SEAMUS COLEMAN WAS not the first of his family to represent his country. He wasn’t even the first of his siblings to score wearing the green jersey. And boy, did he grow up knowing about it.
For a long time, there was just one Ireland shirt with the Coleman name hanging on the wall of St Catherine’s Football Club in Killybegs.
One of his older brothers, Stevie, was part of the Ireland team that won a bronze medal when the Special Olympics World Games were held here in 2003.
This small fishing community on the south coast of Donegal was proud to celebrate one of its own achieving such a feat.
Seamus Coleman, 38 in October, is the baby of his family.
Older brother Francis has been in the Irish Army since he left school. Stevie turns 50 in May. He was born with cerebral palsy and has not just set an example by leading his life with resilience and respect, but also dry humour.
“Stevie would be quite witty and wouldn’t have been shy at all making sure Seamie knew who was first to play for Ireland,” family friend Brian Dorian, who was also Coleman’s old coach at St Catherine’s, says.
Stevie and Seamus’s bond was strengthened through football, where they shared certain traits. One was a mad determination to win.
In the housing estate up on St Cummins Hill, where the kids grew up and their parents Henry and Maire still live, there was a big green in front of the house.
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Matches would be played between those who lived around it and children from rival estates would converge for challenge games.
Stevie would go in goal and have a temper worse than Peter Schmeichel if he conceded. “He was tenacious and he would f***ing hate if the other team scored,” Dorian says.
Coleman didn’t know it, but he was being shaped for a life in football that would prove as much about endurance and survival ability as a mere will to succeed.
The greatest glory he could imagine is now within his grasp. A World Cup play-off against Czechia tomorrow and the possibility of a decider in Dublin on Tuesday: the most thrilling conclusion to his playing career is tangible.
Roots
Seamus Coleman remains a humble product of St Catherine’s, the player who flew the nest but often returns. There are stories of him consoling underage players with words of encouragement after losing games, or, on one occasion, surprising some of the senior team players by flying home the morning after a game against Arsenal and doing a warm-down session in his Catherine’s gear alongside them.
That’s not to say he didn’t have to change when he went to Everton. For one thing he was only lifting 60kg weights as part of his strength and conditioning programme, while peers had 20 or 30kgs on him.
Dorian remembers the car journeys they would share to Sligo Rovers when Coleman, in his less-than-reliable Mazda 121, would relish a sausage sandwiches with a can of Coke and a packet of Tayto crisps. “You’ve never seen so much red sauce in all your life,” he says. “It would be enough to make you sick.”
All of that stopped once Coleman got a taste of the life that could be ahead of him at Goodison Park.
Phil Neville, the club’s former captain, remembers manager David Moyes asking him to sit with the new arrival in the club canteen. He recalls the shy kid in a grey tracksuit who quickly became a family friend; Neville’s wife is Irish, with her mother coming from Buncrana in Donegal.
The Coleman-Neville family connection is stronger still. As their friendship grew, they learned more about each other’s lives. Seamus would speak about Stevie, and he would often be a presence in the first-team dressing room before and after matches at Goodison Park.
One of Neville’s daughters, Isabella, suffered a stroke in the womb and was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at 18 months old. Neville and Coleman connected on a human level, an emotional attachment that endures.
Ahead of Coleman’s first pre-season at the club in 2009, an infection in his toe was brushed aside. The pain got worse and only a last-minute procedure prevented a career-ending situation.
There were some who felt that the writing was on the wall when Coleman suffered a horrific broken leg against Wales in Dublin during the 2018 World Cup qualifying campaign.
Coleman suffered a horrific a broken leg against Wales. Tommy Dickson / INPHO
Tommy Dickson / INPHO / INPHO
He was 28 and close to the peak of his powers, but now faced a battle to return. He went home to Killybegs to start the recovery. Yet, as if to provide a stark reminder of life’s priorities, it was while in a hospital bed in St Vincent’s in south Dublin after surgery on the double fracture that he watched his eldest daughter, Lily, take her first steps.
Martin O’Neill and club boss Ronald Koeman visited him to provide encouragement while he convalesced in Donegal. Coleman told them the same thing he told everyone else who came to show support. “He told everyone he would come back stronger,” Dorian says.
These were some of the experiences that Coleman was drawing upon when he spoke to the Ireland players at the start of their last international window in November for the games with Portugal and Hungary.
