McConville keeps faith in Cross

IT’S not well known outside Ulster but Oisín McConville is gaining a growing reputation as a pundit who calls games right. Writing a column in a Belfast-based Sunday newspaper, his record of picking winners is impressive.

He’s not afraid to discount his own Armagh either. In last year’s Ulster SFC opener, he correctly tipped Monaghan to beat the then Division 2 champions. As a recovering gambling addict, it might be seen as a perilous exercise. Not for McConville. There was a time when teams’ odds meant everything to him. Not anymore.

Sailing too close to the wind? Not at all. “I’ve never thought of it like that,” he says. “It would never have crossed my mind that it could be seen as being too close to gambling. Let me put it to you this way: I watch games and call games now for the right reasons. Before I wouldn’t have. Now it’s purely for what I know about a team and what sources from counties would tell me about how teams are going. I’m doing it for the right reasons, a love of the game.”

Marrying the love of his life, Darina, last month has also seen McConville, 35, move further away from his demons.

He works now as a counsellor, splitting his time between Newry and Belfast. Life is good.

“I am in a great place, my head is in a great place and that helps when you turn up for training on a Tuesday and Thursday night and go out and play a football game at the weekend. I love going out on nights like this and devoting those two hours to the training. You go back then and you have your family life, you have your work and whatever else you have going on in your life. I am just content.”

McConville, of course, is thankful some things haven’t changed in his life. Crossmaglen, after their 2009 blip, are winning a lot again. Tomorrow’s All-Ireland semi-final, their eighth in total, represents a reinvigoration of the principles that made Rangers what they were.

After the Ulster final win over Naomh Conaill in December, McConville appeared to take aim at former boss and current Armagh selector Donal Murtagh when he claimed the new management team of Tony McEntee and Gareth Swift “have turned the thing around in this club; it’s more professional”.

“I can understand why it could be seen as criticism but all I was saying was Tony and Gareth had brought in a new lease of life,” maintains McConville. “It was no slight on Donal and the previous management set-up. The way our club was going, we had started to take things for granted. We thought that we could waltz through Armagh and then ramp it up when we got into Ulster.”

Even if it had the desired effect in shaking up Crossmaglen, that shock defeat to Pearse Óg in the 2009 county quarter-final — their first defeat in the Armagh championship in 14 years — is a vivid one.

“It was gutting. It was very difficult to leave the house for a week or so because it was a strange feeling. You felt as if you let everyone down. I just knew that we needed to win another one.”

McEntee and Swift haven’t been slow to shake up things. Figures like Irish boxing chief Billy Walsh have spoken to their charges while they’ve introduced long-distance running into training.

The management have had to reflect in training the shift in Cross’s power base from physicality to skill.

As McConville explains: “Cross teams down through the years, and I know this myself, would have ground teams down. We don’t have that physicality any more. We had only one player under six foot in the 1997 All-Ireland winning team. We don’t have that at the minute. We have got ball players and you have to adapt to their style.

“Some of the talent is unbelievable. Just to pick out two players James Morgan, our corner back has been unbelievable and Jamie Clarke, we got a sense of what he could do last year with the county team.

“People will have seen and heard of him but as far as I am concerned they have seen nothing… they have not seen enough of him yet because he is special. It is not just those two, there are lots of other players coming on. They are talented footballers, not reliant on that physical side of it. They can play ball.”

It’s the presence of Morgan and Clarke in his team that make it easier for McConville to call tomorrow’s game in Navan.

Crossmaglen.