McGirr's legacy lives on.
© Copyright The Sunday Tribune.
McGirr's legacy lives on.
By Malachy Clerkin
August 24th 2003
“I think it has been a real basis for the character of these lads that are now in the senior team. They’ve grown together. They did a lot of growing in a short space of time. And although it’s human nature that people move on and get on with their own lives long after something happens, I think there’s a lasting bond there. It’s a hidden thing that nobody really talks about but certainly a number of the players are aware of it. There was an unwritten pact to say, ‘Let’s go forward from here and do the best we can. And maybe, just maybe out there, there’s a Paul McGirr factor without anybody making a deal of it.’” Tyrone manager, Mickey Harte.
THE traffic was a mess in Omagh that day, so bad that instead of getting the team bus to take them from lunch in Molly Sweeney’s to Healy Park, the Tyrone minor team decided they’d be just as quick walking. Besides, it was no harm strolling through town as a group, red and white kit-bags slung over their shoulders, matching tracksuits letting the world know who they were. The town was black with people, each and every one there to see them and the senior team play Armagh. Walking the walk added to the occasion.
They knew their opponents well. Cormac McAnallen was at St Patrick’s College in Armagh and Fr Gerard McAleer, joint-manager alongside Mickey Harte, was about to enter his final year teaching at the same school. Earlier that year, Fr McAleer had been in charge of the St Pat’s team that had been beaten in the final of the McRory Cup by St Patrick’s Dungannon. The priest reckons that of the 30 boys who took the pitch in Omagh on 15 June 1997, he’d coached at least three-quarters of them at one stage or another.
It turned out to be a disjointed, patternless dog of a game. Tyrone weren’t the fluid attacking outfit they’d been billed as and had it not been for three beautiful second-half points from Kevin Hughes, their season would probably have been over before it had really begun. Steven McDonnell was lobbing over points from all angles for Armagh but was getting very little help. In the end, Tyrone’s greater physical presence just about told.
They won by 1-10 to 0-9, their goal coming after only 10 minutes when wing-forward Paul McGirr dived in front of Armagh goalkeeper Willie McSorley trying to get to a loose ball. The pair collided and although he got there momentarily ahead of McSorley, McGirr didn’t rise to celebrate after the ball dribbled into the net. The Tyrone team doctor, Seamus Cassidy, attended to him on the pitch before calling for a stretcher. He was taken to Tyrone County Hospital. The word was that he’d cracked a few ribs.
After watching the seniors grab a lucky win in the second match, the rest of the players walked back to Molly Sweeney’s for their victory meal. The double done over Armagh, the sun high in the sky, it had been a fine day all round. Declan McCrossan was the team captain and he took it upon himself to hurry through his meal so he could go to the hospital to check in on McGirr. He, Stephen O’Neill and Aidie Ball always travelled together so the three of them headed off. There was no sense in everyone visiting at once – if Paul was going to be in for a few days, it’d probably be best to space out the visits. So most of the rest of the panel went home.
“The traffic was really bad,” McCrossan recalls. “So we took a few of the back roads to get to the hospital. We got in and the first thing we saw was a priest talking to these two men. We didn’t know who they were or anything, we just wanted to find a nurse who could tell us where Paul was. But then we heard the priest say something like, ‘Well he was a young lad who died doing something he loved. Playing football for his county and enjoying himself.’ And we were just like, ‘Holy fuck, hang on a minute here. What’s after happening?’”
What was after happening was that Paul’s liver had ruptured in the collision. One of the main arteries connected to the organ had torn away and the bleeding had become impossible to control. Paul died just after six o’clock, still dressed in his Tyrone gear.
• • •
Paul McGirr was the youngest of Francis and Rita McGirr’s six children. He’d started his footballing life with Errigal Ciaran in an under-12 team with the likes of Mark Harte and Cormac McGinley as teammates. Rita was a teacher in Garvaghy, Francis a farmer. He farmed bits and pieces of land around the area but when the chance came to move to bigger holding out in Dromore, he took it. Paul’s older brother Mickey continued playing for Errigal but Paul transferred to Dromore.
He was a quick-witted kid, never short of a one-liner or a comeback if the dressing-room started humming with banter. One of the few on the panel who wouldn’t be underage again the following year, he was in the middle of a sports and leisure course at Fermanagh College. Beyond that, he was a Manchester United fan and had a photograph of himself and Alex Ferguson shaking hands at Old Trafford to prove it. He was outgoing and cheerful and if a party needed a little life and soul, he wouldn’t be long stepping up to the plate.
On the field, he was a classy forward. Not especially stocky or well-built, more angular and lean. He was tall enough for a minor and carried himself around the pitch gracefully. His natural game was stylish and elegant but he wasn’t afraid to stick his head in among the flying boots if he had to.
