CONNACHT SFC SEMI-FINAL:His death was a huge shock, but now Philip McGuinness's former team-mates want to honour his memory with success, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

A FEW weeks back Mickey Harte was invited down from Tyrone to talk with the Leitrim football panel. The three-time All-Ireland winning manager is often asked to share some of his powers of motivation, and Leitrim sure needed to stay motivated given their 10-week break between the league and their championship opener against close rivals Roscommon.

But that wasn’t exactly the purpose of Harte’s visit. He was there to provide motivation of a different sort; or rather consolation, to offer words of comfort and support after the tragic death of Leitrim footballer Philip McGuinness on April 19th, at the age of 26.

McGuinness had not only been one of Leitrim’s star forwards of recent years, the man in the number 10 jersey was also one of their most popular, influential and inspirational players – from one of Leitrim’s most respected GAA families.

For Leitrim joint managers Mickey Moran and John Morrison, in only their second year in charge, the loss was as incalculable as it was indescribable. Both men had grown particularly close to McGuinness, as they had the rest of the Leitrim panel, and like everyone else involved with GAA in the county it was a tragedy beyond words. That’s where Harte came in. Sadly, Tyrone football had also endured similarly devastating losses, on more than one occasion, including the sudden death of full back and captain Cormac McAnallen in March, 2004, at the age of 24.

“We were very grateful to have Mickey Harte come down,” Moran commented afterwards. “You need somebody who has experience, and are not emotionally attached. After that night, we got back to training and slowly but surely picked it up again. We’ll never forget the red-haired number 10 who is always in our thoughts, but the focus has to turn back to football, and Philly would want that anyway.”

McGuinness was born and bred in Leitrim GAA. From an early age he was considered a special talent, playing underage for Leitrim at all levels in both football and hurling, and first appeared on the senior football panel in 2003 while still in his teens.

In 2001 he’d been selected on the Connacht International Rules team that travelled to Australia, and was also an accomplished hurler, playing for the county on a number of occasions in the league, before concentrating on football once his status on the senior became more pronounced.

His father Michael, who died a few years earlier, also played both football and hurling for the county, and was voted onto the Leitrim GAA Team of the Millennium in 2000, at full forward.

McGuinness was equally committed to his club, Mohill, and was one of the standout players in their 2006 senior county title victory over St Mary’s – the club’s first such success since 1971 (when his father had also starred).

It was playing for Mohill on the Saturday afternoon of April 17th, in a county Division One league match against Melvin Gaels, in Annaduff, alongside his brothers John and Michael, that he sustained a freak but serious head injury, after a totally accidental clash with an opponent. He was first rushed to Sligo Hospital, and later transferred to Beaumont Hospital. He never regained consciousness and died on the Monday evening, April 19th.

Just a week before he’d also played in Leitrim’s final league game against Limerick. Although that ended in a heavy defeat, their league form had been reasonably encouraging, especially the wins over Longford and Carlow, and having avoided the so-called difficult side of the Connacht football championship draw – as in Mayo, Sligo and Galway – there was good reason to be optimistic about their semi-final date with Roscommon, who as expected have since beaten London in the first round.

Suddenly, and inexplicably, the mood changed with the death of McGuinness. Suddenly football wasn’t so important anymore. In fact it didn’t seem to matter at all. And yet his death has also united Leitrim football, in grief, initially, and now in their determination to play in the spirit of McGuinness, to the best of their ability, in the manner that he always practised and preached.

These mixed emotions were perfectly captured this week by Feargal McGill, who in his position as operations manager with the GAA, and also goalkeeper with Leitrim club Bornacoola, was able to offer a unique perspective of the impact McGuinness’s death has had on the Leitrim players, Leitrim GAA, and the wider Leitrim community.

“It’s very difficult to understand how close the community is in Leitrim, unless you’re actually from there,” says McGill. “And particularly the football community. When I say everybody knows everybody else that is literally true. Definitely everybody who has played football in Leitrim over the last two or three years would have known Philip McGuinness, and known him personally.

“So it rocked Leitrim, and Leitrim football. No doubt about that. By the same token, everything that happened around his death and his funeral proved a very unifying event for everyone in the county. Shocked and all as we were, I suppose we saw the best of the county, in the way people turned up to pay their respects, they’re coming together, and the real community spirit that exists in Leitrim. That really came to the fore over the week or so of the funeral.”

As difficult a time as it was for the McGuinness family, it was difficult too for Moran and Morrison. Still relative newcomers to the county, they had no way of knowing how long it would take, if at all, before football would return to normal.

“Philip’s death has rocked us all,” said Leitrim County Board chairman Joe Flynn at the time of the funeral. “His death will put football in Leitrim back a long way. He was part and parcel of their football lives for many years and it will take them a long time to recover from this terrible loss.”

However, what McGill witnessed at the McGuinness funeral proved that Moran and Morrison already had their hearts in Leitrim football. As long as they had that, there was no reason Leitrim football couldn’t find some heart again.

“It was so obvious standing outside the steps of the church at the funeral how much Mickey and John had been assimilated into Leitrim. The way of thinking here, the community. They’ve become Leitrim men over the last two years, no doubt about it. The amount of people that knew them, and they knew, was incredible. And that’s because they bought into the community spirit, and became a part of the scene as if being Leitrim men their whole lives.”

Tomorrow’s short journey to Dr Hyde Park in Roscommon takes place 10 weeks after Leitrim’s last competitive game, which would usually present problems of a different sort, but it’s only nine weeks after the death of McGuinness. They say time is a healer, but the only fear in Leitrim is that those nine weeks may not be time enough.

The tragic absence of McGuinness is compounded by their albeit far less relative loss of Emlyn Mulligan, who is sidelined with a repeat of a cruciate knee injury, and also the obvious lack of fitness of fellow forward Declan Maxwell, who missed Leitrim’s entire league campaign after undergoing an operation on his foot. Although Maxwell had the cast removed a month ago and has since returned to full training, it’s unlikely he can deliver a full 70 minutes.