POSTED FROM

CURRANS

CO. KERRY · IE

Currans
Na Curraíne, Co. Kerry

Transit / 06

Na Curraíne · Co. Kerry

A farming village on the N23 that became the home of Kerry football.

Currans is a quarter-mile of houses, a chapel and a GAA pitch on the N23 between Farranfore and Castleisland. About 250 people live in the village proper. Most travellers meet it as a thirty-second blur on the way to or from Kerry Airport - the runway is over the next field, more or less, and the road north out of the village runs straight at the terminal.

It is, at heart, a working farming village. Flat land, hedgerows, the River Maine cutting along the north-west, Stack's Mountains low and grey on the horizon to the north. The civil parish has been here for centuries; the Catholic chapel sits in the parish of Killeentierna and was rebuilt and reorganised in the 1860s after the western section was carved off into its own parish. The old Ardcrone burial ground, just outside the village, holds graves older than the chapel that replaced it.

What changed Currans - quietly, but completely - was the GAA. In December 2021 the county opened the Kerry GAA Centre of Excellence on a flat plain on the edge of the village. Four floodlit pitches, a state-of-the-art gym, eight dressing rooms, a dining hall. It had been twenty years in the planning. Every senior, minor and development squad in the county now passes through here, week in week out. The village still looks like a village. But the field on the way out of it is, in a real sense, where Kerry football is made.

Population

~250

Walk score

A chapel, a pitch, a crossroads - five minutes done

Coords

52.1861° N, 9.5469° W

01 / 05

At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 The Centre of Excellence

Where Kerry trains, now.

The county GAA Centre of Excellence opened on a flat field outside the village in December 2021 - four floodlit pitches, a gym, video rooms, the lot. Twenty years in the making, €8 million spent. Every Kerry development squad now drives to Currans.

Stories & lore → 02 The road

On the N23, near the airport.

Currans sits on the short N23 between Farranfore and Castleisland - 8.5 km south-west of Castleisland, a few minutes east of Kerry Airport. Most travellers pass through it without noticing they did.

Getting there → 03 The parish

Killeentierna, since the 1860s.

A civil parish and a Catholic chapel village in the parish of Killeentierna. The River Maine runs along the north-west boundary. Stack's Mountains sit on the northern horizon. Sheep, cattle, silage - the work has not changed much.

The letter →

West up the glen, the green where Padraig O'Keeffe is cast in bronze.

→

02 / 05

Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

Kerry GAA, Currans, December 2021

The Centre of Excellence

Twenty years of fundraising, planning rows, Kerry Group cheques and Croke Park grants ended in December 2021 when Larry McCarthy, the GAA president, cut the ribbon on a €8 million complex on a flat field outside Currans. Four full-sized sand-based floodlit pitches. A gym, a video-analysis room, eight dressing rooms, a dining hall, offices. Every Kerry team from the under-14 development squads to the senior footballers now trains here. Kerry Group later put another €1 million into a phase-two expansion. The village did not ask to become the engine room of Kerry football. It is now, all the same.

Currans and the N23

On the road to the airport

The N23 is one of the shortest national primary roads in the country - a stub between Farranfore and Castleisland that exists, mostly, to feed the airport. Currans sits on it. Kerry Airport's runway is a few fields north of the village, and the airport bus, the hire cars and the Friday-evening Ryanair traffic all pass within sight of the chapel. Most people who say the name 'Currans' to a satnav are heading somewhere else. The village does not mind. It is older than the road.

Killeentierna parish

The chapel and the old ground

The Catholic parish of Currans was united with Tralee until 1703, then carried on a quiet existence until 1866, when the western section was sliced off into a newly created parish and the chapel at Currans was reorganised. The old Ardcrone burial ground sits a short walk from the village - broken slabs, briars, the kind of small Kerry graveyard that holds a parish's whole memory in two acres. The Reformation-era ruin of an earlier parish church is in there somewhere. You walk softly.

03 / 05

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Any time

Year-round

The Centre of Excellence is a working training facility, not a visitor attraction. If you want to see Kerry football in action, check the GAA fixture list for games at Austin Stack Park in Tralee. The village itself has no seasonal logic for a visitor.

◉ Go

04 / 05

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

Expecting the Centre of Excellence to be open to walk around

It is a county board training facility. Closed unless there is a game or event. The pitches are visible from the road; that is generally as close as you get.

Stopping for food or a pint

Currans has neither. The airport is five minutes west; Farranfore village is three kilometres away and has both. Castleisland is eight kilometres north-east.

Treating it as a destination

It is not. It is a corridor between Kerry Airport and the rest of the county. The GAA story is real and worth knowing; the village will not hold you more than ten minutes.

Getting there.

By car

Currans sits on the N23, about 3 km north-east of Farranfore and 8.5 km south-west of Castleisland. From Killarney, allow 20 minutes via the N22 and N23. From Tralee, 25 minutes south.

By bus

No direct village bus service. Bus Éireann 270 (Tralee-Killarney) and Local Link services stop at Farranfore, three kilometres west. From there, a taxi is the simplest option.