BACK IN THE SUMMER of 2012, the teenage Aidan Forker was considering his life choices as a clammy day in the Athletic Grounds loomed.
That Sunday he was due to face Tyrone in his championship debut. Coming from the spit of land where Maghery juts into Tyrone, there was plenty anticipation.
In the preceding years, he had turned down Dungannon Swifts’ bid to get him to play Irish League soccer, and their increased offers thereafter.
He only had eyes for Armagh.
By coincidence that week, he bumped into Paddy McKeever, his childhood hero. Left foot, number 10 jersey, they had things in common.
Forker would be wearing the number 10 jersey, and he hit an early goal to announce his arrival as a county player.
Tyrone won, 0-19 to 1-13. Armagh had a hard luck story with Kevin Dyas sent off with twenty minutes to go. In the way of a teenager, Forker didn’t wear the defeat heavily. He was now a made man, a decade on from Armagh’s sole All-Ireland success.
Just turned 10 in September 2002, he didn’t know if he would get to that final against Kerry, but in the end Joe Forker turned up two tickets for The Hill and Aidan went up on his father’s shoulders.
His mother couldn’t take the stress and left at half-time. By the final whistle, they got caught in the tumult and one of the most exuberant pitch celebrations ever.
“I remember being delighted and seeing the delight on my dad’s face. Just hugging anybody you could see, it was unbelievable,” he said in 2012.
“I remember being surrounded by people and I was only small, so I did actually lose him for a couple of minutes. I managed to find somebody that I knew – maybe it was my uncle or something – and he took me under his wing for a couple of minutes. It was just pandemonium. Mental!”
Today, Aidan Forker stands in front of the media as a man who has lived a few footballing lives. The latest journey begins this Sunday when they face Fermanagh in the Ulster quarter-final in Brewster Park.
The young tearaway forward has gone through a number of reiterations and reinventions. For a time he was a wing-back. Then he became a man-marker, squaring up to the likes of Michael Murphy while giving away significant inches and pounds. Now, it can be anywhere in defence.
Through it all, he has dedicated himself to it entirely. There’s never been the year away travelling. Nor the summer playing ball and labouring around New York. He’s been as loyal as any player to Armagh, with very little reward.
In terms of silverware, that is. He couldn’t put a price on everything else the last decade-plus has given him.
“I love it,” he says.
“It’s not lost on me that as you get past 30, you do think it’s not going to be forever. But I’m feeling really good physically. No major knocks or bangs and training hard and got a good preseason so I have no excuses.”
In his third season, he became acquainted with Kieran McGeeney, who was a bolt-on to Paul Grimley’s backroom staff. Then McGeeney succeeded Grimley and while he has brought Armagh to an Ulster final and kept them an attractive proposition, their ongoing search for silverware has many saying this is his final season, with just a one-year extension to his term last August by the Armagh county board.
Forker doesn’t see why it is even a debate.
“Why would Kieran not be there next year when we are a Division 1 team?” he asks.
“Look at all those teams, an All Black team under (Steve) Hansen, they lost the World Cup but they didn’t get rid of him; they said ‘you take the learnings from being at that level and bring us forward.’
“So the same sort of model – why would we get rid of all what Kieran knows about the group and the players he helped to create alongside everyone who has supported him and not go at it together? And to me, it should be Kieran’s decision.”
The years in the Armagh camp and exposure to certain characters has fed his hunger for knowledge around teams, athletes and performers.
Forker’s mind craves stimulation anyway. Despite his relative youth he is the Primary 7 teacher and Vice Principal of Our Lady’s Primary School in Tullysaran on the Tyrone-Armagh border.
Away from the job and the pitch, he devours what he can on the All-Blacks, acknowledging at the same time that it probably makes him a cliché, such is the level of over-exposure of that team. The most recent book was Dan Carter’s.
“You know yourself when you consume so much you could add in yourself, but it was reassuring he was doing a lot of similar things we would do as a group or individually. It’s good. I enjoy that aspect. I think life is a performance to be honest,” he says.
Eddie Jones, despite the rash actions, is someone who interests him.
“Not a man of deadly craic I have to say.
“He doesn’t help himself at times, but like, his edginess and the way his teams play they’re aggressive.
“He’s quite strategic with certain things, obviously got the timings of things wrong with regards to the World Cup, he ran out of time the last time.
“And I think I like how he challenges his players all the time. That’s important to be challenged all the time.”
This Armagh team have faced their challenges. Two penalty shoot out losses last year in the Ulster final against Derry and the All-Ireland quarter-final against Monaghan left Forker feeling as low as he ever has.
The recurring problem of finding ever more inventive ways of losing games that they seem poised to win is a stain the management will never shift, until they deliver a trophy.
Over the winter, the most experienced campaigners had a short period of reflection before signing up again. Stefan Campbell, Rory Grugan, Paddy Burns, Jarly Óg Burns, Blaine Hughes are all back. But for a purpose.
No team exhausted the; ‘It takes a good team to win an All-Ireland and a great team to win it twice’ line more than McGeeney’s edition of Armagh.
It was unfair on themselves, but that was the standards they held.
For Forker, he believes his career will be unfulfilled if they don’t win a championship trophy.
“As a player now presently playing, yes I’m pretty adamant you play football at this level to win,” he says.
“I do have a sense of perspective that when I look back on it, I’ll have enjoyed it and enjoyed the journey.
“But it won’t be completely fulfilled as you say if we don’t win a championship medal for me and the boys around me.
“There are loads of elite people who have soldiered with their county for years and you don’t always get out of it what you want. But that’s not my plan and that’s not our plan.”
