Ronan Clarke still devoted to Armagh’s football cause

Ronan Clarke doesn't watch football on television any more. And if you quiz him about Armagh's famous All-Ireland victory in 2002, he might jokingly inquire if you watched it in 'black and white'.

Recurring injuries meant he couldn’t finish his career on his own terms, and the agony of watching others play prompted the TV ban. Newspaper and radio coverage of the game managed to survive the cut.

But detaching himself from the sport hasn’t been easy. Clarke continues to train on his own and still has moments when ambition tricks his body into thinking he “could still give it a rattle”. But then reality intervenes and “the body says you can’t, so you have to move on”.

And move on he did. But he hasn’t departed from the game entirely. After all, this is a man who split his honeymoon into two parts, in order to sandwich in a championship quarter-final with his club last year.

The consequences of that decision were almost fatal but we’ll get to that later.

First, we must look at how the gym owner is appreciating that second chance at life by channelling his love for Gaelic football, through managing the Armagh women's football team.

“It’s a great opportunity and especially after the last few years, the team has been developing well,” he says,

“When they gave me the opportunity to come for an interview, I jumped at the chance. It’s a great privilege and a great thing to see girls pushing themselves.”

“They didn’t do themselves justice against Dublin [in the All-Ireland semi-final] last year but I knew they had the nucleus of a good team.”

But fleshing out the talent in the team presented internal challenges that Clarke did not expect and a lethal injection of professionalism was the required tonic.

Long distances

“I thought it would be a given that there would be food after training,” he says, “Then you notice that girls don’t get this. I just couldn’t believe that that could happen. I mean, girls travel long distances to get to training. I was disgusted and I got my eyes opened.”

“You hear these stories about how they get treated; they don’t get mileage, they pay for their own physios. And then they have to pay for half the gear because the county board can’t afford it. This is happening all over, not just in Ulster.”

Clarke, along with former Fermanagh manager Lisa Woods, have made significant strides to correct those problems, by drafting in a physio who can attend training sessions, and a nutritionist.

But while they were overcoming those issues, Armagh had another farcical episode to contend with at the end of the league. They were scheduled to play Cork in an away fixture in Division One. An overnight stay, at a cost of around £4,000, was arranged, but in the days leading up to the game, poor weather was predicted. They enquired if alternatives were in place should the venue be unplayable, but were told to travel regardless. The inclement weather arrived as expected and the game was postponed.

Reflecting on it now, Clarke says: “As soon as we hit Cork, I had this feeling that the game wasn’t going to be played. It was a completely wasted trip.”

The squad reconvened for the rescheduled game but further misery was to follow. After losing to Cork, Armagh were told they had qualified for the semi-finals, only to discover later by telephone that a mistake had been made. They were out of the competition.

“We were told we had qualified so my mind went towards who we would be playing in the semi-finals. And the next second you get a call so of course, everyone is going to be deflated. But we’ve just brushed it under the carpet and moved on.”

As a player with Armagh, Clarke’s precocious talent won him a host of honours including the Young Footballer of the Year award in 2002, two All Star awards and five Ulster titles. After his injury-enforced retirement in 2010, Clarke continued with his club Pearse Óg where personal fulfilment was still possible and 2015 was a particularly productive season for him.

Almost fatal

But then that aforementioned championship quarter-final came along where an attempt to palm an incoming ball into the net, resulted in a collision with the goalpost which led to an almost fatal outcome.

Clarke assumed it was a standard knock on the head but he was rushed to hospital where he drifted into a coma.

After he woke up, he made the inevitable decision.

“After spending five days in a coma, you soon have to put everything in perspective and say ‘is football the right thing here? Or do I give it another go? I was just married and I couldn’t put Michelle through that again.”

But football moves on this weekend there’s an Ulster Championship meeting for his team with Monaghan. He’ll happily watch this one and it won’t be in black and white.