TROUBLED times often adversely affect sport, but they can also inspire invention and innovation.
So it was that, just over a century ago, the inability of opponents to travel across Belfast for a football match led to the formation of Clonard Amateur Swimming Club.
On a warm summer's evening, some of the frustrated footballers were unable to swim in the dam between the Whiterock and Beechmount in west Belfast, so after a meeting above Doyle's Bakery, it was decided to form a swimming club in the Falls Baths.
Water polo was part of the plan from the outset in 1921 and it's that sport for which Clonard is now famous across Ireland, and beyond, although it also produced many swimming stars.
It may be 37 years since Clonard last won the men's Irish Senior Cup but they celebrate their centenary tonight as still the most successful club in Irish water polo.
Covid delayed the planned evening to honour the many achievements of the renowned west Belfast club, but Belfast City Hall is a fitting setting for the event this weekend; based in the Falls Baths, Clonard have drawn and taught swimmers and water polo players from across the city.
It's appropriate too that one of Clonard's most famous sons, Kevin Armstrong, is the current Irish Water Polo President. The boy who was literally out of his depth on his first visit to the Falls Baths – having to be rescued from the deep end by pool attendant John Devine – developed into one of the best water polo players Ireland has ever produced.
The son of an even more famous father, the Antrim dual star after whom he was named, Kevin may have been "useless at football and hurling, much to the dismay of my GAA-mad family", but he became brilliant at water polo.
His inspiration was a tournament at the Grove Baths in north Belfast, when Clonard as Irish champions defeated their counterparts from England, Scotland, and Wales – London Poly, Motherwell, and Newport.
Aided by regular shooting practice against the Clonard and Ireland goalkeeper Bob Morrison, Kevin broke into the Clonard first team at the age of 16. That feat was all the more remarkable as the club was in the middle of an incredible 14-season winning streak in the Senior Cup, and he went on to help them win the second half of that tally.
From Hawthorn Street, off Cavendish Street, Armastrong is remarkably modest about his achievements, saying of his breakthrough into that all-conquering senior side aged just 16:
"I was very lucky, Clonard had loads of good players but I just seemed to hit it right at that time."
Paul Murnaghan, a Clonard player of the Eighties and Nineties, puts Armstrong's status into proper perspective, though:
"He would be known in his generation as probably the best player in Ireland. A brother of Donal, who played for Antrim in the 1989 All-Ireland [Senior] Hurling Final; Donal played water polo as well, as did another brother.
"Winning 14 titles in a row - even Dublin weren't able to do that, and it will never be repeated."
Armstrong was clearly a quick learner: "The first time I played was in nets; it used to be that they put the person they didn't think was any good in nets. By the time I got onto the senior team I was playing out."
It helped that he was being taught the game by some greats: "I gravitated towards the swimming through going to the Falls Baths, I went to St Gall's school, in Waterville Street.
"There was a Brother there who used to take us to a swimming pool up in St Patrick's school on the Glen Road, they had a pool… I really didn't become a competent swimmer until I was 14 when I really took it seriously."
Having moved St Mary's CBS, who were big into water polo in my day – it was Barrack Street then – there was a close connection with Clonard. We have players from St Malachy's and all over now."
Clonard was basically a university of water polo. "Jim Hurson was a big figure in Clonard then, he was a very competent champion swimmer as well as a water polo player.
"Jimmy McDonnell, from Iris Street, was the first Irish national coach for water polo, and he was a coach in Clonard. Then Nigel Magee came from Beechmount and coached.
"I got the opportunity through that to play on the Irish team, then I also was able to go and play with St Mary's at university, then played for the British universities team and came across lots of good coaches playing for them.
"It gave me a lot of opportunities. The first time I was ever on an aeroplane was with Clonard going to Germany, first time ever out of the country."
Armstrong helped Clonard break the record for consecutive Irish Senior Cup triumphs, passing the tally of another Belfast club, Wellington, set in the Forties. The west Belfast men extended that to an astonishing 14, with coach Magee even playing in the last of those, the 1973 decider against Pembroke, due to injuries.
That was a competitive era too, Armstrong points out. Besides the various Dublin sides, "there were a lot more clubs in Belfast, certainly – obviously Cathal Brugha, also based in the Falls [Baths], there was a team called Neptune and Donegall, Victoria, Wellington was a big team in the 40s and 50s."
All good things come to an end, but Clonard's streak was stopped very controversially. Due to a row over the 1974 Final date, they did not turn up, and the Cup was awarded to Dublin's Half Moon. Clonard went 12 years without a national men's triumph – but Armstrong was involved again, as player-coach in the 1985 success.
Since then, no senior men's success has followed, but Clonard continues to produce water polo talent.
Paul Murnaghan was part of the rebuilding process from the Eighties onwards, along with his brothers Mark and David. Originally from Dublin, a nephew Jimmy Boggin, Dublin hurling manager for many years in the 70s and 80s, his dalliance with that code didn't last long.
A pupil at St Malachy's College in north Belfast, which was affiliated to St Enda's in Glengormley, he remembers: "In third year I went up in midfield to catch a ball and the boy beside me lost the tip of his finger, caught between two hurls.
"I was very good at polo underage and I looked at that and thought 'That's not for me – you can't play water polo with no finger'.
