WHERE HAS IT ALL GONE WRONG FOR DERRY?
The Oak Leaf county were an elite force in the 1990s but poor planning has led to a remarkable fall from grace
ON the first Sunday in September, the one and only group of Derry players to win Sam Maguire will wave to the crowd during half-time of the All-Ireland final.
It will be a reminder of a wonderful football team, populated by flinty and skilful players like Anthony Tohill, Enda Gormley and the Downey brothers.
But, unless their minors navigate their way to the All-Ireland final, there will be very few Derry people at Croke Park to mark the occasion. Twenty-five years on from the late Eamon Coleman leading the county to its greatest hour, Derry football is in a bad place. They welcome Declan Bonner’s Donegal to Celtic Park for their Championship opener as a team that has sunk into Division 4 of the Allianz League – just four years after playing Dublin in the Division 1 final.
Even allowing for the unpredictable nature of local derbies, not even the most optimistic of Oak Leaf supporters holds out much hope for Damian McErlain’s side today. Why has it all gone so terribly wrong for Derry?
Fergal McCusker will be one of those who will wave to the Croke Park crowd on All-Ireland final day. He believes the achievements of that 1990s side — one All-Ireland title, four National Leagues and two Ulster titles — have raised expectations around Derry football to unrealistic levels.
‘The aspirations around Derry football are artificially high,’ McCusker believes.
‘The success of our team in the 1990s, the success of Derry clubs, Slaughtneil and Ballinderry before them, have inflated expectations beyond what they should be.
‘The cold reality is that this county has won one AllIreland in its history. We have won six Leagues – and four of those were won between 1992 and 2000.
‘We are a small county and the success of the 1990s skewed things.
‘Now, we should be better than what we are. We shouldn’t be in Division 4. We are a Division 2 side, but what is expected is inflated artificially high.’ McCusker has heard all the arguments about how strong club football is in the county (Derry have won four of the past five Ulster club titles). He doesn’t agree. Slaughtneil’s current success has skewed things in that regard, too. ‘I would argue that, back in the 1990s, Derry club football was in a much better place. Lavey won the All-Ireland title in 1991, Bellaghy got to the final a few years later. There was Ballinderry, Swatragh,Banagher, my own club Glen. Those games were hot and heavy, it was dog eat dog. I don’t think club football is stronger than in that era.’ When Derry football sank to its lowest point in March, much was made of the fact that, over the past decade, the county had received €1.3 million in coaching and games development grants from Croke Park. Only Dublin and Cork have received more. But throwing money at an issue means little unless it is spent properly. In Derry, there has been an obsession with infiltrating the Maiden City, for so long a GAA black-spot. However, that is a long way away from the 15 miles of countryside in the south of the county which is its footballing stronghold — the patch of land that has produced three All-Ireland club champions in Bellaghy, Ballinderry and Lavey and the current Ulster kingpins in Slaughtneil. ‘Gaelic football is never going to be strong in the city,’ McCusker insists. ‘It doesn’t have the tradition. ‘They talk about the 100,000 chimney pots they see in the city’s skyline and that they have to make football strong there. But it is throwing good money after bad. ‘It is like deciding they were going to make football strong in Kilkenny, simply by throwing money at it. It won’t work and it doesn’t work. There needs to be tradition. There’s only one strong football club in the city, Steelstown, and that is because it is made up of blow-ins from Donegal, Fermanagh and south Derry, who grew up with Gaelic football.
The people in Creggan, the Bogside and Brandywell never grew up with football and you can’t force them to love the game,’
And McCusker feels that part of the apathy the Derry public feel towards its county team stems from them playing their games in the city, some distance from the footballing heartland.
The apathy is real, too. Irish News journalist Cahair O’Kane, a Derryman himself, recently undertook a survey that discovered only Leitrim had a higher turnover of county players in the past decade than the Oak Leaf county.
There is apathy among the players and apathy among supporters.
‘Celtic Park is not a place where people want to go to watch football,’ McCusker claims.
‘It is a long way from the heart of Gaelic football in Derry, which is a 10 or 12-mile radius around Magherafelt and Maghera. Throw a blanket over that area and that is where most of the Gaelic football supporters are from, and they have to go over the Glenshane Pass to watch the team play.’
The apathy towards the county team was illustrated in the recent League campaign. Less than 600 people turned up at Celtic Park to watch the Offaly game, less than 500 people to watch Wexford.
Around the same time, almost 4,000 spectators watched the MacRory Cup derby between Derry’s two school powerhouses — St Pat’s, Maghera and St Mary’s Magherafelt.
McCusker feels that Division Four may present an opportunity for the public and the team to bond again with each other – if the county board uses it.
‘We are in Division 4 next year, so the county board should try to reconnect with the Derry public. Bring the games to Bellaghy and Ballinscreen, where they might create a bit of atmosphere. Bring them back to the football stronghold, it will beat playing in front of 300 people at Celtic Park.’
McCusker works in Dungannon and has coached in Monaghan club football.
He views enviously how that county has created its own brand around its football team but also looks towards the impressive side that beat Tyrone last week as a template for Derry, especially considering the underage talent that has been produced in recent years.
Monaghan’s continued ability to turn water into wine has been one of the most admirable stories of GAA in recent times and McCusker feels there are lessons for Derry to learn from the Farney County.
He is not the first one to suggest this, former team-mate Gary Coleman has said Derry must learn from Monaghan’s rise to become one of the country’s top teams.
‘We need to model ourselves on Monaghan, a small county who are punching way above their weight. They have created a definite brand and the public feed into that brand. We don’t haver any connection with the county team in Derry. Young lads are not aspiring to play senior football for the county.
‘It is a catch-22 situation, though. There is apathy because there is no success but there won’t be any success until we get rid of this feeling of apathy,’ McCusker says.
Just one Championship victory can transform the mood of a county.
If Derry pull off a shock in Celtic Park this afternoon, it may just pique the interest of the public once more.