Trials across the water forged Forker's path to Armagh football

Forker was invited in with the Armagh minors for 2009 but he stuck with soccer and, in his absence, the Orchard won the All-Ireland. He didn't make that mistake again.

Sat, 27 Apr, 2024 - 06:54

Paul Keane

Liverpool via Dungannon Swifts, Conor Bradley's journey to the Premier League has a familiar ring to it for Aidan Forker.

School teacher Forker is from the next county over, Armagh, but did play for the Swifts himself and was picked up by Liverpool for trials too.

That was as a 14-year-old in the 2000s and unfortunately for Forker - or fortunately for Armagh - the dream died there, a week spent on Merseyside ending with handshakes and goodbyes.

He was back two years later, in Liverpool that is, for another trial, this time across the city at Tranmere Rovers where Kenny Shiels from Maghera was the head of youth.

Shiels told him that it was a close run thing. If Forker had been living locally, the club would have taken a punt on him. But he wasn't so they didn't.

Forker was invited in with the Armagh minors for 2009 but he stuck with soccer and, in his absence, the Orchard won the All-Ireland.

He didn't make that mistake again, agreeing to play minor in 2010 and lining out against a strong Cork side at Croke Park. Armagh lost by a point but Forker was hooked.

Speaking of hooks, he was called into the Armagh senior setup in 2012 by Paddy O'Rourke and remembers going down to play Meath in a challenge in Navan.

"In their changing rooms the hooks are really high up on the wall, I remember thinking, 'Jeez, there must be some big men around Navan!'" he smiled.

A dozen years later, Forker is still going strong. But could he have done what Bradley did and made it at Liverpool, if things had been a little different?

"I think it's not unattainable," is the defender's measured response. "At the time, I was probably a little bit overawed and it felt like maybe boys were a wee bit ahead of me.

"And I'm not going to knock a person at that age who doesn't have maybe the resilience or the toughness. It was brilliant to be exposed to it. A good experience. That's what I'll put it down to."

Forker's brother, Paul, made a little more progress in England, playing for Preston North End. Another brother, Stefan, was involved with Armagh in 2008, the year they won their last Ulster title.

Stefan later lamented his inability to make a greater impact whilst playing for Armagh but Aidan could be on the verge of something special. He is the team captain and after losing out on penalties in last year's Ulster final, and with Derry now out of the picture, he may very well get his hands on the Anglo Celt Cup.

Named at wing-back for Saturday evening's provincial semi-final against Down in Clones (5.15pm), Forker is proud of what he achieved playing soccer moreso than regretful.

There was the time, for instance, he attended underage international trials for Northern Ireland.

"There were maybe four teams of 11, maybe 44 players trialling, and I was put in centre-back, which I was raging about," he smiled. "Who was beside me? Shane Duffy."

Duffy ended up a Premier League regular, with various teams, and played 60 times for the Republic of Ireland.

"He was the size he is now when he was 14," recalled Forker who spent one of his days trialling at Liverpool watching Sami Hyppia, Djibril Cisse and Steven Gerrard train.

Back in Armagh, Kieran McGeeney is held in the same sort of reverence as Gerrard is in Liverpool. Two icons of their eras.

Geezer is a decade in charge and perhaps on the verge of something special with a hardened crew. Armagh actually didn't lose a Championship game over 70 minutes last year, beaten by both Derry in the Ulster final and then Monaghan at Croke Park on penalties.

"We can take a bit of positivity and strength from that in terms of being hard to beat," said Forker. "But we want to be on the right side of those results and hopefully we are in a better position now a year on to eek out the wins in those big games.

"But we have to get into those big games first of all to see if we have learned or not. Time will tell I suppose."

When Armagh met Down at this same stage last year, they beat their neighbours by 4-10 to 0-12. Both teams have pushed on in the meantime, Down coming up from Division 3 this spring and Armagh securing promotion from Division 2.

In Armagh's case, promotion came with a final outing at Croke Park which ended in defeat to Donegal. You wouldn't bet against those two counties meeting again next month.

"The old cliche is of taking it one game at a time but you still have the All-Ireland series at the end of it," said Forker. "We should have no excuses and just go after what we'd like, to try to get back to where we'd like, and hopefully go one step further (than 2023) but listen, it's this weekend and nothing more than that for now."

*Aidan Forker was speaking at the 2024 AIB GAA All-Ireland senior football championship.