When the squad gathered in Dublin, Coleman set a tone by speaking to everyone in the room, reminding them of what they have also had to overcome in their own careers to even get to a point where they could be fortunate enough to represent their country.
The historic victories that followed have brought Ireland to this point and the sense of shared struggle among the players is clear.
Like Seamus, players like Dara O’Shea and Jayson Molumby have had to overcome a broken ankle and leg. Goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher has thrived as Brentford’s number one in the Premier League this season, yet such professional acclaim comes at a time of immense contrasts in his life. He continues to mourn the death of his friend and former Liverpool teammate, Diogo Jota, while in recent weeks, Kelleher became a father for the first time.
Jake O’Brien spoke to The 42 last week about how being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of 16 was life-changing but not defining. No Irish outfield player has played more minutes or games in England’s top flight that the Everton man this season, and Coleman’s teammate is also finding such purpose after the birth of his son last August.
On the other end of the scale, Robbie Brady is someone in this current squad who has experienced the warmth and glow that comes with tournament life, smothered with adulation after his header against Italy in Lille secured progress to the last 16 of Euro 2016.
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He became gripped by anxiety in the weeks and months that followed, a stark example of how sports stars develop an armour growing up to protect themselves in the course of action but remain vulnerable during those most mundane of moments in life.
With that in mind, a thought for Evan Ferguson, a young man recovering from the second ankle operation of a career that still offers so much. His three goals during qualifying were vital for Ireland, and the 21-year-old’s absence will be felt, even if Troy Parrott has emerged as the nation’s darling following five goals in his last two games.
The brace against Portugal was outdone a few days later with a hat-trick that will go down in the lore of the Irish game.
Troy Parrott in 2023. Ryan Byrne / INPHO
Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
Parrott while a teenager was lauded as the future saviour of Irish football. He once again carries the hopes of his country, but for several years in between he walked a more lonely path, seen by many as just another kid who couldn’t follow through on his promise.
But he kept going.
There was something in Parrott and many of his teammates that sustained them in difficult times. Call it faith or old-fashioned stubbornness, but they continued to do the small things, from one day to the next, that could eventually lead them to the night like we face now.
As Coleman will testify, each Irish player’s story began to be written long ago and continued in quiet hours – from the beautiful to bleak. All the triumphs and every struggle which helps them to meet this moment.
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Seamus Coleman: the natural leader for a team who have learned to fight through the storm
SEAMUS COLEMAN WAS not the first of his family to represent his country. He wasn’t even the first of his siblings to score wearing the green jersey. And boy, did he grow up knowing about it.
For a long time, there was just one Ireland shirt with the Coleman name hanging on the wall of St Catherine’s Football Club in Killybegs.
One of his older brothers, Stevie, was part of the Ireland team that won a bronze medal when the Special Olympics World Games were held here in 2003.
This small fishing community on the south coast of Donegal was proud to celebrate one of its own achieving such a feat.
Seamus Coleman, 38 in October, is the baby of his family.
Older brother Francis has been in the Irish Army since he left school. Stevie turns 50 in May. He was born with cerebral palsy and has not just set an example by leading his life with resilience and respect, but also dry humour.
“Stevie would be quite witty and wouldn’t have been shy at all making sure Seamie knew who was first to play for Ireland,” family friend Brian Dorian, who was also Coleman’s old coach at St Catherine’s, says.
Stevie and Seamus’s bond was strengthened through football, where they shared certain traits. One was a mad determination to win.
In the housing estate up on St Cummins Hill, where the kids grew up and their parents Henry and Maire still live, there was a big green in front of the house.
Matches would be played between those who lived around it and children from rival estates would converge for challenge games.
Stevie would go in goal and have a temper worse than Peter Schmeichel if he conceded. “He was tenacious and he would f***ing hate if the other team scored,” Dorian says.
Coleman didn’t know it, but he was being shaped for a life in football that would prove as much about endurance and survival ability as a mere will to succeed.
The greatest glory he could imagine is now within his grasp. A World Cup play-off against Czechia tomorrow and the possibility of a decider in Dublin on Tuesday: the most thrilling conclusion to his playing career is tangible.
Roots
Seamus Coleman remains a humble product of St Catherine’s, the player who flew the nest but often returns. There are stories of him consoling underage players with words of encouragement after losing games, or, on one occasion, surprising some of the senior team players by flying home the morning after a game against Arsenal and doing a warm-down session in his Catherine’s gear alongside them.
