A village with 477 residents. A community without a local post office or shop. A GAA club with 115 members. This is the parish we have come to know so well: Mullinalaghta.
The tiny village in Co Longford served up one of the most impressive GAA success stories in recent memory on Sunday when they overcame Kilmacud Crokes to win the Leinster Football Club final.
As Donegal sports fans wondered how Gaoth Dobhair defied the odds to come out on top in Ulster, Barry Mulligan, a Letterkenny taxi man, a Mullinalaghta native, headed south to Leinster to watch his beloved parish take on an outfit that were crowned All-Ireland champions twice before.
Barry, who is the uncle of Mullinalaghta’s captain Shane Mulligan and Francis Mulligan, left the village in 1968 for Dublin before making the move North to Donegal in 1971.
A retired Garda Officier, Mulligan said ‘never in his wildest dreams’ did he think he would see his home village win a Leinster Football Club final.
“I don’t think I thought, or anybody ever thought, that we’d get to a Leinster Final, but that team has been together these last five or six years.
“They were beaten four or five years ago in the County final and for the last three years, they have won it. Three or four of them players are county players as well, which is unique for a small parish.
For Mulligan, his connection to the Mullinalaghta St. Columba’s GAA club remains strong, 54 years after leaving the village.
“My brother lives down there, Shane (Mulligan) and Frances (Mulligan) father, and they still play with the senior club.
“We’re such a small community that we are all like brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts and everything else.”