Mourneful memories
They have blown the dust off the bunting and raised the red and black around the picturesque club-house, nestling beneath the Mourne mountains, so close to the sea that the sand can sting your eyes during training.
That certain feeling has returned to people around here.
In Ulster, they call it the old Down arrogance, appearing whenever they have sight of the big day in Clones and the sniff of an Ulster title in their nostrils.
Gregory McCartan unleashes a deep, northern laugh. “Down arrogance? We haven’t had much to be arrogant about in the last few years.
"People always say it about Down, maybe it is the black shorts or those red shirts. I don’t know, we are still playing Tyrone, who everyone are tipping for an All-Ireland.
"All we can do is go out there and do what we have be doing all year, putting pride in the Down jersey.”
The revival of Down this summer is entangled with the revival of Gregory McCartan.
Against Monaghan, he drove the county forward to their first championship victory in four years and was carried, shoulder-height, by supporters off the pitch.
Again, against Fermanagh, it was McCartan, his surname redolent of great Down teams of the past, who ensured Down didn’t let their Ulster final place slip.
While Paddy O’Rourke has tinkered with his team, blending the old with the new, it is how the new manager has ignited the spark in one of his most talented players that has most tongues wagging about this Down team.
When things went badly wrong in Down over the past few years, McCartan let things slide badly with them.
“In the past few years, things had just gone stale and players weren’t happy. There were guys acting the maggot at training, none more so than myself, there just wasn’t a lot of pride in the jersey.
"And I did as much as anyone else to sully that. It is just great this year to get the chance to redeem myself and put some pride back.
"Paddy has been a big factor in that, he has come in and basically said to us, either you guys want to play for Down or you don’t.”
O’Rourke issued a stark warning on his first few days stepping into Pete McGrath’s shoes.
There were no certainties. He brought 54 lads into the training panel before Christmas. McCartan was one.
In years gone by, he never worried much about his place in the Down team. A couple of years ago, he was dropped from the panel, but his commitment had waned so much by 2001, he knew it was coming.
This was different. O’Rourke cut the panel back to 32 just before Christmas and for the first time, McCartan was concerned that he mightn’t have made it. When he really wanted to.
“Other years, I always felt I was a cert to be on the panel, but this year, I was apprehensive approaching Paddy. People think I am joking, but it was a relief to discover I was on the championship panel.”
It is hard to believe that Down, or most counties, could do without a fully-fit, fully committed Gregory McCartan. He was brought into the Down panel the winter before the break-through in 1991.
Pete McGrath remembers him as a big, but raw, talent. He watched the whole All-Ireland adventure from the sidelines, a greenhorn 20-year-old, celebrating the prize as if he played every game.
If this was senior football, he could get used to it. He remained on the fringes and even found himself off the panel in 93.
“We just decided that Gregory hadn’t developed as pa layer in the two years he was on the squad,” McGrath recalls.
His first test. The first time questions were asked about McCartan’s heart and drive. Nobody ever doubted Gregory’s talent, but it takes much more than that.
McCartan went back to his small club, Ballymartin, and played so well for a year that McGrath couldn’t ignore him again.
The first time he pulled on the red jersey in the white heat of championship, Derry were defending their All-Ireland title in Celtic Park.
For those who saw that game in living colour, it was a spectacle unlike any other.
Eamon Coleman calls it the greatest game of football he ever had the pleasure to be involved in. And his team lost their All-Ireland title that day.
McGrath remembers it as a classic, two teams at the peak of their powers, a standard of football that is unlikely to be repeated.
Now Gregory sighs, because he hears the question so much. Making your debut in one of the greatest football games ever, what was it like?
“You don’t remember. Who remembers a specific 70 minutes of their life. I mean, it went by so fast.
"Maybe when I am old and grey and lying around, which is probably sooner rather than later with me, I will look back on that game, but not now.”
Still, the record shows a 23-year-old McCartan made his championship debut in the game of the 1990s.
His role in capturing that second All-Ireland was as important as any, but his contribution was over-shadowed by the likes of Linden and Carr.
“He was one of our outstanding performers that year, played well in all our games. I often think Gregory’s contribution was over-looked because so many of our players played well that year,” McGrath says.
Down tapered off after that second success, going out the following year in the first round to Donegal. In 1996, McCartan carried a bone-tired team to an Ulster final but found Peter Canavan a little too hot.
