Time passes differently in county football. As music fans of a certain generation will know, Meatloaf passed away recently. I read about it on my phone that morning as the kids were ready to go to school. Of course, they never heard of him.
We stuck on Bat Out of Hell to give them an idea of who he was. Where those songs took me was into the back of a HiAce van on the way to county minor training, driven by a man we only ever knew as Conal-Eamon.
Conal did a loop of southwest Donegal to collect all the minors in the area for sessions in Ballybofey. And as soon as the Killybegs crew got on board, they stuck that album into the tape deck. It became the soundtrack of those journeys. We all felt that we were closing in on a lifetime’s ambition in preparing to wear a county shirt for the first time. It was also the summer of Italia ‘90.
And it was a golden summer. I felt as though my life was beginning to open up for the first time. I had started to play senior football for Glenties. I was on the minor squad. And I was ‘allowed’ to go to the Abbey Hotel nightclub for the first time. I remember being in the top bar of the Abbey during the World Cup looking down at what seemed like thousands of people.
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They would show the highlights of the games on a big screen that evening before the nightclub started. And life was good. And that was the start of it for me on the county scene. And I see now that I was so, so lucky: to get into the senior squad just before Donegal won the All-Ireland championship; to stay relatively injury free for most of my career, to captain the county. From the minors through to 2004, I got 14 years in total out of it. And the point is: it was over in a flash.
I remember standing in Termon around Christmas 2011: we were crowded into a tiny dressingroom talking to the group. By now, I was Donegal manager. And I remember I said to Patrick McBrearty, who was 18 then: ‘Paddy, you’ll be 28 in the blink of an eye and a few years after that, it will all be over’. My career came to an abrupt halt in a club match.
Leon Thompson made a run inside when I had possession and I went to deliver the ball into him. I was making a pass I had made countless times over the years when I was met with a tackle and physics intervened: my leg was on an upward kicking trajectory as my marker came across me. I fractured a knee, ruptured a cruciate ligament and in that second, I knew that was it for me and county football.
I think I was trying to convey that to Patrick that morning. The end comes out of the blue — not necessarily through injury — but it still takes you unawares.
So last weekend, out and about, on the Saturday before the Ulster final, I bumped into several ex-Donegal players. Inevitably, we got chatting about the match. And a pattern emerged. Many weren’t going. They had various reasons. Tickets. Caught up in work. I’m not sure if I’ll get there was a common refrain. But another just said: I can’t face it, to be honest.
And he said it would just be too painful to be there and not be involved and feel part of a day that he had based so much of his athletic life around. That it was hard to watch it and get behind it and truly enjoy it.
It is not indifference that prompts so many players to stay away from football days which a short time before had been at the epicentre of their lives. It is because they loved it so much that they can no longer go.
I knew exactly what he meant. Because from 2005 to 2010, I was in that very place. Donegal football — all county football — just meant pain for me after I had to let it go. I felt completely estranged from it. It’s a very powerful sensation and it’s difficult to articulate. Playing for this team and representing your county is what comes to define you. And you owned it.
It is not your job — it is deeper than that. You are known as a county player. And when that ends — and it feels as if it is taken away, even if you decide to retire — it can leave you with a tremendous sense of loneliness, really. Nothing prepares a player for that transition.
I think that a lot of players all over the country, through every division, go through that. Some respond by immediately getting into coaching: they are back in the dressingroom with no real break. Others face it straight on and do become spectators and get along to games. But many, many others disappear into another world. Because to return as a supporter is to thrust yourself into a very strange environment.
The sights and sounds and smells are still the same. The crowd is still there. The pitch is still the same. And everything you loved is all about you. But you are not there. You are not on the bus. You are not in the dressingroom. And somebody else is wearing ‘your’ jersey.
Much of what makes Ireland unique is about place and an intensely localised sense of identity. The role of the county player completely encapsulates those two concepts. You are this symbol of your place. And then, all of a sudden, you are no longer that.
So it is not indifference that prompts so many players to stay away from football days which a short time before had been at the epicentre of their lives. It is because they loved it so much that they can no longer go.
Sometimes, it is children who pull former players back into that world. They start bringing their own children along for their first training sessions; next thing they are coaching and they find themselves having reached full circle. Except now, they are the guide and the mentor and they are watching as their youngsters start out on the same journey that they themselves had taken.
But there is a sizeable minority out there, too, who put their heart and soul into football and once they finish, they have no way of hearing that music any more. It’s something I was conscious of when I started coaching and anytime I watch a big championship game now I am always aware that one or two of the stars are, at the back of their minds, wondering if they will be back in this place again.
So when people sit down to watch games this weekend, when we start to see teams eliminated and with them household names who have given all of us immeasurable entertainment, we should spare a thought for those players who privately know that this is it.
There is nothing like being part of a team.
But walking out of the dressingroom for the last time is something every player must do alone. It’s the hardest skill to master.
