`Marvellous' days after the lean years

Yesterday, the sun was general throughout mid-Ulster and in Crossmaglen, sedate and routine on most spring afternoons, they suspended normal business and gave themselves up to the inevitable flurry.

The TV people whirled around the main street, there for the obligatory shot of the grim and corrugated British Army base which looms over the local gaelic field, to film the billowing black and amber shop front colours and to talk with the people about why it is that their club is emblematic of their very being.

Margaret McConville, mother of the town's silken attackers, five-year club secretary, too-frequent washer of the Cross strip, sometime fundraiser, ardent fan and requisite interviewee, wheels into the house where Oisin is pottering about in the shadows, glad to leave the public words to other people. Oh, for a minute's peace.

"Hectic and very enjoyable is the way I'd describe all this I suppose. I'm 60 now so you can probably appreciate that it gets tiring but, ah, I've always been like this. Years ago they told me I was mad but sure now there is not a woman in the town who isn't involved."

She is a Cross lady to the bone, her father, James Morgan, having played on the senior side and his brother Gene a corner back on the great Armagh team that fell to Kerry in the All-Ireland in the early Fifties. Her sons are star turns in the current era. Sometimes, she and her husband Patsy drive the ring of Kerry to call in on the hoary old victors from that day and they talk fondly of simpler times.

Thing is, these days are better than ever. Too often Crossmaglen made for disturbing news footage, its environs the stage for the political unrest which blackened that part of the North most severely. It's all brightness now.

"It's all positive and you can see the people here warming to it. You can see what they want, that they are tired of the old ways. This town looks so well now and I think it's welcoming. Maybe youse can all come and visit if there is celebrating to be done."

Mrs McConville is casually learned in local lore, sporting and otherwise. "We were always steeped in GAA, not just this family but most of the town. It gave us the opportunity to express our identity when things were bad, was a source of pride to us. Of course, we weren't always winning, we had a long lean period but, yes, this is marvellous."

The McConville family travel south today though with one burning regret. Patsy (a veteran of the 1947 and 1960 Crossmaglen sides) took ill at the weekend and will be forced, after much persuasion, to watch the game on TV from his room in Daisy Hills hospital in Newry.

"It'll break his heart not to be there and it's upsetting for us too, naturally the boys are a wee bit worried. Hopefully, it'll all go well in Croke Park, though," she says.

Down and back is the way Joe Kernan wants the trip. "Well, it's a short enough run and the lads get to sleep in their own beds the night before," offers the straight talking messiah who prophesied days like this back when Crossmaglen were a two-bit act on the local circuit. The coach's story is the stuff that makes ink flow.

"He instilled this belief in the team and of course introduced the short ball game to a club which always caught and kicked. He was ridiculed for it then but did it pay off," says Margaret.

Today, Joe, silver haired and dark eyed, will walk the sideline and somewhere in the echoing stands, Margaret McConville will watch on, imploring her boys, thinking of Patsy.

It can't last forever. They'll have to invent another super-secretary soon and there's talk that today might be Kernan's last with the club. For sure, these two back room wonders will step down eventually and though they might leave the club, Crossmaglen won't leave them. Runs through their blood.