Medals do not put bread on tables

DONEGAL FOOTBALL:IT HAS been a restless decade for Donegal football and now a new turbulence threatens. Unemployment and the long tale of emigration are hardly anything new to the county, but the fact that almost half of the present senior football squad is now without work tells its own tale, writes KEITH DUGGAN

The traditional team training base in MacCumhaill Park had been out of commission for most of the spring due to ground redevelopment, but when the players returned for their first summer training session on a fabulously warm June evening a few weeks ago, they were in high spirits.

Their first-round match against Antrim was around the corner and the hard training was behind them: they were glad of the pure pleasure of kicking a ball on a warm evening. But for all the good humour, the uncertainty that many players face means the long-term future of the current side has to be in grave doubt. There are players sticking around primarily for football and that situation cannot continue indefinitely.

In fact, Karl Lacey, the sharp and highly regarded Four Masters defender, returned from a period exploring the Antipodes purely to resume his football career. He decided to return home despite the gloomy broadcasts he had received from friends who had been laid off work or were fruitlessly searching for jobs.

Lacey completed a Masters in Jordanstown before deciding to spend a winter in Australia and New Zealand, a trip he had been eager to make for a number of years. He left in the reasonable assumption he would be able to begin his professional career upon returning, but finds that he has come back to a different country.

“I haven’t been able to pick up any work since I came home,” he said, standing near the “home” dugout and shading his eyes from the sun. “I am struggling to find anything. It is a bad time to come back. It wasn’t too bad when I left, but since I was away I heard how tough it was. I am trying my best to find work.

“The GPA launch that was held the week before last was very good, so maybe that will help. I have put my CV in everywhere so hopefully somebody will pick me up for a bit of work.”

News that Lacey had decided to commit himself to Donegal for the championship was welcomed across the county. The corner back is the prototype modern defender, light and strong, a sticky marker and a consummate football player. This was only his second week back training: the previous Tuesday was the first time he had ever met the new Donegal manager, John Joe Doherty. The pair had spent the spring conversing on the phone, negotiating if and when Lacey would show up at a Donegal training session again.

“Shook his hand for the very first time last week,” Lacey grins. “But he is very easy to communicate with on the phone and I found that there was a good buzz around when I came home. Like, I kept in touch the whole time – I was up watching the McKenna Cup final half seven on a Saturday morning in New Zealand. How sad is that?

“And you know, this county is in bad need of an Ulster title and I knew I wouldn’t like to be sitting out in New Zealand watching Donegal win a championship in July. It wouldn’t be a nice feeling at all. I definitely wanted to be part of it. And I am fighting for my place now. My fitness wasn’t up to much, but with challenge games and in-house games I am hoping to get that back and try and nail my place, so fingers crossed.”

Lacey’s return has meant that Doherty has as close to a perfect deck in terms of the strength and quality of players available to him. Lacey, as expected, made the team. Barry Dunnion, his flying accomplice along the left flank, returns after nearly two years destroyed by injury. Neil Gallagher, the big midfielder is back on harness too. But as Michael McGuire, who makes his championship debut against Antrim sees it, there is a sense of a team keeping reality at bay for the duration of the All-Ireland championship.

McGuire is a block worker and left Dublin to work independently at home and admits the demand is lessening all the time. He nodded sombrely when asked if he could see county players having to leave.

“I think that is the way it is going to be. Men are not going to stay about if the money is not coming in. You can’t stay about because, at the end of the day, football is not going to make you a fortune.

“I am busy enough at the moment so hopefully it will stay that way so I can stay about. But there are a lot of boys on this panel who have had no work this long time. There is 10 or 12 altogether at the moment. I suppose every man will hang about and see out the championship, see how that goes.

“Hopefully that goes well and keeps men about, but towards the end of the year I think there will be hard calls made, definitely.”

In previous recessions, one of the few unofficial perks for county players everywhere was that jobs would somehow be “found” in order to enable them to stay locally. But this time it is different.

Brian McEniff, the godfather of Donegal football, believes this has been the most severe and swiftest downturn that he has witnessed in over four decades in the hotel business. In 1972 and 1974, he spearheaded Donegal’s first Ulster championship successes as player-manager, periods that coincided with devastating years for local tourism because of the radical escalation of violence in the North.

“We lost players then too – the one in particular I remember was Mickey McMenamin from Seán MacCumhaills, a tremendous footballer. He was gone and that was it. But generally speaking, players would get a job. In the 1980s and 1990s, quite a lot of lads were employed through the ESB but that is no longer the case.

“The big problem now is that nobody can say when the recovery can come. And the number of transfer requests we had had in recent times for clubs in Australia and places makes me sad.”

The problem has been brewing for some time, prompting John Joe Doherty to make a public appeal some months ago. A few weeks ago, Brendan Boyle spoke at the GPA launch of his experience of having graduated and secured an engineering post with the Donegal county council only to find his job vanish earlier this year. The effect was having the rug pulled from under his feet. Through that upset, Boyle worked hard to reclaim a starting spot under Doherty after several seasons lost through a knee injury that threatened to end his career.

He has made the cut for Doherty’s first championship 15, a notable triumph after a tough few months. Tony Boyle, the former All Star forward who is a selector with Doherty, says the situation bears no comparison to his own playing days.

