Chrissy McKaigue: A fantastic leader and Derry’s Mr 100%

LEADER: Derry captain Christopher McKaigue returns to the dressing room with the match ball after the Ulster GAA Football Senior Championship Final between Derry and Donegal at St Tiernach's Park in Clones, Monaghan. Pic: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

Last weekend, as if sensing all the attention lavished on his former team mates back home, Callum Brown decided to grab destiny by his bare hands and scored four goals for Greater Western Sydney against Hawthorn in the AFL, after the first 24 hours of downpour that has swamped Sydney.

For Brown, it must have felt like a day at home in Limavady.

Just 21, Brown could have been a part of the Derry team that won an Ulster title, but the path from Derry to Australian Rule football is a well-tramped one.

From Dermot McNicholl, to Anthony Tohill, Derry were the early front runners and that curious tradition has continued right up to the present team.

While Conor Glass and Anton made their way back for a variety of reasons, the big surprise was that Chrissy McKaigue returned from the AFL in 2012. Of all the hopefuls, McKaigue was the one that nobody expected to see back.

Having been on Damian Cassidy’s panel in 2009, he went straight back in with his county. The prospects were promising. Derry had been to the Ulster final the year before and only for Eoin Bradley rupturing a cruciate the week for the final against Donegal, would have made it interesting.

Here’s the thing. Before they took out All-Ireland champions Tyrone in Omagh this summer, McKaigue had the grand total of one Ulster Championship victory over the course of a decade to sustain himself; Down in Celtic Park, 2015.

But Gaelic Games offers adult relationships that are open. Derry may have served up annual disappointment, but when McKaigue suited up in the maroon of Slaughtneil, it was a white-knuckle ride through various winters.

In 2014 they won their first Ulster club and squeezed three titles out of four years. In 2015 and 2017 they played the All-Ireland final.

Throughout those runs, McKaigue’s talent would burst into flame when the All-Ireland runs were the biggest show in town. Marking Diarmuid Connolly against St Vincent’s in the All-Ireland semi-final of 2017, he coughed up a point to one of the most outrageously gifted forwards in the game.

However, he got forward to kick 0-4 from play himself.

In hurling, they lost the 2013 and 2015 Ulster finals. But just days after the funeral of Thomas Cassidy, the Godfather of Slaughtneil hurling, they beat Loughgiel in 2016 in an emotional, gorgeous and evocative afternoon in the Athletic Grounds. They have won four out of the last five Ulster titles, granting McKaigue the success his standards demand.

For Derry though, he needed some convincing.

This year in Owenbeg, a rare bumper crowd turned up to see if Derry could seal promotion in round six, against this weekend’s semi-final opponents, Galway.

Instead, they were blitzed, 0-12 to 4-11. As he trudged into the dressing room he felt it was a case of ‘same old story.’ “Rory Gallagher had no doubts,” he recalls now.

“I can still vividly remember what he said to us in the changing rooms after Galway and I can still remember what he said to us on the Tuesday night after. He had no doubts.

"He said he didn't believe that that game had been us. He didn't believe we had anything to be worried about. We had had our bad day. He mentioned that our league preparation hadn't been great but also that it was outside our control. We were victims of our own success in having a very strong club. He was unerring.

"I have been in plenty of changing rooms when managers have come in and said the token gesture piece but you could hear in his voice, you could see in his eyes, he had no doubts.

"I'm not saying I totally believed him. I have a bit more mental scarring having been around Derry set-ups before and was thinking 'Here we go again' but he didn't.

“When someone of his intellect is saying things like that, even the most sceptical like me start to think, 'Well, maybe he knows more than me on this one,' and in fairness he has been proved correct. It was one bad day.” 

Earlier this year, Slaughtneil were left crestfallen by their All-Ireland club semi-final defeat to Waterford’s Ballygunner. Usually in those circumstances they might have taken their time in coming back into the county fold.

There was none of that this year. Once beaten, they were straight back up the Glenshane Pass to Owenbeg.

When Glen were beaten in the Ulster club semi-final to Kilcoo, it was the exact same.

"That's the culture that has been set within Derry now. There are people who want to be inter-county footballers in Derry. I'm not saying it is THE most important thing in their lives but it is certainly one of the most important things in their lives,” says McKaigue.

It wasn’t always that way. Indeed, it might not have even been that way for McKaigue himself occasionally. Most people would act out by skipping a few training sessions here and there if they felt they were jaded by their county involvement.

That wouldn’t be his way. Instead, he took on more responsibility, heading out with Brendan Rogers to play hurling for the county and become dual players in 2017 and 2018.

“Maybe Slaughtneil was going so well in the hurling that he had a taste for it at that time,” says Gerard O’Kane, a former team mate.

“Derry had dropped down a level and he didn’t need to show the same commitment to it as the football. Brendan Rogers played for the hurlers that season too. Maybe the Gerard Bradley and Meehaul McGrath figures had their influence too, ‘come with us for a while.’” 

Former manager Brian McIver believes he never came across anyone quite like him.

“Nobody could ever say that he didn’t give 100% in every single night he turned up at training or every game he played. He is totally, totally dedicated,” says McIver.

“And then throw in on top of that, he gives great leadership. Even when Derry would have been struggling in matches, he gave that leadership, for other players and younger lads coming in, setting very high standards.

“And he’s a damn good player,” he says, citing that performance against Connolly in 2017.

Under Gallagher, he has a different role. This season he has marked Darren McCurry, Jack McCarron, Patrick McBrearty and Keelan Sexton. Only McCurry scored from play against him with two special points.

How do you convince a 33-year-old that his best job is nullifying someone else? Surely that belongs to someone with less miles in the legs?

“Chrissy would totally buy in to that. Give him a job and he sets himself to do it. He will do his homework and if it is what the team needs, he will do it,” says McIver.

“He has the discipline to do that, to do the job on a Paddy McBrearty and that’s it.” 

“I am going to be honest here,” laughs Ger O’Kane, “I could never have done what he does.” 

In the early stages of Rory Gallagher arriving in Derry, certain things amazed him once he stepped inside the bubble.

For a start, he had underestimated the scale of hurling in the county.

But there were other things too that pulled on Gallagher like a rag nail. One night they hosted Donegal in Celtic Park. Michael Murphy was injured for Donegal but was still there in his tracksuit with the rest.

Some of the Derry players were clad in their club gear, at a remove from everything else, arriving late, coming and going.

Gallagher let them have it for their lack of professionalism.

“You know what?” says McKaigue, “It did no harm because the standards in Derry, albeit those smaller details in the larger scale of things aren't overly important and I'm sure Rory was aware of that but he was setting his stall out that the standards in Derry were not good enough. 

"And they weren't good enough - culturally, the dedication and commitment of the players and with due respect to the player,s they maybe didn't know any different. How would they?

"Rory was just setting his stall out that no matter what happens here, we are going to do it the right way and we have done it the right way.” 

Despite all that, McKaigue accepted an invitation to manage a local Junior club, Desertmartin in 2020.

There was an emotional draw in that his mother is from the area, and management and coaching intrigues him.

"A glutton for punishment,” he laughs now.

“The strange person that I am believe it or not, it was almost like therapy to go away and coach and to go away and work with people, do a bit of managing, because it is completely different.

"That was the year that the county season was flipped around and we played Armagh in November. It coincided, in my opinion, with allowing me to have one of the best club campaigns I ever had in hurling and football because I had nothing else and we were just so engrossed in it.” 

100%. All the way. It’s all he knows.