My Club and I: Dean Rock

In the latest of our 'My Club and I' series on GAA.ie, we speak to Dublin's All-Ireland winning forward Dean Rock about his club, Ballymun Kickhams.

Interview: Brian Murphy

Named after the Irish revolutionary Charles Joseph Kickham and founded in 1969, Ballymun Kickhams has an impressive honours list for a relatively new club, winning county titles in 1982 and '85, before adding a third, after a 27-year gap, in 2012. Dean Rock played a starring role in that side, which went on to Leinster success before losing to St. Brigid's of Roscommon in the All-Ireland final.

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In winning a county title, Dean Rock followed in the famous footsteps of his father, Dublin legend Barney, who played on the successful Ballymun Kickhams team of the 1980s.

Among the Ballymun players who have represented Dublin in the past are Anto McCaul, John Kearns, Gerry Hargan, Ian Robertson and Paddy Christie. Dean Rock, James McCarthy, Seán George and Philly McMahon are all part of Jim Gavin's current Dublin squad.

Based in the sprawling suburb of the same name on the north side of Dublin city, Ballymun's clubhouse and pitches at Páirc Ciceam, which were opened in 1997, are just off the M50 close to Dublin Airport and include a fully floodlit artificial pitch.

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Can you remember your first involvement with the club?

I would have started with Ballymun at the age of six. My dad, Barney, would have brought me down from day one and I have played with the club since then, all the way through to minor and to where I am now as a senior.

I would have gone through all the underage levels. James McCarthy, who also plays with Dublin, is my best mate so we would have come through at the same stage all the way through the ranks at Ballymun.

We play right beside the airport so my clearest memories are of the cold weather on Saturday mornings and all the planes going over your head as you are playing matches. They are the kind of things that stand out as a kid playing with Ballymun. I have nothing but fond memories of my time playing with the club as a kid.

You live in Garristown near to the Meath border in North Co. Dublin. Was there ever a doubt over whether or not you would follow in your father's footsteps to Ballymun?

Ballymun was always where I went. Dad brought me up there as soon as I was ready to play really. I would have played in the Fingal Schools League as a kid growing up in Garristown National School. My mother is from that area so my father had no choice but to set up shop there! I was never tempted to play for Meath or anything like that, though.

How has the club changed since you first started going down as a young lad?

The club has developed hugely since I started playing with them when I was six. We have an all-weather pitch now and we have great facilities in the clubhouse as well so it's certainly evolved an awful lot in the last 20 years. That can only be a good thing for the kids coming through the underage grades now.

Of the team that played in the All-Ireland club final last year, how many did you play with on underage teams growing up?

Myself, Jason Whelan, Ted Furman and James McCarthy. The four of us would have been the backbone of an U13 or U14 team back in the day. The team two years above us is where the rest of the team came from - Alan Hubbard, Philly McMahon, Eoin Dolan and guys like that.

In the county final that we won against Kilmacud in 2012, I think 14 of the 15 that started played in the U21 final the year before so we kind of would have all come up and played together at various stages.

With so many future Dublin stars in the team, did you enjoy a lot of success with Ballymun in the underage grades?

When we were Féile, we probably had six or seven good players that carried the rest! I think we were only in the 'C' Division at the time. We won the U13 'C' in Dublin the year before but didn't go on to represent the county or anything like it.

As a minor team, we got to a county semi-final but we were always lagging behind the likes of Kilmacud and Ballyboden, who just had much bigger picks at the time. We did well for what we had.

Can you remember the first time you played for the Ballymun senior team?

The first time I got called up was after being involved with the Dublin U16s. I was on the bench for the championship semi-final against Oliver Plunketts. It was a daunting experience at that stage of my career because it was a full house in Parnell Park, looking on and wanting to come on but knowing that you were there for the experience more than anything.

My first experience of playing was in league games the following year, but my championship debut was against Kilmacud in the quarter-final of the championship, when they beat us by a point. Kevin Nolan, Cian O'Sullivan and Rory O'Carroll were all playing for them so that was a great experience.

How big a deal was the county title win in 2012?

It was massive. It was the club's first county title since 1985 so to win one after 27 years was huge for the club. We had been beaten in semi-finals and quarter-finals by eventual winners and stuff like that in the past. We had gone the whole season unbeaten coming up to the championship final, which was our 20th game. We had a lot of confidence and we knew what we were about because Paul Curran set us up with a game-plan that we went with.

The whole community got behind us. It was massive, but you only realise after how big winning a county title is. We had won two U21s in a row, but you don't get the magnitude of it and all the hard work people have put in to get the club to that point. With the run we went on then after, it was an amazing year for us.

Did the county title win and the subsequent run to the All-Ireland final help cement the bond between the club and the community in Ballymun?

A bandwagon jumped on which is the same with every team because if a team is winning people will want to follow them. But that's what we had to do - we had to win a Dublin Championship and get the profile up there so more people would come and join the club and get involved.

Every game we went through in Leinster, more and more people came along and when we eventually got to Croke Park the support was amazing. But you have local figures like Philly McMahon who is a great man for the club and tries to get the young lads around to come up and play. He's a role model and gives the youth of Ballymun someone to look up to. At the minute it's the GAA team and hopefully that will bring more people to the club.

How does Ballymun Kickham continue to attract new members in a community where there are so many distractions - sporting and otherwise - for young people?

We have a GAA Development officer, James Glancy from Leitrim, and he does a huge amount of work going through the schools and recruiting players. When I was young, why most lads didn't come down to the club was because of transport - trying to get from Ballymun to our grounds by the airport. That was the biggest turn-off for lads trying to get to training. The parental support for the kids is great now and parents are making that choice much easier for kids. But, again, James Glancy does a huge amount of work for the club and we can thank him for a lot of the success we are having at underage level at the minute.

How important a role do you think the club play for young people in the area?

I'm sure there are lads on our team now that, without football, could be in a much worse off place. Gaelic football has been huge for a lot of the members on our team. On the underage teams coming up, it's a great distraction on a Saturday night to know that you have a game coming up on a Sunday morning. I think having so many guys involved with Dublin from the Ballymun senior team gives the underage players role models to look up to and people they want to aspire to be like. It keeps them off the streets and out of trouble.

(Photo: Ballymun team-mates, from left, Dean Rock, Phillip McMahon and James McCarthy following the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Final win over Mayo in 2013)

Ballymun's social problems are well documented, but does the club sometimes get a bad reputation as a result?

Both on the field and off the field we try to act just like any other team, but obviously we will always have the Ballymun tag assigned to us. I think the community is getting much better all the time. The towers have come down and it's not really the kind of community that some people think it is. It has that perception, but it's starting to get better nowadays. We play hard on the pitch with Ballymun and have a reputation for being tough, but we don't mind that.

What has been the highlight of your club career to date?

The county title win in 2012. Personally, it was a big thing because I had been dropped off the Dublin panel in May of that year and I set out my stall then to win the Dublin Championship. That was it. It was a big stepping stone for my career. It was a great memory, going back to that game (against Kilmacud) and watching it again. It set us up as a club moving forward.

Finally, it's clear the senior team is on good shape, but what are the underage structures like in the club?

We have a very strong U16 team, which Paddy Christie has brought through. They won the All-Ireland Féile three years ago. They played in the U16 'B' Championship a year early last year and won that so they are a very strong team. You could be seeing a lot of those players coming through to the senior team in Ballymun over the next two or three years to add to what we already have there at the minute. The future is looking good for Ballymun.