better than me, I didn't have a problem with it.

“I never had a problem with it anyway because she always pulled the game out of the fire, there wasn't anything I could do.

“I worked hard at my game but I didn't have the polished finish or speed that Angela had and was recognised by everyone. I didn't have a problem with that, to be quite honest.

“My family would never have said that one of us were better than the other, that was something for those outside the family to say.

“Within the family we were equal and both as important to the team as anyone else was.”

Angela was a scoring machine for Kilkenny and the sort of player who seemed to always produce the decisive moment in evenly contested matches.

Quite often, though, when she was shooting holes in opposition defences the bullets were being supplied by her twin sister.

The two of them had a near telepathic understanding on the pitch, so when Ann came charging out of the Kilkenny defence with a ball she invariably found her twin sister with a perfectly weighted pass.

“I would have had a fair idea where she was,” says Downey. “I would have seen the movement or I'd know where she would like the ball best that she could come onto it and hit it off her left-hand side or right-hand side, depending on where she would be.

“Yeah, we had that understanding. I suppose playing in the back garden for all those years and bringing it into the playing pitch helped.”

When you win as much together as Ann and Angela Downey did for both club and county it can’t be easy to pick one highlight above all others.

Still, when she gives it some though, one day does rank above all others for Ann.

**“**The most special memory would be the 1994 All-Ireland Club Final that we played,” she says.

“We were playing with Lisdowney at the time and Lisdowney didn't have an enclosed pitch so the match was actually played in our own village of Ballyragget.

“We were playing Glen Rovers and we were 11 points down with 10 minutes to go and the crowd were leaving.

“We looked well beat against a strong Glen Rovers team that had players like Therese O'Callaghan, Linda Mellerick, the two Dunleas, Mary Ring.

“But we produced a great comeback on the day and ended up winning by six points. It was just unreal. That's a special memory, I suppose.”

1994 was also the year the Downeys won their last All-Ireland senior title with Kilkenny.

22-years would pass before the county would win another. When they did finally end the famine, it was fitting that the Downeys would play a big role once more.

Ann was team manager, and Angela was one of her selectors. Kilkenny camogie’s most famous double-act had delivered again.

“When we came in in '16 there was a lot made about Kilkenny not winning since '94,” she says.

“There was big pressure to try to get over the line. For me, I was just delighted for the girls, to be honest, to have that monkey off their back.

“We would have hoped to have won another few, but we lost to two brilliant teams in Cork and Galway.

“To compete in four All-Irelands after we took over was brilliant and a great achievement, but, of course, you always want to win and it was disappointing that out of the four we were in we only won one.

“There's great talent in Kilkenny. Brian Dowling has taken over now with Tommy Shefflin and Philly Larkin so I'm happy that it's in good hands.”

Not long stepping down as Kilkenny camogie manager, Ann was appointed manager of the Ballyragget men’s intermediate team.

She’d coached the team previously, but the appointment of a woman manager of a senior men’s club team in Kilkenny still made headlines.

The profile of camogie, gaelic football, and women’s sport in general in Ireland is rising all the time, but women coaches and managers are still scarce on the ground and not just in men’s sport, but women’s sport too.

Downey hopes she might break the trail for many more to follow in her footsteps.

“I was surprised by the reaction, to be quite honest. I didn't want that sort of a reaction because I don't want a situation where it puts pressure on the lads that they have to perform or we have to win just because I'm gone in over the team.

“I could name five or six women straight away that I know have been coaching and haven't gotten the same recognition or there hasn't been anything made about it.

“Maybe the fact that I've gone in as manager and that's a new role in Kilkenny for a woman. It's never happened here.

“If it had been in any other county, a lesser hurling county without being disrespectful, it might not have gotten the same press.

“The fact that it was Kilkenny and I was going in as a the first woman manager, it is great for women because it gives clubs the push to take a chance in asking the women they have in their clubs.

“It hopefully will give other women to have the confidence to let their name go forward.

“All you can do is do your best when you go into these jobs. There are plenty of great women coaches who I would hope, going forward, we'll see plenty more of them making the headlines.”

As is quite often the case in Kilkenny, the Downey GAA gene has now been passed on to another generation.

Kilkenny midfielder, Conor Browe, is a son of Angela’s and was one of the breakthrough stars of last year’s All-Ireland Championship.

Ann Downey has a very close relationship with his nephew and is hugely proud of what he has achieved to date in the game, but watching him play can be a trial as much as a pleasure.

“I enjoy going to the matches but I'm a nervous wreck even looking at it because you'd be hoping he wouldn't make a mistake,” she admits.

“I think at this stage I've learned to go to a different stand, maybe, and sit among the opposition so you don't hear the criticism if he does make a mistake.

“Conor works hard at his game but he needs time. He has a lot of experience to gain and if he can make the team on a permanent basis he'll gain that experience.

“He's young and hopefully we'll have many more years looking at him and enjoying the games that he's playing in.”

You can be sure that Conor doesn’t lack for encouragement from his mother and aunt in the same way they didn’t lack for it from their father Shem.

Just like them, he’s benefitting from the best of both nature and nurture.

“Hurling obviously in our DNA coming from Daddy and mammy's side, to have that hurling gene within us,” says Ann.

“But, really, it's a county thing. It's what you're born into. The sport that will be pushed and trained at so that your skills are worked on. It's not a football here in Kilkenny, it's a hurl.

“And, look, doesn't it bring us all together? I often wonder about people who don't have a match to go to on Sunday, what are they doing?

“We live for the games, especially when it's an outing for the family. It just brings people together, it's as simple as that.”