GAA: Anniversary Celebrations to the Fore

Along with Claudy, Foreglen are the joint oldest GAA club in Derry.  This weekend they hold a gala dinner as part of the club’s 130 anniversary celebrations.  Michael McMullan sat down with members of the organising committee to talk about the club’s history and their emergence from ‘down the lane’… IT’S a bitter winter morning in Foreglen.  The wheels of 2018 are already in motion.  Two days later the senior footballers would start the club’s 130^th season with a comprehensive win over Sean Dolan’s in the Ulster league. With the club’s gala dinner just a matter of days away, the organising committee are applying the finishing touches to Saturday’s event in Letterkenny’s Clanree Hotel. Three of them, namely JJ Butcher, Noel McFeely and Gregory McLaughlin, are sat around the committee room table.  It’s a stark contrast to the club’s humble beginnings all those years ago. Michael McMullan: Where did GAA start in Foreglen? Noel McFeely: The year of inauguration was 1888.  It started as a football and hurling club, playing where Muldonagh Cottages are now.  There was a bit of a pitch where the old school was, McNicholls they called it. We wouldn’t know a lot about the details back in those days.  In the book (written by Fr Donnelly) are the names of those who formed it.  It is still synonymous with the names O’Kane and Kerlin, people within the district. M McM: Like any corner of Ireland, I suppose the club has played a role in the community. N McF: This community wouldn’t be here only for the GAA, it caters for everybody from young and old, that has gone down a long number of years. Foreglen had went in and out of leagues at times because they hadn’t enough players to field over the last 130 years. M McM: How does a club last so long? N McF: It was people down through the years that kept it going whenever they had nothing.  That would be more relevant than anything.  The chairmen of the times, being there for 10 or 20 years, with no change and a lot of it is still going on, where chairmen and secretaries have to take it on for a long number of years. M McM: You had a breakthrough with the intermediate title in 1985.  What, do you feel, were the landmarks in the club before that? N McF: I suppose, the Dr Kerlin Cups were the North Derry championships at the time.  We won a good few of them, especially in the early 1960s.  We had a really good side back then, we were beating the Dungivens and the Ballerins fairly regularly and they were great sides then too. There were some near misses in the juniors before we won the inaugural championship in 1985.  We came up from the junior league two years earlier, we stayed up and won the championship that year.  There was no Ulster (championship) back then – but winning the Derry championship was a fantastic achievement for the area. It was a brilliant at that particular time.  We had no home ground or changing rooms – it was just the famous ‘down the lane’ (the old field). M McM: Going back to 1985, what are the recollections?  What sticks in the memory? Gregory McLaughlin: It lifted the whole community and pulled it together.  Obviously there was plenty of celebrating after it.  There were no players available for the three weeks after it. It was the first and once you get one under your belt, you feel the confidence to go on and win more.  I think we have underachieved at championship level.  I think there were far more championships in The Foreglen.  Noel talked there about near misses, being beaten in finals and I think there were three or four more that we should’ve won. M McM: Would you have counted yourselves as favourites at the start of the 1985 season? N McF: In 1983 we won the league, we won the Dr Kerlin Cup and we were beaten in the championship semi-final by Claudy.  A couple of our senior players were injured – that was one of the reasons.  Also, Tommy McKeever was managing Claudy at the time, he was a manager of renown.  Managers were chairmen at that particular time. In 1985, we had nine players, on the Friday night before the championship final, at training down the lane.  That’s how many we had, I will never forget it. The match was against Desertmartin at Ballerin.  We drew with them the first day.  My abiding memory, although I didn’t see it but I was told afterwards.  The McLaughins were renowned for being good supporters.  I had a 45 metre free to equalise.  Phonsie (McLaughlin) had his hands (on the wire) and he had his head turned the other way.  He squeezed and ripped his hands on the barbed wire when he heard the cheer whenever I levelled the game.   That’s what it means to people. Then in the replay, we won by three or four points.    The hotel in Dungiven would have been where we celebrated.    Brendan McTaggart, God rest him, would have been a Foreglen men and was very good to us. My memory of that was the people coming up the floor, the unsung heroes, with the cup.  The people who supported us all their life and never won anything, people who weren’t playing football.  Mothers and fathers, it was fantastic – we gave it to them to carry up - they were there through thick and thin. G McL: There was one memory I would have leading up to that, in the early 1980s.  You were on earlier about having no changing facilities.  