The Premier years

When the Amateur League created its Premier Section in 1991–92, it set ground criteria that were beyond many clubs. Kilmore met every requirement, the reward for years of work on the monastery ground, and became founder members.

The upgraded ground paid off immediately in the grandest way available to an amateur club: a home tie against senior opposition in the Irish Cup. On 18 January 1992 Cliftonville became the first Irish League club to visit Crossgar. They left with a 1–0 win, but the abiding memory belongs to Paul Moore, whose header crashed off the crossbar with the game goalless. Six inches that Crossgar has been discussing ever since. Moore would be back: fourteen years later he managed the club to a Border Cup final.

Kilmore were becoming Irish Cup regulars. In January 1995 they went to Loughgall in the fifth round and lost to a Stephen Barnes double, with the former Portadown striker Peter Withnell in the Kilmore ranks, and the following season Cliftonville came back to Crossgar and won 3–0. Three senior ties in five seasons said plenty about where the club now stood.

Survival in the Premier was another matter. These were hard years. By 1993 Kilmore were “fellow strugglers”; by February 1994 they were one of seven clubs facing relegation, and that month Tom Kennedy left to take charge at Crewe United. In the spring of 1996 the club reckoned it needed to win eight of its last twelve to stay up, and got there by throwing in the youngsters — the same youngsters who were about to win the Youth Cup.

The decade’s crowning achievement belonged to the young ones. The under-18s entered the Northern Ireland Youth Cup in 1994–95 under Billy Sloan, and reached the final at the first attempt, putting out former winners Coleraine Youth and then Bangor in the semi-final. Four days before the final the Belfast Telegraph came to the club and found the committee treating the run as the one good thing in a bad season. “All the credit goes to Billy Sloan,” said club secretary Robert Adams. “He looks after the team whose efforts have certainly kept us going through a very bad period.” The paper named four of them: goalkeeper Peter Trevors, defender Mark Holland, midfielder Ian Smyth and top scorer Gary Kennedy.

On 22 April 1996, at Dixon Park, Ballyclare, they beat Portadown Boys 2–0 to win it. Both goals came from a 17-year-old Gary Kennedy, fresh from trials at Stoke City, in front of watching Northern Ireland manager Bryan Hamilton. “Kilmore’s Kennedy steals the show”, said the Belfast Telegraph; “the trophy was on its way to Crossgar.” No Amateur League club has won it since. Kilmore was the last. Several of that team went on to play Irish League and senior amateur football, and Mark Holland was still in the Kilmore first team seventeen years later; none went further than Kennedy himself, whose story this history keeps returning to.

The era carried its sorrow too. In May 1998, Robert Adams, “Mr Kilmore”, died suddenly at just 47. His work and dedication had carried the club for three decades, and the response was permanent. Later that year the ground he built up was officially re-opened as Robert Adams Park, his family at the centre of the ceremony alongside co-founder Davy Harper, with Brother Paul McKeon of Tobar Mhuire and Rev. Sam Armstrong of Lissara Presbyterian both at the top table. The monastery and the manse together, which says everything about what the club is in Crossgar.

The improvement works that followed were begun in his honour: the perimeter wall, gates and grandstand completed in 2000, and the changing rooms first used in 2002 and opened officially on 9 July 2003, Glentoran manager Roy Coyle cutting the tape before a friendly against the Glens.

On the pitch the club dipped and recovered. The drop finally came in 1996–97, and the response was immediate: 1998–99 was spent as title rivals in 1A, a 2–0 win away at Dromara Village in April doing for the neighbours’ promotion hopes, and Kilmore went back up. What happened next has never made it into the club’s own record. In their first season back, by late November 1999, Kilmore Rec were top of the Premier Section — the Larne Times, reporting a 3–2 home win over Barn United, described them simply as the league’s leaders. The decade closed with the club exactly where it believed it belonged.