"I think that was my last hurling match. Donal Armstrong asked me to play football for Queen's in the Maculey Cup, the annual inter-county tournament they have, so I played for 'Antrim' one year. A lot of my friends were on the Sigerson Cup teams – John Kelly and own, Mark McCartan of Down, Paul McErlain [Antrim]."
Don't think for a second that water polo is a soft sport, though – quite the opposite, as Murnaghan points out:
"It is extremely physical and it is extremely violent, albeit the water protects you. The stuff that happens under the water can be painful, but you're rarely going to do real damage – what happens above the water can be dangerous because you don't have protection.
"Referees have a significant amount more control than a rugby referee would have. Literally if you look sideways at a referee they can throw you out.
"Referees demand and need the respect otherwise, and I say this with a little bit of a smile, there could be murder in the pool - but ultimately, 99 times out of 100 after any physicality happens, you get out of the water and shake hands."
"You have referees on either side. It's described as a 'non-contact sport' - but once you have hold of the ball you can do pretty much whatever you want, as long as you don't punch somebody in the head.
"As long as the attacker has the ball, he's trying to get advantage, you're trying to get your advantage back and it's all about leverage and body against body with nothing to stand on.
"There's very little tackling of the ball – as long as you don't take the head off the person, it's very much physical."
Having said that, Murnaghan sees water polo as a sport for all – all genders, all ages, all backgrounds.
"I started swimming for a club in the Grove [on the Shore Road] called Donegall; most of those guys were from north Belfast and from the Protestant tradition. Clonard is from the nationalist tradition. Thankfully things have evolved from that.
"I swam for Donegall then joined their water polo club, but at St Malachy's pretty much all of their players were Clonard men.
"My sister ended up marrying Jim Hurson, whose dad, also Jim, was probably the best-known water polo player at the time - he retired at 46 captaining the Irish senior team, with his son getting his first cap as a senior international the same day."
Murnaghan is optimistic that water polo is on the rise again, in Clonard and elsewhere: "Back then in the late 70s and 80s clubs would have been more tribal than, thankfully, they are now. Going back to Kevin's generation there were a lot more clubs – Donegall, Wellington, Pembroke, all sadly lapsed.
"Cathal Brugha are very strong at senior level, and there's Cuchulainn, an amalgamation of Setanta and Grads, who were Queen's grads but primarily a north Belfast club.
"What's been good over the last 20 years is the growth of the female game. Dublin has always had a relatively strong ladies community, but in the north it had been limited.
"At Clonard we now have a girls' team that's unbeaten at underage level, in an All-Ireland Final for the first time this year. They have a lot of kids being selected internationally as well, which is fantastic.
"Our boys won the U17 Cup earlier this year in Lisnasharragh and five of that team went on to compete for Ireland, so we're coming back - at junior level we're punching probably well above our weight, boys and girls."
Cathal Brugha are top dogs at the moment, with Armstrong noting – no pun intended – that the two clubs really come from the same pool, they're from the same area. In recent years they have been very strong at senior level, they won the last two Irish senior championships, and over the last 20 or 30 years they've been quite strong."
Yet Clonard is still an attractive outfit, Murnaghan says with pride: "Clonard would be the biggest from a membership point of view, we have the biggest number of juniors in the country, we have waiting lists now. We're not in difficulty that way – the problem is taking the kids all the way up through their teenage years and keeping them, a bit like in the GAA.
"Where do they go after they leave school? Do they stay here or go away? All of that's a challenge. If we can keep the kids at home and not having them disappearing all across the world…"
Murnaghan acknowledges that water polo demands serious, intense commitment: "It needs to be your first sport. Ciaran Barr is an example of somebody who played at international level but also played hurling the way he did for Antrim.
"Most people playing water polo are doing six to eight sessions of team sport, and at least the same time again on your own to get the strength of swimming. You can swim up to four-and-a-half miles during a match.
"People are pulling and hauling at you constantly, it is very physically draining, and that's not for everybody. But camaraderie, teamwork, friendship for life is what you get."
It's a sport for life, even for those who have passed on. "Clonard held a Masters tournament there, one of our colleagues from yesteryear [Dermot Neary, an Antrim Road GP], he passed away more than 10 years ago, and we have a tournament in his memory every year. Teams come from Switzerland, from Spain, Liverpool. Most of those people are in their 40s, 50s, 60s, in fact we had a guy of 72 played in it.
As someone who played more than 70 times for Ireland, Ireland, capped at U17, U19, U21 and as a senior player from the age of 17, playing internationally up until his late 20s, family ended that part of his career: "Kids, wife, and other distractions."
However, he's been passing on his experience as a coach, including to his own offspring: "Playing for Ireland is a wonderful experience – my young lad has had his first tournament away with Ireland, and I'm very proud as you can imagine."
Senior success may return soon for Clonard, but tonight they can still celebrate a century of achievement.
The nature of the sport is reflected away from the water too, says Armstrong: "We would be in fairly close contact with a lot of people, we're not distant.
"The water polo community is a small one but it's a fairly tight one. We would have I would say up to 130 members and I think it's going to be near 300 at the do."
With men like Armstrong and Murnaghan involved, the second century at Clonard is in very safe hands.