The team used to come to our shed to train.  Our job was to have it spotless before they came.  It was just a concrete floor.  One night we were interrupted by heavily armed RUC officers.  They heard there was a training exercise going on in The Foreglen.  They were very surprised when they walked in and saw people in shorts and Foreglen tops.  I don’t know what they were expecting but they were quite relieved and left again. N McF: Aye, that was 1983 and Gregory’s father, God rest him, would have been very good to us down through the years.  There were potatoes and everything in it (shed) – it didn’t matter what was in it, he cleared it out for us and we trained in there because it had a light. G McL: And it was dry. We had no community hall back then. N McF: We had nothing. M McM: After 1985, how does the Foreglen story continue? N McF: We went down again to division three for a couple of years.  Lissan beat us in the semi-final of the junior championship and went on to win it.  They were a good side.  Ballinderry Thirds beat us one year.  We won the junior league and championship double.  We went back up to intermediate and never looked back after that.  We stayed there and went up to division one for a couple of years. G McL: Another important point was when Noel’s late sister, Geraldine, formed a camogie team here. N McF: That would have been in the 1980s. G McL: Ladies football wasn’t popular then, but camogie and hurling was.  A very famous person in Dungiven, Hinphey (Liam) from Kilkenny – said ‘you couldn’t arm them boys out there’ but we formed a camogie team.  Unfortunately we hadn’t the numbers to sustain it.  A lot of our ladies are playing for Banagher and Dungiven. It was another feather in your bow and it was great to see them playing camogie.  It is not about winning, it is about participating – seeing them out there giving all they have got.  They were never going to beat the bigger clubs but they were trying. N McF: When Kevin Lynch’s won the minor hurling championship in 2007, there was nine of our players playing for them in the final.  That’s how many hurlers we had.  They are (now) playing in Dungiven or Banagher or wherever they chose but we couldn’t sustain a hurling team.  It’s too small an area. M McM: I remember taking underage teams up to play Foreglen around the start of the millennium and your underage was coming strong at the time. G McL: We looked at what other clubs were doing and realised we had to start at underage.  This man (Noel) was the backbone of that.  It was his brainchild, it was his work, his time and his determination. M McM: Were there more numbers or a landmark moment where the club decided to push the underage? G McL: We were watching how other clubs were developing and there were a lot of great Gaels that are unfortunately not with us any more, that were helping him at that stage.  Everything has to start with youth and it comes on from there.  We won an All-Ireland (2000). M McM: That was the U10 Community Games wasn’t it. N McF: Yes.  Parishes could go together.  Banagher is our parish and they wanted to go with us, but we didn’t want to.  We had an idea we had a fair side ourselves. G McL: We had a couple of wee girls playing on it as well. N McF: Out of that team that won the All-Ireland, nine of them played on the 2013 championship and league winning team.  Gregory was part of the management with Paddy Downey. We beat Clontarf of Dublin in the semi-final and Castlehaven in the final.  The crowds met us at the bottom of the Glenshane and there was a car cavalcade right through Dungiven to the Community Centre. JJ Butcher: It was a big thing at the time, it was run by the electric board (now Electric Ireland), they sponsored it.  It was run in Butlin’s (Mosney) and we stayed in the chalets. N McF: You talk about memories.  My abiding memory was of a couple of men that have died since, John O’Hara and Willie John McTaggart – Gary Duffy was driving them.  The pitches were across the main pitch, with a bit of a rope around as a barrier.  I remember them going right across the pitch before the final, in a wee jeep – you don’t forget things like that. That was a good year for us, but 1984 was when the youth started, as Greg was saying. M McM: That would have been the first formal underage structures. N McF: Before then, there were a few teams and they were in the ‘B’ and ‘C’ divisions.  There was only 10 or 12 to work with.  I took over as Youth Officer, it was nearly unheard of at the time in any club.  I got the boys that lived in Dungiven, that were from Foreglen.  And our Pascal lived in Ballykelly.  But we were always two or three players short of a county championship winning team. M McM: A year later you won the first intermediate championship.  That probably fed into the underage. N McF: That is the reason why it took a shot up.  They had to look up and see what the future was. M McM: Gregory, so that fed into the 2013 winning team. G McL: Me and Paddy (Downey) worked together for two years, that was our second year.  We are still very friendly and would talk a couple of times a week.  We just bonded to it and we got on very well with the players.  We were fit to get the most out of the players, made them believe and changed their mindset. We were beat in 2012 by Swatragh by a point.  