LOTG: Kildare and Rathangan's Eddie Cusack

From Intermediate titles to Celebrity Bainisteoir, Rathangan GAA has seen plenty of excitement in the last 30 years or so. One born and reared Rathangan man, Eddie Cusack, was there to see it all.
A local lad not spurred on to join the club by his parents was instead influenced by the presence of his brothers David and Alan and their involvement in GAA. The decision to follow in their footsteps would prove an inspired one.
“I got on the senior team in 1989. A lot of lads came through at the same time, there were a lot of lads around my age or a year or two older than me. My debut was against Two Mile House and I would have been 16. If you were any good you could play any time back then,” Eddie explained
Rathangan’s young crop of the late '80s would truly make their mark in 1991 with the capture of an U21 Championship which laid the foundations for what was to come.
“We hadn’t done much after winning Intermediate in '81 and if you are asking what changed, I would say Joe Lynch the trainer changed us. He was the principal in the National School when we were all young lads. We all learned to play football under him and he took over U21s that year we won it,” Eddie recalled.
“We would have gone through a brick wall for him. He made us believe we were much better than what we were. We beat Towers in the semi-finals of that Championship with Glenn Ryan and the Donnellans. They were after winning it the year before and were still all nearly under-age again. Joe Lynch was what changed us.”
The following year’s senior efforts would end at the hands of Castlemitchell before the young guns came good to win the 1993 Intermediate Football Championship, the club’s first since '81 and just third ever. It was hard earned too with the first clash with finalists Eadestown ending in a 3-5 to 0-14 draw.
“It was probably chaotic and it was a lot more catch and kick compared to what you see today. There was no going backwards or even sideways really,” Eddie chuckled.
Second time out was a much more traditional score line with Rathangan edging the decider 0-9 to 0-8 to take home the IFC title.
“We had Eamonn Fitzpatrick playing with us who had won a Leinster U21 with Kildare in '92. He was playing centre-back and had a great game, him and Eric Dockery, who was also on that team, they were brilliant. It was a good, strong team performance, but those two boys played really well,” Eddie explained.
The 1992 Leinster U21 winning Kildare team would of course form the base for the great Lilywhites teams of later in the decade. That side featured the likes of Niall ‘Nuxer’ Buckley, Anthony Rainbow and Ronan Quinn. The Rathangan contingent were no bystanders either with Eric Dockery getting two crucial second-half goals to beat Laois in the Championships opening round.
However, the winning score of the '93 Intermediate Championship would fly from the boot of Mick Maloney as Rathangan kept it simple en-route to victory.
“Brian Gorry was in goals and he kicked the ball out to Mick in the middle of the field, he caught it, took a few steps, and put it over. It was one pass and over, you can’t get any more direct than that. It was even direct for 1993 football,” Eddie remarked.
“That win was huge at the time because it brought a lot of young lads down to the field too. We were very strong at underrage and if not then, soon after, we started to compete at ‘A’ level in U16 and Minor.”
Despite being just 20 years old, Eddie remained realistic about his future endeavours with the club and, unlike many young footballers, knew to savour glory when it came around.
He said, “We knew we weren’t going to win every year, but we were confident. I remember lads saying that we could win a Senior title by the turn of the century and that didn’t pan out of course. That was a very young team in 1993 barring maybe my brother, Liam Kelly and one or two others. Then lads sort of went off working, emigrated or just lost interest in it. Then we were back down to the bare minimum of numbers.
“Even back then, and maybe it was a failing on our part, I remember thinking that this doesn’t happen too often. Maybe we should have looked further than that, but I was telling myself to enjoy this because this might not happen again.”
Rathangan’s stint at Senior would peak with the reaching of the quarter-final stage in 1998 where they came up short against Sarsfields. The Sash were finalists the previous year and would go on to win the '99 Senior Championships.
A couple of seasons later Rathangan were back at Intermediate in what Eddie referred to as “a fall from grace” following relatively recent exploits towards the business end of Senior football.
“Nicky Connell came in (2001) and he really took us on. When Nicky came in, he had us running around Killinthomas Wood and had us training really hard. We were really fit. He got us back into it and it was great at that time,” Eddie explained.
In an unusual reunion, Rathangan would once again meet Eadestown in the Intermediate Championship final and emerged victorious at the first time of asking in the 2001 decider.
“We had brought through another few young lads at the time. Even now you hear lads saying about the current Rathangan team that they are very young, but we had a lot of young lads at that stage alongside the four or five that had won it in ’93. It was the young lads that really turned it on in the final. They ran amuck,” Eddie recalled.
“Brendan McMullen, Davy Connell and Brian Flood, I think they scored 10 or 11 points from play between them. They were only 19 or 20 at that stage too.”
The youthful Rathangan forwards were responsible for the lion’s share of scores as they came out on top by 1-14 to 1-11 in the '93 final.
“It was a great game. We won by three points and that was our biggest margin of victory all year. We beat Celbridge, Rheban and Kill all by a point I think. It was a tough Championship to win and Celbridge were red-hot favourites and did win it the next year,” Eddie said.
After two Intermediate Championships wins, the next raising of profile for the club would be their 2009 outing on Celebrity Bainisteoir.
Rathangan were managed by presenter Ray D'Arcy and exited early on to Northern Irish broadcaster Derek Davis’ Glasdrumman side.
“It brought great interest to the club. There were lads down at the field that I hadn’t seen for I don’t know how long. We were getting 46 or so training. We were beaten by a point, but the referee was a bit hard on us that day,” Eddie recalled.
“We were meant to play a Keogh Cup game, but it got moved back because of Celebrity Bainisteoir. I think we were barely able to get a team the Wednesday after it, after getting 40-odd lads training the week before,” he laughed.
Despite mixed feelings about the presence of RTÉ’s prime-time reality programme, Eddie reflects fondly on many years of service with Rathangan and remains indebted to those who enabled those experiences.
He concluded, “There were no mobile phones or much communication when we were growing up so you would love going down to train with the lads and having the craic. I grew up with all them lads and you see a lot less of them when you stop playing. I have great memories of it and wouldn’t change them for the world.”