fall in behind us, the Oak Leaf county bringing him home. And for the next three days they descend; the mourners seem to pour from the skies. Over the brow of the hill they come, across the fields and down the lane. Minibuses are run from the clubhouse to his simple Loughshore home. The pitch where he was forged is now the car park for his wake. It’s like his hallowed St Trea’s grounds are paying homage to their most glittering prize, not the Sam Maguire but the local boy who brought him home: the man who carved a footnote for them in the history of the sport they were built to serve.
There’s coaches from Cavan and Athlone; they come from Kerry, Cork and Down; there’s Mercs with politicians and bigger Mercs with priests. There’s one man in a wheelchair who has no time for football but for ‘the man who, every Sunday, helped me into my car after Mass’. His club mates and his townland take his memory in their arms and they allow us as a family to feel, already, the legacy of the man. On the morning of the funeral, the club’s youngsters line the lane and the boys of ’93 lift him on their shoulders once again.
1 MIGHTY OAKS FROM LITTLE ACORNS GROW
It was November 1990. I’d been away from home and living in England for almost five years, having left for work in 1986 and staying after the break-up of my marriage. Approaching forty years of age and after sixteen years as a husband, I’d gone away to grow up.
Back home Fermanagh had beaten Derry in the first round of the McKenna Cup for the first time in Derry’s history. The manager then had been Father Sean Hegarty. On my frequent trips home, I’d have given him a hand with the training but he had had enough. Now nobody would touch them with a bargepole.
I got a phone call to England. Harry Chivers, Chairman of the Derry County Board, spoke briefly on the phone. Would I be interested in taking the Derry job and if so would I fly over to meet him, the county secretary Patsy Mulholland and treasurer Jim McGuigan in the Archers Hotel in Magherafelt?
I flew home the following weekend. No interview took place; it was just, would I take the job with Mickey Moran as trainer with me. I said I’d let them know. It wasn’t the first time I’d been approached about the Derry senior job. Back in 1986, the then chairman Sean Bradley had asked me to take it on. I’d have taken the U21s of that year but the senior position wasn’t the job I wanted.
My first move into county management had been three years earlier with the Derry minors and we’d gone on to win the All-Ireland of 1983. I’d then taken the U21 team of 1985 that nobody had wanted and we reached the All-Ireland Final only to be beaten by Cork. But I didn’t get the U21 team whose backbone was the minors of ’83. That was given to the senior management. I suppose they thought they would win an All-Ireland. They didn’t.
That team in ’86 would have been favourites to win the All-Ireland. Three years on from their minor championship, there was no reason they shouldn’t have been kingpins of Ireland at U21 level. It was a waste of a team.
But in 1986 I wasn’t prepared to take the seniors. They didn’t have the players, I wasn’t ready to do it and besides I needed to get away.
The years in England were the first I had spent away from home, away from Ireland. For the first time in my life I couldn’t drive back to the shores of Lough Neagh. It bothered me going, bothered me leaving the lough, but I went and once I got there, I settled in well. But I was never away for more than three weeks at a time. Couldn’t stick the Sundays in London, no football and nothing to do. I’d also made the conscious decision to come home regularly to see my daughter Margaret and my sons Gary and Vivian. We’d been through a lot and I didn’t intend on losing the relationship we had built between us.
Now it was five years down the line and I’d the offer of the Derry senior job. It was time to think again.
It took me a week to decide. I discussed it with no one, not even Gary who was on the panel at the time. It was my decision. I felt they had the players and I was ready for the challenge. The independence I had learnt in England had made me bigger and bolder, stronger as a person and in my own opinions. I knew I could do the job.
‘Improve the state of Derry football’ was the only aim given to me and that’s what I intended to do.
At that stage, Gary was already on the team having been brought in by Fr Hegarty after captaining Derry’s All-Ireland-winning minors of 1989. Fr Hegarty had phoned me in England to tell me he was putting him on the panel and me, proud father and all as I am, advised him not to. Gary was light, he was only eighteen years of age and he wasn’t a big strong fella but he was good enough so he came in.
Despite joining the senior panel for his county as I had done twenty-five years before, Gary had showed not the slightest bit of interest in football until he was around ten years old. In fact, it was my daughter Margaret who could be found on her own, kicking a ball for hours, almost from when she was fit to walk. Gary, on the other hand, couldn’t have cared less. At a school match in Magherafelt one day, the ball went sailing over the hedge. As twenty-nine kids went scampering across the fields to find it, the bold Gary took the opportunity to sit down on the pitch for a rest.
But Margaret was the complete opposite, both off the pitch and on. A year older than Gary, she was determined not to let the fact that she was a girl get in the way of her playing football. Margaret was a brilliant footballer, very tough and bad-tempered, a dirty player actually.
Around 1983, I went to watch Magherafelt in an U10 final against Swatragh in Bellaghy. Both my son and my daughter were playing.
Margaret had cut her hair dead short so she could play on the team as a boy and even Damian Cassidy, who knew her well, didn’t know she was at right half forward for the second half. They lost the game that day because they didn’t start her. But even at that stage, I knew Gary was a bit special. I could see him thinking way ahead of the other kids and felt then he was good enough.
Vivian too had his share of footballing talent, winning an underage championship with Magherafelt and playing with the Derry minors before retiring at the grand old age of nineteen. It wasn’t that the expectations were too much, or that his footballing career was bad, more a case of his social life being too good.
So, it was Gary who stuck with it and made the most of the talent he had. I never saw him as following in my footsteps – you can’t take football after anyone. It’s a help if you’re in that environment but after that it’s just how good you are in yourself.
He had grown in those years I was away but hadn’t changed at all since he was a cub of fourteen. A bit bigger and bolder like myself, he was happy enough to have his da as manager but perhaps thought privately that it might make things hard for him.
I don’t think either of us realised just how tough it would really be on him, or rather how tough I would turn out to be on him.
For years, Derry football had been in decline but at the start of the nineties, I could see the shoots of something there.
Adrian McGuckin had done great things with St Pat’s in Maghera, winning the All-Ireland Senior Football Colleges championships in both ’89 and ’90. That, bolstered by the growth of St Pius’ in Magherafelt, had meant the young boys coming through had already had their first taste of success with the schools.
At university level, St Mary’s, Queen’s and Jordanstown had got their hands on the Sigerson in ’89, ’90 and ’91 and the success of the county minors of ’89 had yet to be built upon.
As for me, I was ready to do the job. I felt I had something to prove, not to Gary as his da or manager or to anybody else for that matter. I only had to prove I was good enough to myself and I felt I was.
Starting with the minors had allowed me to learn and develop away from the pressure of attention. I’d say we were in the All-Ireland Final before we’d seen a county official at training so that had given us time to grow and learn together, the way we wanted, the way I wanted.
Now I had a belief in myself and the players; if that hadn’t have been there, then I wouldn’t have been there. If I hadn’t thought I could do it better than everyone else that was there before me, I wouldn’t have taken