Oisin (Duffy) missed a chance and we could have drew the game.  Nobody scored in the last 20 minutes.  Conor McAtamney, that was his step into the county role after that match.  He was outstanding. The next year we were lucky enough to beat Glen and go on and win it.  It was unbelievable with all the celebrations. M McM: Was there a feeling that Glen and Swatragh were favourites? G McL: More so Glen, they had the great minor and U21 teams that kept winning and winning.  They were going to break through eventually.  They gave Ballerin an awful tanking in the replay down in Owenbeg. M McM: What made the difference for Foreglen? G McL: I suppose it’s having an outstanding bunch of players, who were totally dedicated to the cause.  It is all about the players and if they want to do it for you.  And we were lucky we had some very good footballers as well.  We just didn’t have three or four, we had them all through the panel and still have. There are so many distractions for young boys and the sacrifices – boys leaving England to come here.  Travelling from Dublin and from Cork and it is money out of their pocket basically. M McM: In a lot of other cases, players transfer to other clubs to ease the burden of travelling. G McL: Exactly. M McM: And it could be the easy option. G McL: Oisin (Duffy) is a typical example.  He is married to one of the McGoldrick’s (Meabh) and has moved to Coleraine. M McM: You and your Sean (Coleraine joint manager) will be battling for his signature. G McL (Laughs): He’s a Foreglen man, but I have had this conversation with him.  The next generation are going to be Coleraine players.  That’s how things move on.  You wouldn’t expect Oisin’s wains to play for Foreglen. M McM: Things have turned full circle in Foreglen, from training in your father’s shed to what you have now. G McL: This building was over ambitious.  We borrowed too much money and were not fit to maintain our loan.  This is why we are having a gala night to pay some of it off. The crystal ball and hindsight are two wonderful things.  We could have built it half the size and it would still have been functional.  But I suppose in 2005 and 2006 the economy was flying and there was so much money flying around.  Then in 2007 countries and banks were going bankrupt. We were so construction based here and construction was so badly hit, we lost a lot of our income with boys moving to Australia, America and England. M McM: You are now organising a dinner.  It took a fair bit of organising I’d imagine. G McL: For the Gala night, we have 50 tables and Noel has 30 of them sold.  He has knocked on doors and got sponsorship.  On the flip side, when a club knocks his door – he takes a table for them, so nobody can really refuse him. N McF: But all clubs have to help each other.  If someone comes over here, they’ll head up Muldonagh Road – up to Gregory, up to Noel.  That’s the way it is done. JJ B: The enthusiasm of these people in the Foreglen club are putting this together to reduce the debt on the loan. N McF: There are seven of us set up on this committee, to help run the corporate dinner.  There are us three, Francis McCormick, Susie McFeely, Catherine McLaughlin and JB Farren G McL: It is not about us as individuals, it is about us all.  But going forward, it takes too much money now and it shouldn’t do. There is a mate of mine with a son in a running club.  He goes running three times a week, he gives £5 a week and he is insured.  He gets no tickets home, no hassle.  In the GAA, you are at the parents all the time.  Tickets, draws, tickets, draws, raffles, and gala nights.  It has nearly taken away from the football side of things to fundraising. M McM: You need to have it or clubs won’t be here. N McF: Aye, you won’t have a team in.  All the expenses and it is the same people going around the doors raising the money. No matter what committee you had in here, they still have the responsibility to raise the money for the teams to go into the league and get insurance – it has gone haywire.  They have nearly £9M spent on Casement Park already and they haven’t even put a digger into it. G McL: The amount of clubs and counties that are struggling to stay afloat, I’d say it is a high percentage. M McM: Keeping the gates open is a priority. G McL: But why should clubs rely on other clubs to support them.  Slaughtneil are very lucky and privileged.  Everyone wants to be part of that success, sponsoring them if they are going for a meal – everyone wants to help you.  But a small club like ours, we struggle to get sponsors. N McF: It is the same people, they are doubling up.  How are you going to ask somebody after buying a table, two months later to buy tickets? M McM: With the 130^th year, will you be running other events? N McF: We will probably be running other things during the year.  We were looking at getting people within the district, of different lifespans, to pick the all-time Foreglen team. M McM: That won’t be an easy thing to do I’d say.  All the best with it and have a great night on Saturday. Foreglen’s Gala Dinner will be begin at the Clanree Hotel in Letterkenny on Saturday evening with a champagne reception at 6.30.  The MC for the evening is Gerry Donnelly, with Joe Brolly as the special guest.