That’s not to say he didn’t have to change when he went to Everton. For one thing he was only lifting 60kg weights as part of his strength and conditioning programme, while peers had 20 or 30kgs on him.
Dorian remembers the car journeys they would share to Sligo Rovers when Coleman, in his less-than-reliable Mazda 121, would relish a sausage sandwiches with a can of Coke and a packet of Tayto crisps. “You’ve never seen so much red sauce in all your life,” he says. “It would be enough to make you sick.”
All of that stopped once Coleman got a taste of the life that could be ahead of him at Goodison Park.
Phil Neville, the club’s former captain, remembers manager David Moyes asking him to sit with the new arrival in the club canteen. He recalls the shy kid in a grey tracksuit who quickly became a family friend; Neville’s wife is Irish, with her mother coming from Buncrana in Donegal.
The Coleman-Neville family connection is stronger still. As their friendship grew, they learned more about each other’s lives. Seamus would speak about Stevie, and he would often be a presence in the first-team dressing room before and after matches at Goodison Park.
One of Neville’s daughters, Isabella, suffered a stroke in the womb and was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at 18 months old. Neville and Coleman connected on a human level, an emotional attachment that endures.
Ahead of Coleman’s first pre-season at the club in 2009, an infection in his toe was brushed aside. The pain got worse and only a last-minute procedure prevented a career-ending situation.
There were some who felt that the writing was on the wall when Coleman suffered a horrific broken leg against Wales in Dublin during the 2018 World Cup qualifying campaign.
He was 28 and close to the peak of his powers, but now faced a battle to return. He went home to Killybegs to start the recovery. Yet, as if to provide a stark reminder of life’s priorities, it was while in a hospital bed in St Vincent’s in south Dublin after surgery on the double fracture that he watched his eldest daughter, Lily, take her first steps.
Martin O’Neill and club boss Ronald Koeman visited him to provide encouragement while he convalesced in Donegal. Coleman told them the same thing he told everyone else who came to show support. “He told everyone he would come back stronger,” Dorian says.
These were some of the experiences that Coleman was drawing upon when he spoke to the Ireland players at the start of their last international window in November for the games with Portugal and Hungary.
When the squad gathered in Dublin, Coleman set a tone by speaking to everyone in the room, reminding them of what they have also had to overcome in their own careers to even get to a point where they could be fortunate enough to represent their country.
The historic victories that followed have brought Ireland to this point and the sense of shared struggle among the players is clear.
Like Seamus, players like Dara O’Shea and Jayson Molumby have had to overcome a broken ankle and leg. Goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher has thrived as Brentford’s number one in the Premier League this season, yet such professional acclaim comes at a time of immense contrasts in his life. He continues to mourn the death of his friend and former Liverpool teammate, Diogo Jota, while in recent weeks, Kelleher became a father for the first time.
Jake O’Brien spoke to The 42 last week about how being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of 16 was life-changing but not defining. No Irish outfield player has played more minutes or games in England’s top flight that the Everton man this season, and Coleman’s teammate is also finding such purpose after the birth of his son last August.
On the other end of the scale, Robbie Brady is someone in this current squad who has experienced the warmth and glow that comes with tournament life, smothered with adulation after his header against Italy in Lille secured progress to the last 16 of Euro 2016.
He became gripped by anxiety in the weeks and months that followed, a stark example of how sports stars develop an armour growing up to protect themselves in the course of action but remain vulnerable during those most mundane of moments in life.
With that in mind, a thought for Evan Ferguson, a young man recovering from the second ankle operation of a career that still offers so much. His three goals during qualifying were vital for Ireland, and the 21-year-old’s absence will be felt, even if Troy Parrott has emerged as the nation’s darling following five goals in his last two games.
The brace against Portugal was outdone a few days later with a hat-trick that will go down in the lore of the Irish game.
Parrott while a teenager was lauded as the future saviour of Irish football. He once again carries the hopes of his country, but for several years in between he walked a more lonely path, seen by many as just another kid who couldn’t follow through on his promise.
But he kept going.
There was something in Parrott and many of his teammates that sustained them in difficult times. Call it faith or old-fashioned stubbornness, but they continued to do the small things, from one day to the next, that could eventually lead them to the night like we face now.
As Coleman will testify, each Irish player’s story began to be written long ago and continued in quiet hours – from the beautiful to bleak. All the triumphs and every struggle which helps them to meet this moment.
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2026 world cup playoff chief FAI Republic Of Ireland Seamus coleman Soccer