“I do feel for those boys. It is not a nice situation. We are trying to get a focus on this championship match but there are other things in their lives. A lack of jobs and obviously a lack of money brings its own pressures. But I know John Joe is actively speaking with the county board and the county council to see if anything can be done. And I understand that some people would ask why county players should get preferential treatment.

“But a county player does put a lot of time and effort for no real gain in order to wear the county jersey. And I know that if we can get a win against Antrim, it will lift a bit of the doom and gloom in Donegal at the minute. Getting a run in the championship does lift the spirit of people and who knows what it will lead to.”

The plummeting national fortunes have silenced – perhaps terminally – the vague talk of Gaelic games going professional. Such a notion seems more pie-in-the-sky than ever now and if anything, the real problems that players face illustrate just how firmly entrenched in amateurism the ethos of the games remain. Yes, players do receive expenses now, but until those costs are claimed, travelling to training and maintaining diet and fitness expectations represent a day-to-day hand-in-pocket cost which could surely seem prohibitive to players without work. Put simply, the situation is not sustainable over the long term. “And the expenses that they do get is not going to put bread on the table,” says Tony Boyle. “Luckily, the majority don’t have the pressure of having to provide for young families and mortgages and that. But it is a difficult time, without question.”

And plainly, the state of affairs in the Donegal team simply reflects what is happening among the clubs. In the 1990s, Killybegs was one of the strongholds of Donegal football but their success in the local championship corresponds directly to the decimation of the local fishing industry.

Of the team that won Donegal’s only All-Ireland in 1992, corner back Barry McGowan, man-of-the-match Manus Boyle and substitute midfielder Barry Cunningham were from Killybegs. John “Ban” Gallagher and John Cunningham were county men for many years. But the club last won a Donegal championship in 1996, after which clubs in the north of the county began something of a revolution. There is no immediate prospect of Killybegs winning another.

“We have a good crowd of 20 year olds coming up but we have lost a fair few senior lads, including Matthew Smith, who had a run with the county team,” says Barry Cunningham, a namesake of the ’92 player who was the captain of that last championship winning side.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the success of Killybegs’ football teams was often compromised because of work. The fishing industry was such that excellent footballers would be lost to the rigours and time constraints of the fishing season.

Cunningham played minor for Donegal in 1989 but admits that afterwards, fishing took up more and more of his time to the detriment of his ambitions as a footballer. Now, he coaches under age teams in the town and has been lobbying to have juvenile games reduced to 13-a-side because fielding teams of 15 can be a struggle.

EC quota restrictions have ended the Killybegs fishing boom and without that traditional industry, the opportunities for young people – young footballers – to make a living locally are limited.“When I started working, we would fish for nine months and the other three you would work in the factory in the summer for pocket money. But now you only fish for six months. Nobody here ever feels that they saw this Celtic Tiger. In fact, it started to go the opposite way here,” said Cunningham.

It does not take long for empires to crumble. Donegal has now gone 16 years without an Ulster title, the longest gap since the first was won in 1972. With every passing summer and this year, a generation of players who have never fully delivered on their potential realise that their time to leave their mark is limited. The new conditions make that truer than ever.

On a fine evening by the Finn river, nobody wanted to think to deeply about next autumn. If Donegal play to their potential, a coveted place in the Ulster final ought to be within their reach. Claiming the Anglo Celt Cup after such a long wait would be rapturously welcomed and that ambition is enough to sustain the players for now. But Karl Lacey admitted that his football future is far from mapped out.

“I would think about it if come September there’s nothing, then, definitely, I am not going to sit about home doing nothing when there is work in other places that I could get.”

Who could blame him? Living for Sunday league football is hardly enough to keep mind and soul together. If staying in Donegal means nothing but a dead end, then some of the best players will have to leave.

So if there is a new urgency about the laid back men from the Northwest this summer; if they look as if this is the last match they will play for their county, that is because it just might be.

The Australian Factor

The poaching of the cream of Irish Gaelic football players by Australian Rules football franchises has been one of the most controversial developments for the GAA.

Donegal full forward Michael Murphy has already been touted as an ideal candidate for Aussie Rules scout and has attracted considerable interest. Tall, strong and mobile, the Glenswilly man is an ideal target man, a good ball winner and possesses natural kicking ability.

Michael McGuire played on the U-17 International Rules squad in 1999 and can see the attractions of the sport for up-and-coming Gaelic players. He reckons the lure of professional sport and the bleak employment outlook here means the numbers of Irish kids trying their luck with AFL clubs will grow.

“It was a great experience and any young buck who gets the chance should definitely take it. The way the economics are here at the minute if you got the chance to go you’d be wondering why you would be staying about, especially the likes of Michael Murphy, who I think would be a very good player at that game.”

It would be difficult to over estimate the importance of Murphy, who just did his Leaving Certificate last summer, to the Donegal team. As Brian McEniff put it, he is the best young player to emerge from the county in years.

“He is one of the old traditional footballers and it would be a terrible loss to the association and to Donegal if he went off to Australia. But given the times that are in it, if he got a good offer and he wanted to give it a go, it would be hard to keep him.”