Niall O'Kane reflects on the culture change driving Glenullin's success

For all the moments in Glenullin’s four-year journey to Clones on Sunday, Niall O’Kane is the most recent hero.

With a point between the sides, Daulta Hunney had a chance to clip a point to get Carrickmacross to penalties. He didn’t.

He had a ‘buck to the brae’ moment and went for goal. O’Kane stood tall like he did moments later to flick away Aaron Lynch’s dipping shot.

He also had eyes like a hawk earlier when a dangerous dropping ball landed in a saturated goalmouth. Pressure you could almost reach out and touch.

“My heart was in my mouth,” O’Kane recalls. “I saw it coming in, it was just hanging with the wind. The other two (saves), you just put your body in front of the ball if you can.”

Niall is the youngest in a family of footballing brothers. Gerard, man of the match when Glenullin won the ’07 championship, has recently retired.

Michael is the current manager. John is centre back. Dermot is also part of the panel, who kicked an endless supply of points down the years.

Gerard senior, a former Derry Chairman, is a club cornerstone. Sister Eimear plays camogie for the ‘Glen. There is football on their mother Roisin’s side too.

The family links are nice after games with photos and memories to look back on. Games are about nothing, only what it takes to win.

“I'd do anything for Néill McNicholl or Traglach Bradley, the same way I'd do it for John, playing with him,” Niall said, “so, it's no real odds in the 60 minutes.”

Niall, a forward growing up, was too young to break into the ’07 side that lifted the John McLaughlin Cup.

Under the management of older brother Gerard, he played midfield on an U-16 winning team with Traglach Bradley.

Faced by a strong breeze in the final, Niall was stationed at full-back to mop up what Faughanvale could throw at them before moving to midfield for the second-half.

Returning from four years in Australia, in 2016, he ebbed himself back into football at home. Goalkeeping came by chance.

Pearse McNicholl was goalkeeper in 2020 but when his flight back from Liverpool was delayed, manager John Heaney was left looking for someone to fire the number one jersey at for a pre-season cup game in Castledawson.

Heaney asked the question. Niall’s kicking off the ground made him a more than viable option. It would only be for 10 minutes until their regular goalkeeper pulled into grounds. He agreed.

“Pearse never came,” O’Kane said with a smile. “I played a bit in there that year just to pull them out when Pearse wasn’t there but he was the ‘keeper.”

When Paddy Bradley was appointed as manager for the 2022 season, kick-outs and their importance was number one on any manager’s list.

“The words Paddy said to me, he said, if you can kick the ball out, that's all you have to do. We'll worry about the rest,” Niall recalls.

Finding a Glenullin man his restart was all that mattered. Barry Gillis came in as goalkeeping coach and, like Sunday’s opposite number Ryan Lennon, Niall’s kicking grew in importance.

“The club haven't really had a natural ‘keeper since 2022. They have a couple of young boys coming up, so I had to stay there.”

There isn’t a contentment from standing in the firing line but he is happy to be a regular.

“From (number) two to 15, I definitely wouldn't be on (outfield) so I just think it's a bonus for me to be playing in nets and to be on the team.”

Off the pitch, the buzz around the community is everywhere.

O’Kane is seated in a perfectly symmetrically laid out seating arrangement in the club hall for Sunday’s centenary mass.

Players, all kitted out in club gear, are plentiful for Friday’s impeccably organised press evening. Tae and goodies there for everyone.

On Sunday, it was the players’ turn to serve the refreshments after mass. It’s a mark of giving back to a community that back their every move.

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“Off the pitch has been massive in regards to our underage,” O’Kane adds of the influx that has brought them back to competing for grade A titles.

“We have a lot of younger boys coming into the senior set-up. I’m not saying they didn’t before, but now, it just seems that the whole club just seems to be supporting everybody.

“Everything's going the right way, even for things like clean ups. You used to maybe get the same 10 men, now there's 20 and 25 men coming to the pitch.

“The whole club, as a whole, for the last three, four or five years, has just seemingly taken an upward trajectory.

“It's hard to put a finger on how it started or where it started. Everything at the minute, touch wood, just seems to be going up and the 100-year celebration has brought another buzz again.”

Sunday is Glenullin’s seventh game in Ulster during their last four seasons. Galbally handed them a lesson in the level required in 2022.

The following year, a win over Glenravel gave them a taste before the painful defeat at the hands of Ballyhaise, now ironically managed by Gerard O’Kane.

“Having played so well, having been in the game, winning by four points at a stage, coming down the stretch,” Niall recalls, “they got a goal with five to go and we ended up losing by a point. It was just gut-wrenching.

“To turn that into this year's Ulster run, it's just winter football. Going out and playing a semi-final of Derry eight weeks ago, against Greenlough, conditions were fairly good and it was good football.

“We have come to the conclusion that we're not going to be playing a brand of good football at the moment.

“As long as we can keep the ball moving through the hands nearly and just basically keep possession. If you give it away now in Ulster, you're going to be punished.”

They’ll hope it doesn’t happen and the upward trajectory continues.