How London defeat in ’13 led to Marren’s exile away from wife
ADRIAN MARREN still has flashbacks of his lowest moment in the 15 years he has spent in a Sligo shirt.
It plays in little cinematic waves; the final whistle blowing in Ruislip in 2013 and the penny dropping that they had become the first team in 36 years to lose to London in the Connacht championship.
Arriving at Dublin Airport in the middle of that evening’s edition of the Sunday Game but being advised by a kind-heart security man that they would be better off not watching as Eamon O’Hara cut up ugly on their then manager Kevin Walsh.
A couple of weeks later, after crashing out feebly to Derry in the qualifiers, he took his leave of the country and, but for his new bride at home, might just have stayed away.
‘That defeat probably finished a good few players, a lot of them never came back the following year. They were completely disillusioned.
‘After that Derry game I was out of work at the time and 10 days later I was in New York and spent the rest of the summer there.
‘I wasn’t long after getting married and my wife Fiona had just opened a beautician’s shop in Charlestown so I went out there on my own. That was my way of getting away from it,’ he recalls.
Had it not been for Fiona, Marren reckons that armed with his trade papers as a carpenter he might just have stayed put.
‘That’s for sure, I definitely would have and I would still be over there I’d say,’ he reflects.
So he needs little reminding about the threat that London pose today, but at least they travel forewarned. The last time they simply did not see the ambush coming.
‘We went up to play Derry in a challenge game in Ballinascreen a couple of weeks before it and they were just after winning Division 2, but we gave them a bit of a trimming so we were moving quite well.
‘But we went over to London and everything that could go wrong went wrong. We were not let out on the pitch in Ruislip the evening before the game for a kick around and ended up at the last minute having a run out on Tir Chonaill Gaels in Greenford, where we did not even have a dressing room and just togged in the middle of the field.
‘And in the game itself we had a chance late on to at least take the game to extra-time but we hit the crossbar, but we couldn’t blame it on that. London were way more up for the game than we were. They took their chance.’
Five years on, this could represent a final opportunity for Marren, who made his debut off the bench in an epic 2004 quarterfinal loss to Roscommon.
Since then he has seen the great, the good and the bad. He is only one of three survivors – Ross Donovan and Charlie Harrison the others – from the Connacht winning team in 2007.
He knows that they should have won more – losing to Roscommon in the 2010 final after they had taken care of Connacht’s old firm of Mayo and Galway the most obvious source of regret.
‘When Kevin (Walsh) took us over in 2009 for three or four years in Connacht we felt we could beat any team.
‘We weren’t afraid of anybody and we felt we could give any team outside of Connacht a game as well.
‘We should have won Connacht title if not two in that time but then after Kevin left it went downhill for a year or two. Niall Carew came in and we got into a Connacht final in 2015.
‘We probably got to the final a year earlier than we thought we would and Mayo did a bit of a job on us in the Hyde Park.’
In truth, they never recovered from that six-goal mauling and when Carew was reappointed for a fourth term last autumn, such was the feeling of unhappiness in the squad that the Kildare native took his leave after gauging the mood.
‘Everyone is going to have a falling out with the manager if they are not playing or not making the 26 and probably a few boys voiced a bit of concern last year after he was reappointed.
‘But it is the County Board that hires and fires the manager; the players can only do so much on the field and if the County Board listen to them they listen to them.’
Now it’s a fresh start under an inter-county rookie manager in Cathal Corey, and for Marren this season has the same vibe as 2009 when they caught fire under Walsh.
This year might come too early, but the chance of a second Connacht medal – which would along with O’Donovan and Harrison make him the most successful player in the county’s history – still plays for real.
‘That’s the main aim. There is no point saying you’re playing because of league football. It is to get your hands on a second medal. That is the driving force.’