I haven’t played in two years, my next Championship tie could be my last
Veteran midfielder Darren Hughes is keen to make the most of what remains of his inter-county career
IT’S NOT the sound of the ticking clock but the fact it has fallen silent that concerns Darren Hughes. This is the longest in his 15-season, intercounty career that he has gone without playing a Championship match for Monaghan, and he is at that stage in his career where he can’t afford to lose two full years.
He celebrated his 33rd birthday in spring and, while ageism is shallowness at its most base level, it is not a number that one associates with end-to-end athletic midfielders.
His manager Seamus ‘Banty’ McEnaney – who was also the boss when he called the then teenager into the county panel in 2006 – namechecked Hughes earlier this week when explaining why this winter’s Championship must take place.
‘And there are the players as well. You take Darren and it is safe to say that he has not 10 seasons left in him,’ quipped McEnaney.
Right now, the sense is that Hughes would settle for one really good one to draw a line through the past 24 months that have passed far too idly.
‘I was just remarking to club management the other night, I haven’t played a Championship game for Monaghan since the All-Ireland semi-final loss of 2018. Little did I think that day, it’s over two years ago now, that I wouldn’t have kicked a ball for Monaghan in the Championship since,’ he reflects.
How could he?
Last year, he was shaping up well on a Monaghan team still bristling from cruelly coming up one point shy of taking the county to a first All-Ireland final since 1930. Hughes, as ever central to their plans, was still loosening up for the summer with Scotstown when his ankle snapped in a league clash with Ballybay.
He wrote off the Ulster Championship and tried to cod himself into thinking that the damaged ligaments would bend to his sense of urgency. By the time he had recovered, Monaghan were long gone from the Championship and so was his manager, Malachy O’Rourke.
It was the day they dreaded, but also one they had anticipated.
‘Realistically, yes we did. He had seven seasons done and maybe from the fifth season on, we’d have been going to Malachy to get him back.
‘After 2018, he was left with no choice, we were within the kick of a ball of an AllIreland final, so he sort of just felt it was unfinished business so that was going to be a roll over into next season anyway. It was one last push. Malachy always rejuvenated us and, along with his management team, he always went over and beyond to get training right.
‘It was never spoken about or talked about but I suppose, deep down, when you look back and think about it, we knew that it was going to be the last hurrah.’
Except there was no cheer. A first Championship defeat in 18 years to neighbours Cavan and an eight-point trimming to Armagh in the qualifiers, it seemed like the end of the road for O’Rourke. From the depths of Division 3 to a sustained six-year run in the top flight, from a 25-year Ulster famine to two titles inside three years, from deep-in-the-pack sluggers to five quarterfinals in six years – it had been one hell of a ride. But as Hughes watched injured from the sidelines, it didn’t look like terminal decline to him – just a team struggling for form which is, he reasoned, only a temporary affliction.
‘Frustration is the best word to sum it up because we were coming in after 2018 and we all wanted to prove to ourselves that it wasn’t a flash in the pan and we were going to back it up.
‘In the very first League game against Dublin in Clones, we win it, and then after that, the wheels just fell off the wagon.
‘The most frustrating thing about it was you couldn’t pinpoint one or two or three things that were wrong. We were going to training, we were hungry, we were training well and we were always saying, “The next game will turn it around, the next game, the next game”. It just didn’t happen for us.
‘Because we had the prolonged season in 2018, we didn’t get back in as early as other years and teams probably had us sussed out a bit, but you have to get over that if you want to play at the top table week in, week out.
‘You have to evolve and last year, like, we only beat Dublin and Cavan, we stayed up on four points.
‘We knew it wasn’t a good League and any year we hadn’t a good League we didn’t have a good Championship afterwards. We knew something had to change and it didn’t.
‘We struggled to a win against Fermanagh and then we were beaten by Armagh and here, that’s it, you have to suck it up. We were never a team over the years for making excuses.’
Others would, though. Their size – they have a population of just under 60,000 – and their geographical location in Ulster football’s killing fields has always fed the assumption that they were a team that were content to keep ticking over. ‘You do hear that flouted in the media from time to time.
‘I suppose it goes back to when people say we’re punching above our weight as a small county, but we never really thought much about that.
‘We always felt we had the best players in the county available to us. There wasn’t many years where you’d say, “Jaysus, there’s three boys playing some stuff for their club and they’re not in the county panel”.
‘It’s a small county, we get on well with each other, we always felt we were lucky enough that we never really lose boys going away travelling or for work. So we always felt that the best players in Monaghan, most of the time, were available to us and that’s what probably kept us
‘BANTY WON’T BE LONG IN TELLING YOU YOU’RE NOT AT THE RACES’
‘I’M REALISTIC, IT WON’T GO ON FOREVER – THERE’S NOT LONG LEFT’
at a competitive level over the years.