He lived to play for Tyrone. The night before the Armagh match, he bumped into Fr Tom Breen, the Dromore parish priest, the man who would say his funeral mass just four days later. Fr Breen told him to get home and get a good night’s sleep. “Oh, I won’t sleep,” said Paul. “I’m too excited to sleep.”
• • •
Mickey Harte arrived at the hospital just as McCrossan, O’Neill and Ball were coming out. They told him the news. He can remember the blood draining from his face and his first reaction being that of a father rather than a football manager. Paul had been wearing the number 12; his son Mark had been wearing 13. He has no idea how he’d have begun to cope in Francis and Rita McGirr’s position.
The funeral was the following Wednesday. Peter Canavan brought one of Paul’s county jerseys up to the altar as an offertory gift. Various members of the panel carried the coffin a little of the way from St Dympna’s Church to St Davog’s graveyard. GAA people came from all over the country, including then president Joe McDonagh and former president Jack Boothman.
The squad had been together on and off for most of the week, but they met up formally for the first time in the Glenavon House Hotel in Cookstown that Friday night. Harte and Fr McAleer brought in a psychologist, Dr Niall McCullough, to talk to the players. They broke up into small groups and talked the week’s events away. The tragedy had had a devastating effect on them, even though some of them would only have met Paul for the first time that April when the squad had started training in earnest. Souls were bared, shoulders cried on. A group of young footballers left their testosterone and their egos at the door and quietly grieved together.
Fr McAleer says it was the most traumatic time in his life, worse than the sudden death of his mother four years ago or even the Omagh bombing. It was the randomness of it all that shook him, the fact that a boy he’d coached had collided with a boy he’d taught and one of them hadn’t got up again. Like he says, it wasn’t as if Paul had been out wrecking cars or messing around in a pool in Spain. He was a kid playing football. Kids don’t die playing football. They don’t.
“It was a horrible, sad time for everybody,” says McAnallen. “But the bond that developed between us in those few days became really tight. Whenever we did eventually get around to thinking about the next match, players knew each other an awful lot better, for better or for worse. We came to trust each other and depend on each other.”
An important part of that night was Dr Cassidy’s explanation of what had happened to their teammate. He assured them that Paul had died in a freak accident, that the chances of it happening had been minuscule, the chances of it happening again smaller still. Even so, Harte remembers that for a good while afterwards, his players treated injuries with much more apprehension than they had previously.
That meeting set the antibodies to work and gradually, the wounds started to heal. When they met for training the following Monday, they got straight down to business. They had done their grieving, they had cried their tears. Now it was time to play football again. Harte and Fr McAleer were careful not to make the rest of their season a crusade for the memory of Paul McGirr. It would have been cheap emotional blackmail, nothing more. Instead, it was decided to retire the number 12 jersey for the rest of the year.
On the morning of the next game, against Monaghan in Clones, McCrossan received a letter from Rita McGirr wishing him and the team all the best and thanking them for their support. They walked slowly out onto St Tiarnach’s Park that day in single file, boys carrying grief like men. Still, life went on. They beat Monaghan 4-14 to 3-7. The newspaper said they suffered from some defensive lapses.
Many will be familiar with the rest. They built up momentum, took Antrim in the Ulster final and got past Kerry after an epic replay in the All Ireland semi-final. Laois caught them in the headlights in the final, but the majority returned the following year to take Tyrone’s first All Ireland minor title since 1973.
Victory was sweet that day, but sweeter still was the under-21 title they lifted in 2000. This was the team Paul McGirr played on taking care of business they left unfinished the first time around. As they lined up for the photo that day, McCrossan felt someone tap his shoulder. He turned around to see Francis McGirr standing there. They shared a lengthy hug.
Tyrone took another All Ireland under-21 title the following year and started spilling almost en masse onto the senior panel. Eight of the squad named for the game against Armagh that day in 1997 will be in the dressing room for this afternoon’s semi-final against Kerry. Another four were on the panel but since the management had to name a squad of 24, they weren’t given jerseys on the day.
Twelve players from one minor panel is quite a harvest and Harte has always acknowledged the part coping with Paul McGirr’s death played in the reaping. Fr McAleer believes strongly that the tragedy made them better people and taught them about character in times of crisis, character that brought them back from the brink against Kerry that year and against Down and Derry this. McAnallen says while his name is never mentioned, Paul’s legacy is forever there.
“When you look at things now and you look at the way things have snowballed because of the success of those years, it’s true that the events surrounding Paul’s death were one of the things that kick-started everything. There’s a bond there that we’d feel would give us an advantage over other teams.”
A silver lining, then. Not that it could ever make up for the cloud.
If you would like to make any comments about this article or suggest a piece for my archives please don't hesitate to contact me:
Richard Behal
(richardbehal@gaelicgazette.com)