A Brief History
Up to 1943 the name of the club was Graftonians. It was originally the staff sports association of the Grafton Street department store Brown Thomas. By 1943 the club had become open and the LBIHU minutes record that the Graftonian representatives to the branch came to the 1943 Branch AGM and informed the secretary that the club had a new name, Glenanne, with the same colours and the same players. Meanwhile the Second World War raged in Europe! There is a picture of a Graftonians hockey team on the wall in the Two Sisters.
The old club, based on Fortfield Road, was strictly divided into winter and summer seasons. Hockey and table tennis were the winter games and golf and lawn tennis were the summer ones. The hockey pitch was given over to the golf section on St Patrick’s Day, the end of the hockey season. There were two separate subscriptions for each season.
Each golf and lawn tennis season finished with an “At Home” when all the finals were played with a dinner dance and presentation of prizes that evening in the clubhouse. After each hockey match the club provided tea and Marietta biscuits!
After Graftonians went open the members thought a new name would better reflect its open status. The name Glenanne emerged because the club premises were on the grounds of St Annes, a small “big house” estate running from the KCR up to the back of Kimmage Manor (at the back of the Shell Station on Fortfield Road), which the historic river Poddle ran through. The river was banked high up to 15 to 20 feet giving the premises a glen like appearance, hence the name.
In 1958 the club installed complete hockey floodlights, the first club in the country to do so. It was marked by a LBIHA Presidents XI v a Glenanne XI match under the same floodlights.
In 1970 the club was evicted from its grounds, which was sold for building. Only hockey (barely) survived which is ironic because in the 1960′s the golf section tried to get the hockey to move to other premises so that they could play pitch and putt all year round. The once thriving hockey section was reduced to two teams and the womens section had died out altogether.
From 1970 to 1985 the club used various grounds especially Tallaght Community School. Pitches at Londonbridge Road and Templeogue LBIHU hockey grounds were also used. The men who clung so tenaciously to senior status were finally relegated in 1982.
In 1975 the women’s section was re-founded. It proved to be a huge contributory factor to the resurgence of the club. The first team went from the bottom division to senior status in 10 years and created a great buzz in the 1980′s when they won all the junior trophies open to them in the one season including an all Ireland one. Meanwhile the men were struggling to get back to senior ranks and did not do so until end 1984-85
The Colts section was started at TCS but it really only took off at St Marks throughout the late 1980′s and 1990′s. The colts won 4 Leinster U 16 cups in that era and 16 boys played representative hockey for either Ireland or Leinster. All bar one on the current men’s team came through the colts system.
In 1985 the club hired the St Marks all weather pitch first as a relief pitch but gradually moved there over the next few years and abandoned the pitch at Tallaght Community School.
In 1989 the club made an arrangement with the Trustees of St Marks and the Department of Education whereby the club leased a site from them, built Glenanne Park and gave the School a license to use the grounds during the day in term time. The cost of the project in 1990 was around £300,000 including the site cost. Glenanne Park was officially opened by President Mary Robinson on 10 April 1991 just 21 years after the club had lost its original grounds.
In 2001/2002 the club upgraded Glenanne Park and extended the lease with the School Trustees to 35 years. The upgrading included a new sand filled pitch with shock pad, total refurbishment of the floodlights, replacement ball guard at one end and total replacement of the inner wire mesh fencing. Lotto funds were used in both projects and without them the developments could not have taken place.
Recent years in the men’s section have proved to be a golden era in the history of the club. From 1951 to 1983 the club had not won a significant trophy. When the men’s firsts won the Railway Cup in 1983 the Irish Times headline ran “Glenanne Celebrate Rare Success”.
That ‘Rare success’ has turned into something of an expectancy in recent times as the Golden Generation forged their way towards the forefront of Leinster and Irish hockey in the ‘Naughties,’ A first Leinster League title in April 2000 was followed weeks later by the club’s one and only All-Ireland Championship/League win. Since then three more league titles (2002, 2006, 2007) have followed as well as two Irish Senior Cup’s (2007, 2010) and four Leinster Senior Cups (2002, 2004, 2007, 2008) to join their breakthrough 1996 success. The first Senior trophy the men’s section ever won was the Neville Cup in 1985 and the club has collected eight more since (1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2007, 2009, 2010). However, perhaps the men’s most impressive achievement came in Europe when they took home the 2008 European Club Challenge in Paris after an epic win over hosts Montrouge after extra-time.
Meanwhile, the Ladies have not been so quiet themselves lately. Their most outstanding success came in 2008 when they won the Irish Junior Cup with a 5-1 win over Railway Union and also gained promotion to the Leinster Senior division. Since then they have consolidated that place with two 7th place finishes.
