Gearóid Adams interview: 'Gaelic games became my passion and probably kept me out of trouble'
Clonduff's Gearóid Adams: "I was an only child. My own kids would be quietish as well.” Pic: Tom Maher, Inpho
CLONDUFF GAC is and always will be Ross Carr country. When Adrian Cush departed as manager of the south Down club at the end of the 2023 season, Carr knew just the man to succeed the former Tyrone footballer.
Clonduff chairman at the time, Carr drove up to The Balmoral Hotel in west Belfast to meet Antrim native Gearoid Adams.
Carr liked what he saw the first time around when Adams was in charge of Clonduff in 2015, even if it was for only one season due to being offered a joint-manager's position with the Antrim senior footballers.
By the time the pair had downed a pint in the lobby bar of the Balmoral, Adams was Clonduff’s new senior football manager. Heading into the 2024 season, however, the landscape was desperately bleak for the Hilltown club.
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For starters, there was hell to pay following the almighty brawl that broke out in the championship semi-final between Clonduff and bitter rivals Kilcoo the previous October.
“You had four or five lads who were unable to play [due to suspension] and a couple of lads went to Australia,” Adams says.
Worse, Lorcan Branagan (26), the club’s resident corner-back, died tragically in Sydney.
In that first season, Adams was managing a situation more than a football team.
“Lorcan’s death had a massive impact on the group and around the same time my sister-in-law passed away. So, I kind of had an idea what the Clonduff boys were going through. They retired the number two jersey that year. A young lad in the prime of his life…”
Spool forward to a bright and breezy afternoon in west Belfast, Adams is sitting over an Americano in Kaff Coffee Shop a few days out from Sunday’s Down SFC final meeting with Burren in Newry – a club he spent several years with under the wily leadership of Jim McCorry.
Clonduff haven’t won a senior title in 26 years; their last final appearance coming in 2016 when they lost to county kingpins Kilcoo in a one-sided affair.
Burren, coached by former Tyrone footballer Collie Holmes, won the last of their 14 championship titles in 2018 – the only team to break Kilcoo's vice-like grip on the Frank O'Hare Cup between 2012 and 2025.
“The great thing about this group of players,” said Carr, “is there are no d***heads. That's a big factor.
"It’s been a long while since our club won a senior championship. This group of boys obviously haven’t won one yet. I suppose, you don’t know how to win until you do.”
Son of former Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, Gaelic games was Gearoid’s passion from a young age.
“My Ma played camogie and my Da played hurling and football,” he says. “My Da came out of jail when I was five. I wasn’t really pushed in any direction; it was just to play hurling and football and having a sense of being Irish…
“I attended St Finian’s Primary School on the lower Falls Road. I was very lucky because I was coached by Brother Christopher at St Finian’s who was a mad Kerry man. He took us to Dunville Park every day for Gaelic football.
“And when I played underage for Ballymurphy, Gerry Begley, my Da’s cousin, a man called John Grego and Brother Crummy, who was from Dublin, were involved. When we played for the ‘Murph, we wore a Dublin kit and when we played for St Finian’s we played in a Kerry kit.”
Smiling at the memory, Adams adds: “Brother Christopher and Brother Crummy hated each other. But I was getting loads of football at school and with the ‘Murph. We later amalgamated with St John’s…
“Gaelic games just became my passion and probably kept me out of trouble.”
Gerry senior celebrated his 78th birthday earlier this week. Growing up with his father one of the leaders of the Republican movement and someone rarely off the north's airwaves and television screens, he admits, was “strange at times”.
“I don’t think my Da was high profile through choice,” notes Adams, a PE teacher at Rathmore Grammar School. “If he had his way, he would be low-profile. Ninety per cent of the time my Da would be happy sitting out our back having a glass of Guinness.
“There were times he was never out of the media. But we were a quiet family. I was an only child. My own kids would be quietish as well.”
Adams Óg was “as good” at hurling as he was at football until he broke into the Antrim senior football set-up at the age of 20 and decided to give his full focus to the big-ball game.
A footballer with blinding pace, Adams was Antrim’s resident number five for more than a decade and highly respected throughout Ulster.
In 2005, Mickey Culbert had replaced fellow St Gall’s clubman PJ O’Hare as Antrim manager.
Antrim faced Cavan in their Ulster Championship opener at Breffni Park. Adams, who was 32, had played well in the opening half but was surprisingly substituted at the break.
Culbert’s decision proved to be the beginning of the end of Adams’s inter-county career.
“I stayed in the changing rooms for about 10 minutes,” he recalls. “If you look back at the footage, you’ll see me coming out with the second half already underway because I got emotional as I felt I was doing alright in the first half.
“I always remember Jarlath Burns was doing commentary and he said: ‘Taking Adams off was a really bad move for Antrim.’ Thank God somebody said that, I said to myself (smiling). We drew with Cavan and I played the full game in the replay. We then played Meath in the All-Ireland Qualifiers – it was probably one of my best performances for Antrim across 13 years, and I put my hand up afterwards to say I was finishing.”
He adds: “Being substituted at half-time definitely gave me empathy because whenever I see someone isn’t in the team, or you drop a player – even at school level – and they go into their shell, that was me when I was 32.”
He collected a club championship medal with St John’s in ’98 – but Antrim’s win over Down in the Ulster Championship at Casement Park in 2000, ending 18 winless summers, was the high point of Adams’s career.
Adams, Sean McGreevy, Kevin Madden, Kevin Brady, Anto Finnegan, Joe Quinn, Peter McCann all had sterling careers with Antrim.
They still meet up every Christmas and “we tell the same stories – Peter McCann always saying how he beat Henry Downey to score in the Ulster semi-final replay in 2000.”
All of them, of course, bar Anto Finnegan who succumbed to Motor Neurone Disease in September 2021. Finnegan suffered the life-limiting disease for nine years.
The St Paul's man was the heart and soul of the class of 2000.
“The last time I saw Anto was on Falcarragh beach in Donegal,” Adams says. “He was sitting on a bench with a blanket wrapped around him. I hugged him and gave him a kiss. I don’t think he had long to live. Roisin, my wife, is a very good artist and she drew a sketch of the chair Anto was sitting on that day.
“It’s up on my classroom wall in memory of him.”
Three years ago, the Saffron motley crew hit the tiles in Belfast's city centre for their Christmas get-together. Upon passing the massive shop window of O’Neill’s Sportswear in Royal Avenue, they noticed their friend, their captain – Anto Finnegan on a billboard inside.
It was a perfect photo opportunity they couldn’t pass up.
On Sunday, all roads lead to Pairc Esler, Newry. Adams is hoping it’s Clonduff’s year.
“I’m in a good place. I’ve a good job as a PE teacher. I try and develop football in Rathmore and hopefully that has a knock-on effect in Belfast and in Antrim.
“I’ll be totally honest it would be great to win with Clonduff on Sunday. It would be great to win a final because as a manager and coach I’ve been in a number of finals with St John’s and Burren and we haven’t got over the line. But it’s not even for me – it’s for this group of players. I don’t feel under pressure to win. And that’s where the bit of maturity comes in.”
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