A LONG ROAD TO VICTORY
GOOD things come to those who wait. And Marty McGrath had been waiting quite a while to reach the promised land with his club. Twenty-five years, to be exact, since he made his debut in senior football as a 14-year-old who was able to handle himself.
‘It was worth the wait,’ said the former All-Star midfielder earlier this week. Celebrations were still going strong in Ederney, the village in west Fermanagh on the shores of Lough Erne where McGrath first picked up a football.
The village itself had been waiting 52 years to win a second county title. McGrath had grown up on stories of that team, as his father and six uncles all played on that side. For more than five decades, a photograph of the seven McGrath brothers celebrating the village’s first championship was on his parents’ mantelpiece. There will be a new photo beside it now.
‘I see it with that ’68 team,’ McGrath said. ‘Now, more than 50 years later, they are still brought together by what they achieved. I would like to think if we are still about in 50 years’ time that this team would be the same.’
Growing up, listening to his father Anthony and uncles talk about ’68 sharpened his own sense of ambition when it came to football — and the club. ‘It was talked about a lot and you would listen to the stories,’ McGrath said. ‘Before last week’s final, I watched a video of the 50th anniversary of their win. I could see it in the way my father and my uncles would reminisce about it, the twinkle in their eye.
‘It is about the memories you have with your team-mates, more than the medals. Medals can be lost, my father doesn’t even know where his medal is, but memories will stay forever... And when you do it with people from your own parish, your own community, it is extra special. When you meet someone on the street or down in the club, you will be able to look each other in the eye and know that you achieved something together.’
In this strangest of years, McGrath finally reached the Holy Grail. It’s why he kept coming back year after year, overcoming obstacle after obstacle.
Having been an inspirational force in the Fermanagh side that came within a kick of reaching the All-Ireland final in 2004, he was waylaid a couple of years later by heart surgery to correct a defect. The following season, he was struck in the head by a JCB, putting him out of action for months. Then in 2008, he came back, only to be diagnosed with testicular cancer.
Through it all, he kept plugging away with county and club, even playing a key role in bringing Fermanagh to the 2008 Ulster final, despite waiting for cancer surgery. No wonder around the Erne that Marty McGrath has become a bit of a superhero.
He had been on the losing side in two previous county finals but he knew that there was something stirring in the club. That is why he kept coming back. Last weekend in Brewster Park, Derrygonnelly were going for their fifth title in a row, but in three of the previous four seasons, they had only squeezed past Ederney. McGrath said: ‘We were knocking on the door, so that is why I wanted to stick around. And it is hard to walk away from your club. In our parish, the club is everything. It is the parish. It is the hub of the community, so you can’t really walk away from that. If you weren’t playing, you would be down at the club anyway, helping out, coaching under-age or something.
‘It’s different with the county, it is a higher level, so there comes a moment when you just can’t do it any more, your legs won’t let you,’ McGrath said.
Still, it was getting harder to justify year after year, especially with a young family — his oldest son Dan is now playing with the Under 8s at the club. And during lockdown, McGrath discovered he wasn’t missing football an awful lot. But what he did miss was the craic within the dressing room.
‘I did miss the camaraderie in training and the fact that the focal point of the parish — and that is what our club is — wasn’t there. As I have got older, I have started to realise what the GAA means to Ederney, and places like it all over the country. When I was younger, I wouldn’ t have passed any heed on that.’
McGrath played such a starring role in the fivepoint win over
Derrygonnelly that it has already been christened the ‘Marty McGrath final’, as it was inevitably going to be.
If his wonderful displays for Fermanagh in the summer of 2004 brought him to national prominence, this seems a fitting way for McGrath to come towards the end of his career. And he finds it difficult to compare the feeling of finally winning the county title with coming so close to an All-Ireland final in 2004 — Fermanagh were three points up against Mayo in the drawn semifinal with a few minutes left.
‘They are different moments in time. In 2004, getting so close to an All-Ireland final, winning those games in Croke Park, it was great for the county and football in Fermanagh.
‘But having grown up, listening to stories of the ’68 team and seeing what it means to the parish last week, this is different. ‘And we are always going to have those memories, and they matter more than medals. We will have the memory of what we did last Sunday, just as we have the memory of what we did with Fermanagh in 2004.’
It’s being said that the county titles won in 2020 will be treasured more because of the circumstances surrounding the year.
Nowhere will that be truer than Ederney, where Marty McGrath finally led them to the promised land.