Champion Chase
They would lose their crown from Croke Park in front of 57 people and a dog on a muddy, slanted pitch.
Of course, Crossmaglen changed all that. During the four years that saw them become the standard for clubs everywhere, insatiable desire saw them winning three All-Ireland titles. There was no defeat in Silverbridge or Lurgan, no shock last-minute goal for a team who were intermediate the year before.
Whatever about the difficulty of county teams coming back year after year, it is even harder for club managers to hold their raggle-taggle bunch together.
The nature of club GAA means the four stars are always going to be supplemented by the mediocre and below average, the too old and the too young.
Particularly if a club are the rural village of one shop masked as a pub of Walter Macken fiction.
Well, last year Ballinderry, a parish of 350 families on the Derry/Tyrone border rode a crest of a wave all the way to the All Ireland final and defeated Cork’s Nemo Rangers.
Nobody thought they would be back. As one of their biggest stars, Conleth Gilligan, says, “There is nothing in Ballinderry. One shop, two pubs and a chip shop. And then, the football field. That’s it, so football is the hub of the community, everyone is involved on some level. Nobody is outside the football.”
Given that, you would hardly expect Ballinderry back in an Ulster club semi-final. Was the village not drank dry back in March, were celebrations not still continuing. While Gilligan agrees that some natives might still be enjoying a sup or two at the success, the team had no such luxuries. Any protracted celebrations were curtailed by the early start to the Derry championship. Not two months after upsetting one of the biggest clubs in GAA, the All-Ireland champions were back centre-stage. Against the other ‘best football team in Derry’ Bellaghy. The first round of the Derry championship and Ballinderry looked like they might be heading for the exit door. That focused minds. “Because we were playing Bellaghy so soon, we had to really knuckle down,” Gilligan said. “With all respect to the other clubs in Derry, we knew that if we could get over Bellaghy, our biggest opponent in the rest of the county was ourselves.”
A delicately poised game was decided when Enda Muldoon, only returning from injury, was sprang from the bench and inspired the All-Ireland champions to a six-point victory. They coasted to another Derry championship.
Along the way, there are signs of improvement in other sectors. While the All-Ireland victory relied heavily on the talents of Muldoon and Gilligan, seasoned observers of Ballinderry have noticed the younger players find reservoirs of confidence from the Paddy’s Day win.
“The younger players seem to have come on with the winning of the All-Ireland, the likes of James Conway are far better footballers now than they were last March,” says local journalist Chris McCann. “They weren’t really tested in Derry, but they dragged out a victory against Mayobridge in the first round of Ulster.”
The semi-final will be the biggest test. Whomever emerges from Sunday’s second replay between Errigal Ciaran and Crossmaglen will face the All Ireland champions in as mouth watering a tie as one could imagine.
“Well, there was always a perception that whoever came out of this tough side of the draw would win Ulster. But, Enniskillen Gaels have been knocking at the door for the past few years and Gowna will be no pushovers, either. You only have to look at us last year, we came through the easier side of the draw in Ulster and weren’t expected to beat Mayobridge, but we did.”
Gilligan always knew this year would be the acid test. Any team can win Ulster and Ireland once, with the right coach and a motivated bunch of players. To do it twice would prove the team were great.
“Well, that was our priority this year. That’s why it hasn’t been hard to continue. Success has bred this success. When we went into Derry championship, we knew there was still question marks about us. People were saying they won it once, but can they do it again? The club hadn’t won back-to-back titles since 1982, so that was what important to achieve first.
“After that, we could concentrate on Ulster. You are only a good team to win one All-Ireland, to be a great team you have to win it twice. That is what we are aiming to do.”
A lot of focus in the Ballinderry training sessions has been on statistics. As Gilligan jokes, their trainers are stat-mad. In Ulster club football, there is never a point or two between the sides, even when there is a perceived gulf in class. Especially at this time of year.
“Yeah, so we are told to shoot a lot, if you have more shots than your opponents, chances are you will score more. There is never more than two points between any team. So, even if some of your shots go wide, as they will in this weather, a lot will also go over the bar. And those are the significant shots.”
After so many barren years, success has come in a flood in Ballinderry. Conleth Gilligan can still remember the bad old days, “when you wondered if we would ever get out of Derry, never mind Ulster. Every year, we went down, a load of us from the club, to watch the All-Ireland finals on Paddy’s Day, when Cross and Bellaghy were involved.
“And every year, we would tell each other that we better enjoy this Paddy’s Day session, because there would be none next year. We were telling each other that for five or six years, never really believing it.”
Belief will never be a problem again in Ballinderry.