‘Obviously there was a turnover of players, there could have been 50 or 60 odd players that played for Malachy in his six or seven years,’ he suggests. ‘But you always felt that you were punching with your best squad in any given season and that meant a lot.’
And they still are. In fact, Hughes’ return in spring – he played in all five League games – and the return of his midfield partner Niall Kearns who, after a sensational rookie season in 2018, was forced to sit out last year after undergoing a cardiac procedure, would suggest they are even stronger.
True, their return has been offset by the considerable loss of Jack McCarron, who appeared to be at the top of his game in the early rounds of the League.
There are other things stacked up against them. If his ankle injury thieved him of precious time last year, the current health emergency has been equally damaging to his career. It has changed everything, some things for the better.
Scotstown are up and running and in today’s county semi-final against Carrickmacross – who they already beat handsomely in the earlier group stages of the competition – they are expected to book their place in their eighth final in a row.
Getting back early and having unfettered access to the club has suited, as does the scent of a possible sixth county medal.
We are living through the strangest of times and for the first time in Clones he will play a championship game behind closed doors – Scotstown had wrapped up their qualification earlier last month when the limit of 200 people inside grounds was still permitted.
It may well serve as a dry run for November’s Ulster SFC derby clash with Cavan, a fixture that has always fed off the roar of the crowd.
How odd will that be?
Perhaps not as strange as you might think for inter-county players wearing their Championship blinkers.
‘It is beyond comprehension,’ he admits.
‘Personally, it wouldn’t annoy me, I couldn’t tell you at any given time if there’s 100 there or 10,000. ‘I think the surreal thing is we probably won’t be fit to go on a bus to the game, probably won’t be able to get togged out in the dressingrooms, that’s the abnormalities with it that’s probably going to be a bit different.
‘You’re going to be having your team-talk in the corner of the field or the corner of the stand. It’s a big game, so it’s going to be a different scenario for all.
‘We’re hoping when we get to that time of the year that restrictions might have eased and we might get into dressing-rooms and we’d love to have a crowd there, in any shape or form.
‘We’re going into the unknown here at the minute but we train every night with nobody watching and you try to keep the quality up and keep it competitive enough so we just have to roll with it and get on with it.’ The pandemic has shone a light on several recurring issues within the GAA, not least the lopsided and unjust nature of the provincial system.
If Kerry win one game, they get to play in a provincial final against opposition that don’t play in Division 1, while Monaghan will have to win three games to get to the same stage and then, most likely, will have to face either Tyrone or Donegal.
Added to that, they will have to play week-on-week in heavy winter conditions in games that will come with a cast-iron guarantee of intensity.
‘Yeah, it is a disadvantage but I suppose at the end of it somebody has to win it.
‘Somebody is going to come out with the Anglo-Celt Cup and be going to an All-Ireland semi-final the following week.
‘Whoever that is would like to think they’ll have momentum at that stage.
‘We were never ones to make excuses, we’ll just have to get up for it. It’ll be game by game because it’s so condensed, you’ll not be fit to look too far ahead.’
And how far ahead does he dare look himself?
How many more Championship games will he add to the 51 he has chalked up already since coming off the bench in the 2007 Ulster semifinal win over Derry.
He has filled ever role – full-back, half-back, full-forward and, most memorably, when he played in goal for two Ulster Championship games in 2010, but centre-field is his natural berth.
In many ways, his throwback lifestyle has facilitated his great football obsession.
He laughs when people are amazed that he can balance his career as a busy farmer with elite sport, where the emphasis is on rest as much as training.
‘People that probably don’t know my job say it must be tough, farming and football.
‘I couldn’t have it any other way. I think it would be tougher having to get up at 7 o’clock in the morning and go sit in an office all day, having to pack your bag and have it ready to go to training and maybe come home from training at 11 or 12 o’clock and get up the next day and go to an office again.
‘I’m a bit more flexible with my time. I can manage myself a bit better. I wouldn’t have it any other way.’
But how much longer can he have it?
‘I’m realistic too, it’s not going to go on forever. There’s not long left,’ he admits.
‘It’s two years since I played a Championship game for Monaghan. My next one could be my last for all I know.
‘I’ll see how this season goes. Probably this season is going to roll straight into next season, so I’ll see where I’m at.
‘Banty (McEnaney) is straight up with most players and won’t be long telling you if you’re at the races or not.
‘I feel I’m going okay, I’ve had a decent club championship behind me at the minute. I feel good but obviously it’s a big step up to intercounty.’
He has waited long enough to be ready for it.