I used to hide in the attic to avoid football
From reluctant kid to Player of the Year, Macauley owes a big debt to those who stuck by him
MICHAEL DARRAGH MACAULEY doesn’t need to be reminded how far he’s come. In January, he was hobnobbing with Hollywood pair Kevin Hart and Ice Cube at Google HQ ahead of the premiere of their film Ride Along 2 in Dublin, himself and county team-mate Kevin McManamon presenting the ‘A’ listers with a framed Dublin jersey.
And yet as a kid, this three-time All-Ireland winner and former Player of the Year was a reluctant footballer. Nobody then would have imagined his sporting trajectory, or that he would be anywhere near a Ballyboden St Enda’s team that line out for the first time on St Patrick’s Day in an All-Ireland club football final.
Always engaging and a natural raconteur, he explains how he owes a debt to his best friend’s father. ‘True story. Eugene Kenny got me playing football because I was palling around with his son. So I used to go kicking and screaming up to Ballyboden every Saturday morning.
‘I used to hide in the attic every time the white van pulled up outside my house – I’d see it and run upstairs and hide in the attic and my Dad would have to come looking for me. Sometimes he’d find me but sometimes I’d get away with it and I wouldn’t have to go. He [Kenny] saw some potential. I was probably about 12 or 13 then.
‘Basketball was my number one sport until I was 18 or so. I never had to go kicking and screaming to basketball.
‘I’m the only player from my crop in Ballyboden that is on the squad for the All-Ireland final. That is mad because I was nowhere near the cream of the crop and all the lads will tell you that. I was a left half-forward and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I used to wear my basketball shorts – the lads reminded me of that recently.
‘I was a little bit above average height at that time but I had a bit of athleticism in me from the basketball. No amount of vision could have foreseen that I would eventually become an inter-county footballer. I hadn’t picked it out myself. It wasn’t on the cards. It is funny how these things work out.’
And yet it happened for a reason. That desire to push himself to the limit has always been there.
‘I was always serious about being an athlete. I used to train myself very hard in basketball. I didn’t need to be told – I would write out a million drills and do a million “suicides”. I would religiously go up to the local basketball court and run myself silly when I was a teenager. I didn’t need friends to do it with. I suppose I had that work ethic.
‘When I’m talking to kids now some of them are probably not putting in that sort of work these days. I just didn’t do it on a Gaelic football field; I was doing it on a basketball court. I had built up such athleticism from that routine.
‘I didn’t understand weights until I was 13 or 14 but I was still doing push-ups to beat the band.’
He laughs when ‘Superstars’ is mentioned, the old prog r a mme that featured elite athletes from different sports competing against each other. He remembers Bernard Brogan senior doing very well, and ‘Pat Spillane with the dodgy shorts’.
All the while, he was beginning to surface on the county radar, until senior manager Pat Gilroy took notice. Eventually. ‘A minor manager sent me for a Dublin trial when I really didn’t think that I had any right to be there myself. I played very well at those trials – got selected for a panel. In that short space of time my mindset kinda changed. ‘I had always supported Dublin, I had been going to Hill 16 from the age of 14. At that stage it wasn’t on my radar to play there but once I started making the Dublin minors I started to reset my focus and believing that I could.
‘In 2009 Pat Gilroy should have picked me. I still give him abuse about it. He picked eight – eight! – midfielders ahead of me, probably haven’t played as well since.’
It was 2010 before he ‘started to get the ball rolling’ properly with the Dublin senior team, making a big impact as a dynamic, all-action midfielder, at full throttle barrelling forward and causing havoc in opposition defences. The honours that have flowed since have been beyond his wildest dreams.
‘Look, you kinda ride these waves for however long they come – you never know when they will crash.’
Not playing more of a part in last year’s All-Ireland campaign was the biggest frustration but then Ballyboden St Enda’s surprised everyone by taking Dublin by storm, then Leinster. Only Castlebar Mitchels now stand in their way.
He doesn’t need to be reminded of how difficult it is to win an All-Ireland club medal.
‘The chances of us getting back here are slim,’ he admits. ‘You would probably get good odds on us getting back again.’ (They are currently fourth favourites to win the 2016 Dublin championship.) ‘Nobody ever rates us, I don’t know why. The Dublin championship is crazy and there’s a lot of money coming into it as well for a lot of managers. They are putting huge resources into it to try and win it and I know it means a lot to them.’
In a week when the transfer of Mayo’s Enda Varley, along with Westmeath’s Lorcan Smyth and Galway’s Fiachra Breathnach to St Vincent’s stirred debate over the movement of players, coming soon after Fermanagh captain Tomás Corrigan joining St Oliver-Plunkett’s/Eoghan-Ruadh, Macauley is clearly concerned.
‘It’s a funny one. Dublin is the capital of Ireland and also the economical capital and the lads have to come down here for jobs and it doesn’t make sense for the lads to be travelling three hours back to training. So I can see why they want to transfer to a Dublin club. In saying that, they are all going to the same small number of clubs. I don’t know how far it can go until it reaches a tipping point.’
A story went out a while back that Macauley dragged Ballyboden’s team captain Darragh Nelson to Hill 16 when he heard he hadn’t graced the Dubs’ favoured Croke Park end.
‘True,’ he says. ‘I thought it was sacrilegious that a Dublin player had never been to Hill 16. We had organised as a Dublin football team to go to the match – we were all given tickets for the Upper Cusack. But I wasn’t having that. I rearranged that Darragh and myself got Hill 16 tickets by ourselves. So we all went to the match on the bus together and though we weren’t allowed I snuck off with Darragh to the Hill. I was saying that he couldn’t grace the field of Croke Park if he has never been up in the trenches. Some of my best days were spent up there.’
On Thursday, they’ll run out on the field together.
As Macauley colourfully puts it: ‘Only one last stop on the bandwagon now.’