Rural Electrification - The Forgotten Story of Ballyfassaugh Cromlechs

At first glance, the League of Ireland seems a prime target for the hipster menace; a niche interest, kept alive by a handful of believers, often based in quaint, run-down urban locales. To date, however, the grey ooze of hipsterdom has yet to seep through the doors of the venerable institution. In fact, the league’s demographic has remained relatively stable, if lamentably male, even in times of rapid social flux - although the players themselves seem to get posher by the year. Post-match interviews often reveal softened vowels and lisped t's, a far cry from the days when the average League of Ireland star was a plumber's apprentice with a voice like a sentient lump of black pudding.

And yet, did the hipsters but know it, the league can offer the ultimate exclusive viewing experience. In the past decade alone, several clubs have dropped out of the League of Ireland in mid-season, records and results expunged forever, their ashes mingling with those of the Genesis Report down the Abbotstown memory hole. By my own calculation, in just over a decade of regular attendance, I have witnessed at least twenty League of Ireland games which officially never took place; a level of obscurity to match even the most sparsely attended pop-up xylophone concerto.

The list of the departed reads like a cursory scan of a war memorial; mundane, everyday names, names that once evoked fondness and passion, now slowly eroding into meaninglessness. Kilkenny City, Kildare County, St. Francis, St. James's Gate, Newcastle West, Sporting Fingal – a dreary litany of futility.

Delve further back, and the names acquire an antique grandeur, their gentle rhythm reading like a list of stops on a long-vanished tramway; Pioneers. Transport. Frankfort. Olympia. Dolphin.

Perhaps the most obscure and longest-forgotten name on the list is that of Ballyfassaugh Cromlechs. Formed in 1920 after an unlikely merger between Ballyfassaugh Pagans and St. Jarlath’s Home for Excessively Gifted Orphans, the club played its first game in November of that year – a 3-3 draw against a local unit of the Black and Tans, abandoned after 76 minutes due to the “sudden and unexplained” demise of a linesman who flagged the visitors offside (Ballyfassaugh Avenger and Ploughman’s Champion, vol 19, issue 46).

The club “entered” the Free State League in 1924; its application for membership was rejected, but the squad simply turned up on the sidelines of matches in Dublin, slinging abuse and horse manure and invading the pitch at half-time to play out unopposed victories over both teams. According to the official club chronicle, Ballyfassaugh finished the season with a record of Played: 18 Won: 18 Drawn: 0 Lost: 0 Goals For: 246 Goals Against: 1 (to this day, enquiries as to the fate of Dessie “Destruction” Fitzdesmond, the scorer of that single own-goal, are met with averted gazes and mutterings about an abandoned tin-mine four miles outside the village).

The trophy Ballyfassaugh awarded itself at a “lavish and blasphemous” ceremony (Ballyfassaugh Avenger, Slogan-Cry and Ploughman’s Champion, vol 20, issue 18) has been missing since 1930, when club chairman Jinky Jameson took it to be “valued” in Athlone. His body was never found.

Official recognition came in 1926, and the club celebrated its League of Ireland début against champions Shelbourne with a “grotesque” pre-match spectacle; writing in the Ballyfassaugh Avenger, Slogan-Cry, Ploughman’s Champion and Goat Abortionist’s Advocate, Colm Mac Muireacháin De Gafa recounted how: “The players were piped onto the field behind a line of white-robed virgins, feet and hands bound together as they chanted verses of supplication. At kick-off, an antique artillery piece was fired symbolically from the Paupers’ Stand, shattering the window of the press box. The choking black cloud eventually cleared, to reveal the Shelbourne players fleeing what appeared to be some sort of re-enactment of the Cattle Raid of Cooley.” The game finished 0-0, as did all eighteen of Ballyfassaugh’s matches that season.

Although never threatening to break the hegemony of the Dublin clubs, the Cromlechs racked up an impressive series of achievements in their brief existence. Somewhere in the FAI’s archives exists a telegram from FIFA head office, confirming that the wearing of ceremonial daggers during league play is “absolutely contrary to the spirit of the game, as is the practice of fielding defenders afflicted with leprosy and tuberculosis in order to gain a competitive advantage”. We also owe to the Cromlechs the now-forgotten phenomenon of the Ballyfassaugh hat-trick; the act of breaking an opponent’s skull and both his legs in the same game.

Ballyfassaugh finished bottom of the League of Ireland in 1934, after a nine-point deduction for fielding an unbaptised ballboy. They failed in their bid for re-election, despite a spate of mysterious accidents ahead of the meeting of club chairmen. In the wake of their demotion, the club’s ground at Starvation Hill fell into disrepair, the stands eventually being repurposed as a makeshift debtors’ prison. Under the 1938 Rural Christianisation Act, the town of Ballyfassaugh was subjected to a mass exorcism by a “spiritual flying column” of 25 bishops, under the command of Cardinal O’Donnell. After the ritual cleansing, the town was razed and the population forcibly relocated to the Inishowen peninsula.

No record of the club remains, save an entry for £8.3s.24d in unpaid fines, which has appeared annually in the FAI’s accounts since 1939.