Ratoath keeper Shane Duffy hangs up his gloves on a high

The former Monaghan goalkeeper moved to Ratoath in 2014

Two days after Shane Duffy moved into his new home in Ratoath in late 2014, the local club chairman and manager Fergie Power called to his door.

'Would you fancy playing for us?' was their request as word spread rapidly along the grapevine that Monaghan's 2007 and 2010 Ulster final goalkeeper had moved to the area.

Ratoath was a junior outfit at the time but with Duffy in goals they won the intermediate championship in 2015 and last Sunday claimed back to back senior titles.

Even allowing for the population explosion in the east Meath town next to the Dublin border, it's been a meteoric rise though this is where the journey ends for Duffy.

At 38 and with seven and five-year-old boys at home, he pulled down the shutters on an intriguing career at full-time in Sunday's dramatic one-point final defeat of Gaeil Colmcille.

Quite how the Magheracloone man ended up playing for Ratoath is still a mystery to him though.

"It was literally the second day in the house, a knock came on the door, it was the chairman and the manager at the time and I said, 'Jeez, how did you know I was here? I hardly even know where I am so how did you know?'" said Duffy.

"I never found out that, never found out. They had their wits about them in fairness. Ah look, it was great, it was nice to get involved in the club. At that stage I was kind of expecting to wind down but I got a new lease of life."

Duffy finished up his Ratoath stint with three county titles, two at senior level to add to the senior medal he won with Magheracloone in Monaghan in 2004.

Mind you, his career was pockmarked with enough miserable moments to leave him with a head full of regrets until the last two seasons.

Magheracloone, for instance, never added another senior title and lost finals in 2005, 2006, and 2010 while Duffy was in goals for Monaghan when they lost Ulster finals to Tyrone in 2007 and 2010.

He made 17 championship starts in total for Monaghan and was their undisputed number one between 2005 and 2007 yet when they finally made the provincial breakthrough in 2013 he was gone, a victim of a dodgy hip and the emergence of Rory Beggan.

Last Sunday in Navan, when Gaeil Colmcille scored a 62nd-minute penalty to lead by three, Duffy anticipated more angst though Ratoath somehow rescued it with a 68th-minute goal themselves from Joey Wallace.

"You go through your career and you genuinely do kind of say, 'Jeez, I regret this' and 'I regret that'," said Duffy. "Losing so many county finals in Monaghan, and losing them by a point or two, losing semi-finals... like, everyone in Monaghan will tell you we were the dominant team in that period but we just didn't (win enough), we only won one.

"With Monaghan, I kind of missed the breakthrough there by a couple of years. In 2007 and 2010 we got to two Ulster finals. I think particularly in 2007 we were the underdogs going into that one and lost narrowly, that was the year we lost to Kerry by a point in the All-Ireland quarter-finals as well.

"They're all the little things you say, 'Could have won those' and even at the end on Sunday, at the very, very end I was thinking, 'That's another one gone, that's another regret', when they scored the penalty in the last couple of minutes, so it's nice to be on the right side of it for a change. 

"I was gathering my stuff in the back of the goals thinking, 'That's it, I'm going to sign off on a low' so look, really nice to be on the right side of it."