Breathing a sigh of freedom
Half of the load would be fathers of the other half, schoolboys with stars in their eyes and maybe two silver half-crowns in their short- trouser pockets. This was not just a sporting occasion. This was a cultural event, a statement of Irish identity against all the odds on the Northern side of the bitter Border that divided the island.
This was tradition and pride in the existence of the GAA in every parish in the Six Counties. We drove under the Orange Arches and Union Jacks and red-white-blue striped curbing of the marching season to the kind of Valhalla that was St Tiernach’s Park in Clones in what we always called the Free State.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again now. You who were bred and born in the Republic have no idea at all how important it was to us to travel to the Ulster finals in Clones. No ground in the country, not even Croke Park, touches me to the marrow the way Clones does. I walk into it today and I’m 11 years old again, walking beside my father and his friends, excited, uplifted, in the sporting and spiritual place I was bred for.
Clones and that natural amphitheatre of a park is a state of mind much more than a mere sporting cockpit.
I remember it all as clear as day. The RUC patrols would be very obvious on the Fermanagh roads leading to the Border. You were likely to be checked around every bend. If you were late coming home that evening you would almost certainly be thoroughly checked by the B Special patrols formed by your Protestant neighbours. This had nothing to do with sport and football. It had everything to do with the divided realities of the time and place.
The trek to Clones for the Ulster Final, fundamentally, was a demonstration by the Catholic/Nationalist/Republican minority of their commitment, not just to a certain football code, but to a United Ireland. That is raw but true.
When the hackney passed through the customs posts into the Free State you breathed a sigh of freedom and some of the schoolboys would be encouraged by their dads to sing a blast of something like ’A Nation Once Again’.
The telephone boxes on the roads to Clones changed from scarlet to yellow and green and you saw Tricolours and you were free from the Empire for the day. It was magic in the town. Your sense of freedom was sharpened by the aromas of fish and chips from the cafes, by all the crowds, by the buskers on the pavements singing ‘Kevin Barry’ and playing sharp-edged reels on accordions and fiddles.
There was hardly room to move on the narrow streets leading to St Tiernach’s Park. “Hats! Dolls! Colours!” in Dublin accents from the traders. “Programmes For The Match!” Backyards of private houses converted into makeshift cafes for “high teas”.
Three slices of ham, four of corned beef, two tomatoes maybe, lettuce, scallions, a few rings of hard boiled egg, brown bread, red jam on the side, as much tea as you could drink for five bob and a half-crown for the young lad.
Porter flowed from every loud pub at a time when all the pubs were closed in the North. Bottles of stout or half-ones for the Fermanagh daddies, fizzy lemonade for the boys. Bands playing in the distance, that scuff and scuffle of feet moving towards the park. Flimsy paper caps in the colours of the teams that ran the colours down your face if it drizzled rain. Usually the colour was blue because Cavan were usually in action in those years. They had won their famous titles more than a decade earlier, one in the Polo Grounds against Kerry, and they often won the Ulster title but never went much further afterwards.
St Tiernach’s Park is tucked neatly into the Clones oxter and just the right shape. When you got your backside on the narrow sideline terrace seating you were looking up at the hill opposite and the Monaghan horizon behind. I’ve been many times in the Gerry Arthurs Stand in latter years but, somehow, never a better or more powerful view than from those rough concrete strip seats along the sideline.
Were you from a county like Fermanagh, who have never won an Ulster title, you most often were viewing battles between the other counties in the Ulster finals of my boyhood.
It maybe made things a bit easier in the end. You always hoped that a team from North of the Border, from the Wee Six itself, would triumph and move on to the next stage.
It did not happen often enough but nobody will ever forget the arrival in Clones one July of the great Down team that went on to become the first to bring Sam Maguire in triumph across the Border.
I watched them in awe in that Ulster final as they dismantled Cavan and they brought a new dimension to Ulster football in Clones. The forward Tony Hadden played so wide that his boots were white from sideline lime. I was within feet of him that magical day. James McCartan was a flamboyant figure down the centre, Paddy Doherty unerring from frees, Kevin Mussen, their captain an inspiration in defence. I think I remember that Galway beat them later in the campaign but they went all the way the following year. And the cup crossed the Border for an autumn of celebration that will never be forgotten.
And when the battle was won and the crowds flooded back into The Diamond of Clones the alchemy was already there that meant the entire province was solidly aligned behind the Ulster champions far more solidly than in any other province. And the schoolboys could never quite understand why their fathers were more interested in going into the pubs than in walking through the town to sample the excitement of it all. But they were freed to go away and spend their half-crowns on sweets and toys to bring home to the younger ones.
And they had, even at that age, a marrow-deep sense of belonging to something Irish and special that they would never ever truly find under the Orange Arches and Union Jacks of home.
I still get that feeling in Saint Tiernach’s Park in Clones every time I walk down there on match days from The Diamond. Again I’m like a foal at foot with stars in my eyes, a paper cap on my head, walking in the footsteps of great Gaels, remembering great heroes, remembering how simple and somehow pure it all was.
Now I have tears in my eyes... and I’m not ashamed of them either.
