McKaigue is keen to shut door on foes and inspire Slaughtneil

GAELIC football may be team game, but there are certain variables that players can judge themselves on. For man-marking defenders, it is the impact their direct opponent has on the scoreboard. In that respect, Slaughtneil ace Karl McKaigue’s record since the start of the Derry Championship — in both codes — has been nothing short of astonishing.

Conleith Gilligan. Danny Tallon. Seanie Johnston. Ronan O’Neill. Jerome Johnston. Ryan McHugh. All county footballers, all the main men in their respective club’s attack. And yet McKaigue has held every single one scoreless from play.

More than that, McKaigue — along with his brother Chrissy and Brendan Rogers — is possibly the most-used player on the island at the minute, between club and county football and hurling. Barring injuries, the last time any of them would have had a prolonged rest period was at the end of 2015 when they were knocked out of the Ulster Club campaign.

“I remember back in 2015 I took a bit of a break to keep the body right more than anything,” recalled the 25-yearold physio. “I was going up to the club and watching league games. I was actually wanting to get back out to play and I couldn’t live with myself standing watching it.”

That jars slightly with the modern-day fascination of digging out disaffected player narratives, but then success is addictive.

It’s one thing being ultra committed, quite another thing when fixture scheduling comes with little sympathy.

When Slaughtneil beat Omagh in the Ulster football final, they were playing just six days after the Ulster hurling final. The initial belief in the club was that it was being staged on a Saturday night to cater for television demands, but that wasn’t the case. It was a chronic lack of empathy for a club that really could have done with the extra 24 hours rest or even to have a pitch-based run-through on the Saturday if the game had been fixed for the Sunday.

After that game, McKaigue admitted that the club had managed to keep it in-house, but the dressing room was like a war scene with bodies patched up week on week before being sent over the top again at the weekend.

“It wasn’t really switching between the codes. We are sort of used to it at this stage. It was the fact that we played something like nine Championship games in the space of 12 weeks, that’s always going to take its toll on you, physically and mentally,” he reflected.

“At that stage, we were just trying to get through games, keep men reasonably fit and we were just lucky enough to get over the line.

“Once you are 10 or 11 weeks into a Championship campaign, you can’t perform at your optimum level. It’s not physically possible and it’s about grinding it out. I think that did show a wee bit in our Ulster Club performances. A lot of them were sort of nitty-gritty, nothing too flamboyant or special about them.”

Something had to give and although Slaughtneil prepared diligently for the All-Ireland semi-final against Na Piarsaigh, they found themselves level on the scoreboard with 25 minutes to play, their Limerick opponents down two men from red cards. Slaughtneil lost by seven points.

“There was no real excuse from our point of view, to go into the meltdown we did,” McKaigue admitted.

“You know, it’s probably something you never prepare for, playing against 13 men. I