Slaughtneil conjuring magic once again
Before telling the story, I need to provide some background. As a boy, I mainlined Westerns. Cowboys and Indians. Despite the fact that they usually got whipped, I always aligned myself with the Indians — or native Americans, as they should be called.
In fact, I always felt slightly aggrieved with God that I was born in a hospital. It should have been a teepee. Hunting buffalos. Riding horses on the open plains. Ambushing the American cavalry. That was the life for me. I had school: spellings, tables and my awful paintings. It was such a raw deal.
When my mother bought me a book about native Americans, one of the pictures managed to capture my other childhood obsession – fish. Don’t ask my why? I can’t explain it. The American short story writer, Raymond Carver, a keen fisherman, once wrote: ‘I’ve always been drawn to water’. That about sums it up.
The picture which rapt my attention was of a young brave holding a net at a waterfall as he tried to catch a salmon that was migrating upstream. How I longed to be holding that net.
What a country! Salmon that were so plentiful you could reach out and catch them.
A few years later when I started fishing, we were told about the mighty salmon. Apparently, the king of fish could be found in our local rivers. It seemed scarcely believable. Never mind catching a salmon, we never saw one. Every now and again, when the silence of the river would be broken by a loud splash, we’d have the usual debate. Was it a big trout or a salmon? (This was the ‘B.X’ era — Before Xbox). Even when we concluded that it was “definitely” a salmon, in our heart of hearts, we were never entirely convinced. The salmon was held in reverence. They were mystical. We found it hard to comprehend how these magnificent creatures could make that journey all the way from the Atlantic Ocean and end up in a river a few miles outside our town.
This was 1985. I know the year because it was the summer holidays when Barry Convery kept singing Tina Turner’s hit song, ‘What’s love got to do with it?’ We didn’t mind. Barry was a good singer.
On the day in question, we weren’t catching anything. That wasn’t an uncommon state of affairs. But, in a break from standard practice, we didn’t just keep trying our usual haunts. We kept looking for new spots. We kept walking upstream. After a few hours, we had absolutely no idea where we were. But Barry knew.
When he recognised a familiar farmhouse, Barry informed us that we were “in the middle of Slaughtneil”.
This was slightly disconcerting news. As townies, we suddenly realised that we had wandered into very unfamiliar terrain. Slaughtneil was uncharted territory for us.
But we were undaunted. We had discovered a waterfall. This in itself was an exciting new development which had made the trek worthwhile.
Waterfalls are hypnotic. It’s the noise. The three of us stood high on the riverbank watching the torrents of white water while imagining what might lie in the dark pools below.
Then, it started. A salmon suddenly leapt from the black depths. This time, there was no debate. It was definitely a salmon. We were awestruck.
Then another one jumped. And another one. There were dozens of them. We were spellbound. A salmon run. And we weren’t watching television. And we weren’t on a prairie in the Mid-West. We were in Slaughtneil.
While I will never forget that day, in more recent years, I have sometimes questioned whether it really happened. I was starting to think it was figment of my imagination.
I was genuinely starting to wonder. But my doubts were allayed recently when we took our children on a visit to Drumlamph Wood. Developed by the Ghaeltacht community in Slaughtneil, all the signs on the trails are in Irish.
We followed a route which brought us down to the same river I had fished 30 years ago. Near the bridge which is a puck away from Slaughtneil’s GAA ground, the sign informed us that we were standing in Ríocht na mBradán — The Kingdom of the Salmon.
And like the salmon which once spawned in the mountain river near their GAA ground, Slaughtneil GAC have also embarked on an odyssey of epic proportions.
The distance they have travelled is difficult to fathom.
Last Sunday, they beat Austin Stacks from Kerry, a club that has been in existence since 1917. Slaughtneil was founded in 1953. Stacks won the first of their 12 Kerry Championships in 1928. The Emmets broke their duck in 2004.
As an underage footballer, I never played against Slaughtneil. Their teams were always in the ‘B’ Division. At senior level, it’s not an exaggeration to say their senior sides were more feared than admired.
But that’s history now. A dual club that wins in every age group and every code, Slaughtneil are reaping rewards of decades of monumental graft.
In their second ever foray into the provincial Championship, they defeated Clontribret (16 county titles), Cavan Gaels (13 county titles) and Omagh (eight county titles). Remember that to get out of Derry, they had see off Ballinderry, the Ulster champions.
To reach the river that lies below their playing fields, the salmon which made it back to Slaughtneil had to evade factory ships, drift nets, poachers and pollution.
Only the strongest of the species returned to the uplands streams where they were hatched.
The teams which make it to Croke Park on St Patrick’s Day endure similar obstacles. The road to Croke also requires an extraordinary journey — which very few start and even fewer complete.
Even now they have reached their chosen destination, some Slaughtneil supporters will still be in a state of disbelief.
That’s understandable. But wonderful and incredible things can happen in Slaughtneil. It happened before.
It’s happening again.
* Twitter @HeaneyPaddy
