Glen come of age at headquarters as long journey ends
HISTORY MAKERS: Eunan Mulholland of Glen with the cup after the AIB Ulster GAA Football Senior Club Championship Final. Pic: Ben McShane/Sportsfile
When Malachy O’Rourke steps out onto the Croke Park pitch for the All-Ireland final as manager of the Watty Grahams, Glen club against Kilmacud Crokes, it is the end of a journey that began over 30 years ago.
As a student in St Mary’s Teaching College, then known as ‘The Ranch’, his class were a tight group of just 12 PE students. One of them was Bronagh Kelly, later to become Mulholland. While Malachy and the likes of Jarlath Burns, Cathal Murray and Pascal Canavan were engaged in the heavy training that it took to win the 1989 Sigerson Cup, assignments fell behind.
Bronagh kept them up to speed.
“Malachy, there is an awful good side to him, a soft side to him,” says Mulholland.
“He would have been very good-natured, just a good, solid fella. I used to be very proud to see him when he was progressing with Monaghan. I would tell people, ‘I used to run about with him at college.’”
Her decision to attend College in Belfast came from deep within. She is the only child of Philomena McEldowney of Slaughtneil, and John Kelly.
Kelly joined the IRA in the 1950s when he was 18. He took part in the Border Campaign and was arrested in December 1956 and jailed until 1963.
Later, he was involved in setting up Citizen’s Defence Groups to defend nationalist areas that were affected by Loyalist pogroms that led to the burning of Bombay Street and other areas.
After the bodies sought funding for weapons from the Dublin Government, a fund of £100,000 was raised but the planned shipment failed.
Kelly was one of the co-defendants in the subsequent Dublin ‘Arms Trial’ with ministers Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney, accused of conspiring to import arms illegally into the Republic of Ireland. The trial collapsed due to a lack of evidence as the relevant government files were kept secret but several ministers were subsequently sacked.
The Kelly family had to relocate to Dublin, and settled in Blanchardstown.
“And then Daddy did time in Mountjoy at that time,” she explains.
“It was after the Arms Trial. He was giving a talk at some commemoration or a rally down in Enniscorthy and he was charged with membership afterwards as some Garda taped him.
“I was just starting school at that time. It was just me and Mammy, I was an only child. It was hard on my Mammy, she was from here, they had their own house, a lovely bungalow in Belfast in Glengormley, working full-time, Daddy was working full-time and the whole thing just blew up in their faces.
“Sure those were tough times. We stayed in Dublin, Daddy wasn’t in a position to come back up here and I went to secondary school in Blanchardstown.”
Despite the turmoil, strong links were formed with the GAA. Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh lived across the road. He trained the Dublin-based Kerry footballers on the green in front of their houses.
Her own grandfather, Oliver Kelly, served as Antrim county board Chairman for 12 years. A solicitor by profession, in 2002 it was uncovered there had been plans by the Loyalist gang that murdered Pat Finucane, to assassinate Kelly.
“I went to school down there, but I always felt I had this thing that I had in some way missed out, maybe I had a chip on my shoulder that we had to live there whereas all the rest of the family were up here,” Mulholland explains.
“So when I got out of school, I went up to the Ranch and I never looked back.”
As the years went on, O’Rourke took up employment with St Joseph’s College in Enniskillen and Bronagh got a post with Glenview Primary school. She watched his progress and kept in touch.
In 2018, she met O’Rourke and his wife Judith in the Croke Park Hotel ahead of an All-Ireland semi-final. She called in a favour in exchange for the dig-outs with assignments. Glen were hosting a Gala Ball to celebrate their 70th year and they needed a guest speaker. It wouldn’t be his style to do that particular circuit, but what could he say?
“I wouldn’t be doing that for too many, but on account of knowing Bronagh I went up to it,” O’Rourke recalls.
“On that night, I knew that they were a lot of hard workers and had underage success and I said to someone, ‘And when was the last time you won a senior Championship?’
“And they said, ‘No, we have never actually won it.’
“I was like, ‘Never?’ Because a lot of clubs have won their Championship, especially a strong club like that and it took me by surprise that they hadn’t.”
So he reached for an anecdote to match the occasion. An avid reader of all sports and someone constantly on the lookout for a nugget of wisdom, his sports books are dog-eared with post-it notes springing out of all directions.
He reached for a famous tennis match between Jimmy Connors and Vitas Gerulaitis in January 1980. Connors had beaten Gerulaitis the previous 16 matches, but this time the tables were turned.
“And let that be a lesson to you all,” Gerulaitis said afterwards, “Nobody beats Vitus Gerulaitis 17 times in a row!” It brought the house down. Committee members made a mental note to move whenever the time was right.
After the Monaghan job ended, they reached out. O’Rourke and coaching partner Ryan Porter went up and had a chat. They knew on the way back down to Ballygawley they would take the job.
The first county title duly arrived. They backed it up last year by defending the John McLaughlin Cup and then reversed last year’s result against Kilcoo in the Ulster final.
“I am delighted I did come,” O’Rourke says now.
“A great group of fellas, you couldn’t get better and I have really enjoyed it. A super club. The club is really at the heart of this community, it is so strong and a caring club in many ways, it does a lot for the community and is strong in Scór, camogie, ladies football, they have underage success and are a very progressive club.”
Now vice-Chairperson, Mulholland has two sons in Cathal and Eunan playing in the final.
Her work in Glenview served two purposes. It raised a number of Slaughtneil footballers such as Padraig Cassidy and Brendan Rogers, but all but one of the Glen starting line-up – Michael Warnock who attended a nearby Bunscoil – went through Glenview.
Of the Derry team that won the Ulster title last summer, they had eight past pupils.
“From when the boys went down, I was involved,” she says.
“I couldn’t tell enough people about the good of the GAA as an organisation. How important it is to be part of a club and feel that sense of belonging.
“And I know it might be clichéd and whatever else, but you see that group of lads out there, those boys are as tight as anything. And it’s growing up together.”
She’s not exaggerating. Overlooking the Glen pitch is Beaver Crescent and Beaver Drive. Cathal and Eunan were joined in that estate by Conlann Bradley and Emmet Bradley, Ryan Dougan, Jack, Alex and Ethan Doherty. Conor Carville came from just over the road.
Around the turn of the century, the kids all had ‘Green Machine’ go-karts, equipped with a sharp handbrake. They would roll the machines down the slope of Beaver and reach the bottom before wrenching the handbrakes and feeling the karts slide and rubber rip on tarmac.
When one went down to Glen pitch, they all went. The kids from the estate grew up and now stand on the edge of becoming All-Ireland champions.
“I couldn’t emphasise it enough,” enthuses Mulholland.
“I say to parents at the school to get your weans down to that pitch if they are anyway inclined.
“Even through Scór, whatever, they will find something for them. You will make friends there. Our girls, their friends are their camogie girls. That’s who they socialise with, that’s who they rely on. And I just think you cannot buy that.
“That’s why, come Sunday, it makes the hair stand on the back of your neck to think of these boys running out in Croke Park together, again.
“I take photographs of everything, but it feels like yesterday where we had an under-10 team winning a blitz in say, Emyvale. And there’s Conor Carville, big Stevie O’Hara, there’s Cathal, Danny, and they are still there. I mean, where do you get that?”
Sunday is the coming of age. And yet, when referee Derek O’Mahoney throws the ball into the air to get things started, Bronagh won’t be in Croke Park for that part, eventually making her way back to coincide with the final whistle.
She’ll find a nearby Chapel and take refuge there, saying a prayer that everything goes alright and they all get through it all.
Together.
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