'When this ends, I’m going to look around me and breathe in the fresh air. Then I’m going to hug the children'
I'm 84 in a couple of weeks. I help out with the lotto on a Sunday night, help out with that and have great friends in that. They’re all younger than me but I wouldn’t be going anywhere on a Sunday night and it’s a great pastime. You’d miss that.
I got a name for doing things in the club but I’d 100 people around me doing the same. You couldn’t put it all down to me; it’s just I was there the longest.
At home, all those years ago, we lived near enough to the pitch and ours was like a canteen. You’d bring everything up from the house to the pitch when they were running tournaments and teams coming from Monaghan, Down, and Derry.
This week, I did a wee video for the club for the internet and sang a bit of a tune. I got awful stick over that from my own family. Some of them were ringing me pretending to be Louis Walsh and Simon Cowell. It was just a bit of fun to lift the mood.
Our PRO Róisín is brilliant in keeping the community in touch with one another at the moment.
We lived through The Troubles and there would be a good few like me who remember them but the young people wouldn’t have a clue. They didn’t have difficulties going to training and all that sort of thing.
It wasn’t easy but the football kept us afloat and kept us right. When all this is over the younger generation will have a greater appreciation for their football and their club. Because right now the children have nowhere to go.
I’ve 21 grandchildren and most of them are living around me here. I’ve the first great grandchild, two months old, in London and I am dying to see him but they can’t come home and it’s difficult for them too.
Oisín’s children are the youngest. There is one who’s nearly eight or at least he’d be telling you he’s eight in a few weeks. The next fella is five and the wee girl is about 17 months.
Oisín and Darina had her here in the garden the other evening and I had to go out and shut the back door behind me and you’d want to see her try and get up on the step and banging the door with her fist to get to Mickey Mouse on the fridge.
Just looking out at them all keeps me going. The grandchildren are doing the shopping for me. I had three dinners here one particular day. They’re all coming through the window — I’ve a table of plates belonging to all different people.
You could get used to this lifestyle, everything being handed to you. I have a great family around me. They’re checking in at night to make sure I’m okay and then in the morning they’re ringing to see if I need anything in the shops. I’m not doing without.
I had a brother Brian who died in the first week of this. We were lucky enough to have Mass but the graveyard was private. He didn’t get the send-off but anyhow around that time I had a fella ring here one day and the last time I spoke to him was in 1948. My brother Brian, myself and this fella were all together in the Gaeltacht in Donegal.
He had seen Brian’s death in the paper, started ringing the McConvilles around here and he eventually got my number. He said he was very fond of Brian when they were young fellas in the Irish college. He said I wouldn’t remember him but I did, a wee red head.
Isn’t it remarkable how people can pick up the phone like that? I really appreciated his call. It’s at times like these that good people can be seen.
When this ends, I’m just going to stand and look around me and breathe in the fresh air. Then I’m going to hug the children. There’s no day that would pass when I wouldn’t have three or four of them here anyway, calling at different times.
Even the ones playing for Armagh at the moment, the O’Neill boys and Cian McConville, they always call and you just love to hear the wee bit of craic.
Granny does hear a lot of things. Maybe I have a way of picking it out of them with so many years behind. I’ve nothing to learn in that respect.
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