In the lost years, Gregory was at his best. They were days when Down were trounced by five or 10 points by teams who had to by-pass midfield because Gregory was catching everything within a 10-yard radius; they were days when Gregory almost wrought victories from a team carrying too much dead-weight.
And there was the winter morning in early 1999, as Down captain, that he went to Newry to have a MRI scan on a stubborn knee injury.
Nobody thought it was too serious. Both McCartan and the Down physio suspected a tear in the cruciate ligament. Nobody expected the results of the scan.
Doctors looked for his cruciate ligament and looked again, but there was nothing there. All those years rising highest in midfield had sanded away the ligament until there was nothing left.
He returned remarkably quickly. By the time Armagh were ending their famine with a comfortable Ulster final win over Down, McCartan was able to make a cameo appearance alongside his name-sake, Jamesie.
That was the last Ulster final appearance, and the last good year with Down. The knee was still troubling him. His form dipped, his confidence dipped.
Nights he would have spent training or relaxing in front of the telly found him down the pub, wondering if there was much football left in his career.
By 2001, he had dropped so far from the radar that McGrath culled him from the panel.
Last year was the same. More injuries, more suspensions. When you ask Gregory about his change in attitude, he says it is because it is the first year in about seven he hasn’t been injured or suspended.
“No wait, I was sent off against Mayo, that’s right,” he chuckles. “But Paddy sorted me out. The next week, we were playing Laois and the team were staying in the Citywest Hotel.
"On the morning of the game, he made me do 26 or 27 laps of the field. It taught me a lesson, you have to work twice as hard when you are suspended.”
HE recalls some of the unsavoury incidents now and shrugs. He and the team were in a bad place at the time.
“It is easy to turn around and hit someone when you are losing by four or five points and things aren’t going well.
"When you are winning, you don’t feel the urge to take out your frustration. That’s all it is. Paddy has told us where we are going, and has told us to stand tall, not take any shite, but don’t do anything stupid.”
Although McCartan denies it, O’Rourke has obviously ear-marked the competitive midfielder as the man who leads by example on the pitch.
Certainly, his former manager believes so. “Gregory has benefited more than most from the change in management,” McGrath believes.
“New people and new ideas, that always gives more of a lift to those closer the end of their career than the start of it.
His career has got a second wind. Gregory has always the potential to be a leader but he came into a team with so many leaders, the likes of Ross Carr, Greg Blaney, DJ Kane, those qualities got a little lost.
“From those two games so far, you can see his body language is that of a leader, and whenever there is a crisis on the field, younger players turn their heads and look to Gregory for guidance.
His experience is shows. He is sensibly economical with his energy. At his stage of career, players have to see the ebb and flow of the game rather than go with the ebb and flow. And he is being extremely astute in that regard.”
McCartan himself thinks the change did cause a lease of life. “Things are being done differently now, if Paddy is able to keep the nucleus of this team together, there is no reason why Down can’t be challenging for All-Ireland and Ulster titles over the next three or four years.
That is where Down football should be, we should be one of the teams in the higher echelons.”
He doesn’t like to recall the dark days, the first round defeat to Antrim when he missed a penalty, the days when players had to think twice before going to training.
“It is terrible that we did that to ourselves, to the county and to the fans. It is a lot of expense, heading to Clones or Casement for the day and to see Down perform like that.
“I know how much it costs my family. Thankfully, this year we have given them something to shout about.”
Now, parading around Clones, carrying more Down hopes than most others, he can find Sinead and the boys in the crowd.
At six and seven, they are beginning to understand why Dad is away four nights a week, why he means so much to so many people, starting to see that Dad can be a hero to people.
On Clones on Sunday, he will look for them in the crowd and put his hand up. Smile.
For a while, nobody was smiling in Down football and Gregory McCartan was one of those who couldn’t be bothered to do much with his physical gifts.
“What people said about me didn’t bother me as much as what I thought of myself. I knew I could have done better.”
Life is good now, though. Down, the Kerry of the north, are back in an Ulster final. They have sight of the big hill in Clones, can almost catch the scent of grease off the chip vans, just like the good, old days.
The red and black is flying again. Jaws may drop if Tyrone are beaten on Sunday, maybe everywhere but in one small tribe which has always believed their style and of pure football is best.
