CLUB HISTORY

Gaelic games were first introduced to the Cabinteely area in 1972.
 
From there, a league was formed embracing the areas of Cabinteely, Ballybrack, Foxrock and Cornelscourt. This league was for boys of 11 years of age, who wished to play Gaelic football and was known as the Foxrock League. Cabinteely were the first winners of this league and received the McNerney cup.
The final was an exciting game with Cabinteely beating Holly Park by one point.

The league continued for a couple of years and proved very successful in establishing Gaelic football in the area. In 1977, Kilbogget Park was made available by Dublin County Council and a  club was immediately formed in the area of Johnstown and Killiney. At the time hurling was also introduced and proved a very attractive proposition to young boys of the local school. The first team to represent the club was the under 13 football team which played in Division Two of the Dublin South City league and went on to win the league in their first season.
 
At this point, hurling was gaining in popularity in the club and many of the young boys were coached in the skills of the game, a local summer league involving boys from nine to 11 years of age took place, and was responsible for putting hurling on a sound footing in the club. Under 10-11 and 12, hurling teams were now participating in Dublin juvenile hurling leagues and acquitted themselves excellently against teams from clubs, which had a long-established tradition behind them. The club also had a popular and successful Camogie section in the early 1980s.
 
The club success over the early years in both hurling and Gaelic football was quite remarkable for such a young club. In most competitions the teams played in the Premier divisions. This very much helped improve and raise the standard within the club.
 
These early successes set out a roadmap to bring teams through juvenile years to minor and under 21 and on to adult grades.
 
In 1994, when our new clubhouse was opened, we had 14 teams in both hurling and football from underage to adult ages. During the 1993 season, we had significant success, particularly with our adult teams where our junior one team won the Conlon Cup for the second season in a row and were runners up in Division One.our junior hurling and second football teams were promoted in their respective leagues. In 1994 and 1997, our junior hurlers went on to win the Junior Hurling Championship.

In the early 2000s the growing (and increasingly successful!) Cabinteely ladies broke away to join forces with nearby Foxrock, to form the formidable Foxrock Cabinteely GAA Ladies Football club, which grew from strength to strength to the multiple Dublin and Leinster winning side it is today.

In 2006, Cabinteely joined forces with St. Francis Gaels to form St. Francis Gaels/Cabinteely. St. Francis Gaels originally played out of Naomh Olaf’s ground in nearby Sandyford and was made up of Microsoft employees. While playing there they won the division 11 title. They were looking for a new home pitch and at the time it made sense for the clubs to amalgamate. Ultimately with waning numbers of Microsoft employees in the club, the club name reverted back to Cabinteely. The men’s team continues to play in the Adult Football League division 10 today.

More recently, 2020 will be best remembered (prior to Covid!) as marking significant success for the re-established juvenile teams, and having hurling and football juvenile teams competing in games against other clubs for the first time in 20 years.