Coordination the key to Cuala's Dublin triumph

It's often said that it takes a village to raise a child.

For Dublin champions Cuala, who won their first ever senior football title on Sunday, it takes half a county to train a championship winning team.

That's because, as manager Austin O'Malley pointed out on RTÉ's Game On this week, the Dalkey club don't own any of the pitches they use to train on.

Like many other field game sporting organisations in south Dublin, they are renters. Any visitors to Cuala will know that there are a couple of pitches right beside the clubhouse, but these are the property of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council.

The senior team had to travel far and wide in their preparations for their successful campaign.

"We actually don't own a blade of grass. We don't own a pitch in Cuala, would you believe it," O'Malley said on 2FM.

"It's a Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown county council pitch, which obviously is always weather dependent, so it means we've got to move to Bray [Emmets]. That's been a major challenge throughout the whole campaign as well.

"You're lucky enough if you can get a pitch if Dalkey is closed and there are no lights in Dalkey either. So that's always a bit of a headache, when you're planning you really are a hostage to the weather there.

"The club has been great in terms of managing what we have. Drilling out of Shankill or Shanganagh there, and we have our pitch in Dalkey. Laurence's as well, which is a school, they're good enough to give us a pitch at times and then Bray as well. But they're juggling the whole time and it's a testament to the guys and the girls in the office in Cuala, the job they do.

"The growth of the club and the underage structures, it's obviously a dual club as well. It's always a major headache, you know. A great man