Home victories make the hard days worth it for Masterson
A FORTNIGHT ago, Diarmuid Masterson stood in the middle of Pearse Park, surveying the delirium around him. He saw the faces of family and friends and those that have followed Longford through thick and mostly thin, all of them savouring the sunshine and a rare Championship win in their own province.
It was an afternoon in the midlands tinged with history. Longford hadn’t beaten Meath since 1982. And the last time that they had reached a Leinster semi-final, 1988, Masterson was a toddler. Even if the prize was dubious, as they walk into the mouth of football’s big blue juggernaut today, the glow from that day will stay with the defender and his teammates for a long time.
At the start of the year, Masterson thought he’d only witness a day like that as a Longford supporter. Dermot Brady, who manned the trenches alongside him for years, had announced his retirement and it set him thinking. He was on the wrong side of 30. His body was creaking a little more. And there was also his day job. He’s fortunate that his boss at Eco Home Insulation happens to be his club manager at Dromod, Sean Hagan, A former Leitrim boss, Hagan also understands the pull on county players. But the work takes him from one end of the country to the other.
Before Christmas, his working week was in Wexford. When we spoke last week, Masterson was in Moville, a Donegal village that hugs the Derry border.
‘There’s a bit of travel involved to get back to training. But I think you just go into auto-pilot and your body goes into overdrive,’ he says.
‘The travel takes its toll. But it wasn’t just that,’ he explained of toying with retirement. ‘I had to ask myself if I could do it all for another year. Every county player must have the same thoughts when they hit 30. It would be mad if you didn’t, given the commitment involved.’
Denis Connerton gave him space but Masterson wasn’t prepared for the bombardment of texts and phone calls from others within the camp.
‘I got a fair few texts and phone calls alright, from lads on the panel and even those around the panel, the sponsors Glennon brothers were on to me. And they all said the same thing. They were telling me this could be a big year. There was a sense the team were on the cusp of doing something this year. Get promotion from Division 3 and make our first Leinster semifinal in 30 years, because we only needed to win one game. I suppose we did one of those things, anyway.’
Fermanagh’s Seamus Quigley nailed a late contentious free to deny Longford promotion but whatever happens today, Masterson believes progression has been made, although he can’t help but look at other provinces and ponder the unfairness of it all.
‘Roscommon are only coming into the Championship at the semifinal stage and played a Division 4 team in Leitrim. They beat Leitrim to get to the last 12. We usually play two games to get to that stage, same in Ulster.
‘With 32 counties, the best solution is divide them into four or eight groups. Have an open draw and go from there. But that is never going to happen. So, if they are going to persist with the provinces, make it a little fairer. Division 3 and 4 teams should be given home advantage up to the provincial final. Imagine if we were playing Dublin in Pearse Park for this semifinal or Clare played Kerry in Ennis last week? It would go some way to balancing things.’
He played his first game for Longford in the Tommy Murphy Cup in 2005 but considers the qualifier against Waterford the following year to be his debut. That summer ended with a 20-year-old Masterson trying to quell the influence of Kieran Donaghy on the day Jack O’Connor reinvented him as a full-forward.
It was one of the peaks in his journey with Longford. This is his 10th season lining out for the county — he had a two-year hiatus in Australia. When he returned home, Jack Sheedy called him and brought back into the fold. He was part of the defence that were shredded by Dublin in 2015. ‘We will be more competitive than we were three years ago,’ he insists. ‘That was one of those days when at the end of it, you are wondering why are you sacrificing so much for this. That was my first Championship game in Croke Park and a really tough day.
‘But we are just looking at getting our maximum performance against Dublin and see what they can do. We didn’t do that last time.’
And no matter what transpires at headquarters, Masterson and his teammates will always have last month’s memory from Pearse Park when they broke through their own glass ceiling.