THE END FOR Chrissy McKaigue with Derry didn’t come after they lost to Kerry in the All-Ireland quarter-final on 30 June.
By then, he had two Ulster titles, a National League and an All-Star in the bag.
But before he had any of that, he knew the end was coming. The only question is how far he might go to meet it.
Let’s go back to the sixth round of the National League, 2022.
Derry had won their first four games before a draw in round five to Roscommon. They needed a result against Galway in Owenbeg to make sure of promotion.
Galway wiped them off the pitch, 4-11 to 0-12. That evening, he made a vow to himself that he would just simply see out the rest of the season. That he would be a good teammate and not drag anything down. But he felt in his heart that Derry just did not have what it took to win titles.
Time would prove him wrong, but there was also something else. His Achilles on both ankles were killing him.
“That infamous day when Galway hockeyed us in Owenbeg. We ran out on the pitch that day and I thought, ‘Jeez, I’m sore here,’” McKaigue recalls.
“But I thought it would go away. I’d run it off. And it never did.”
It had been at him for some time. The year before they played Glen in the Derry semi-final after beating Bellaghy in the quarter-final.
Nine weeks before the Bellaghy game and the week after, he only trained twice on grass.
He sought advice from specialists. Numerous specialists. They all told him the same thing. Just retire.
“To be honest with you, in the second Ulster-winning campaign, from the Ulster final on I should have called it quits then. Obviously with how things ended with Rory (Gallagher, former Derry manager), I felt duty-bound to hang in,” he says.
“Having seen a couple of specialists, they have said it’s chronic tendinopathy on right and left Achilles.
“It’s not even tightness. Just unbearable pain. I was getting injections, but you can’t actually get injection on the tendon so there is no real pain numbing, it was to flush out inflammation.
“It was making no real difference and I tried everything in my power but even Slaughtneil, I feel guilty about them because what I have been able to give them is nothing. I just was physically done.”
The recommendation came that he could get an operation to scrape his tendons. But he went against that. Wouldn’t you? It sounds positively medieval. Having been under the knife a few times, he didn’t want to do it again.
For training, he would tinker about in the gym. He could go swimming. Eagle-eyed fans spotted a trend that when he did warm ups on the pitch, he was always wearing trainers.
This is how retirement came for McKaigue; a sequence of events. Utter frustration with your body that is betraying you at the same time as you are producing some of your greatest football in perhaps the most challenging position on the pitch.
At a time when he was at his most successful, gobbling up the honours and medals and baubles. At a time when he couldn’t even get onto the pitch and became intimately acquainted with swimming goggles. At a time when David Clifford and Con O’Callaghan are bouncing around the training pitch like spring lambs.
Throw in the chaos around Rory Gallagher and his departure. The installation of Mickey Harte that looked like the greatest-ever masterstroke right up to the point it became a complete disaster.
Fulfilled?
It’s hard to say.
Chrissy McKaigue before a qualifier game against Tipperary in Breffni Park. Morgan Treacy / INPHO
Morgan Treacy / INPHO / INPHO
***
Declan Bogue: What kind of toll have injuries taken on your body now?
Chrissy McKaigue: I never had an injury in my life until I was 30. Not one. I would say it was just an accumulation of load that caught up with me after that.
It all started that time we played Armagh in the Ulster championship the year of Covid (2020) in Celtic Park.
I played that game with two meniscus tears in my knee. I had surgery the week after and Armagh played Donegal two weeks after that. If we had beaten Armagh the first day, I couldn’t have played against Donegal. I could barely walk.
And doing things like that across my career, especially after I was 30, didn’t help things.
It took me a long time to come back from knee surgery. When I came back after to training, I was having tough times. I hadn’t the same turn or anything. But I got back again until other things started coming up. Soft tissue injuries coming out of nowhere, taking longer to come back from.
It probably dawns on you that you are mortal.
DB: With a new manager coming in with Derry in Paddy Tally, some might say that was a factor.
CMcK: People have asked me how I am finding retirement. But I have never been more happy with a decision and more assured of my decision.
A lot of people I spoke to have said, ‘you will know the day’.
And I suppose it’s a very true word. I thought it might have been tricky, watching the first couple of games. But when you don’t get a feeling in your stomach that you wished you was out there, you know it was the right decision.
DB: You’ll get it when the Derry team are running out to play the preliminary round in Ulster against Donegal.
CMcK: I doubt it. I doubt it.
DB: 2024 was such a strange year for Derry. You obviously know Gavin Devlin well having been involved with him in coaching Ardboe in Tyrone. Was it a surprise to hear him talking recently on a podcast about how it was his idea to push everyone up against Donegal which ultimately led to your Ulster championship defeat?
CMcK: Knowing Gavin Devlin, he is a very selfless individual. And there’s a large part of that, where he is taking all of the blame.
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There’s a noble thing about Gavin Devlin. The way he did that interview, there is a charisma about him that anyone that knows him can tell.
There’s a nobility to it. You can call it ego, whatever it was. But that’s how much Gavin backed the players. How much he thought of the players.
There might have been a naivety to it, but the players are culpable too. They have to own it.
He wasn’t telling the players to leave 50 yards of space behind them either. There has to be a bit of ownership from all parties. It didn’t work out last year.
DB: Why?
CMcK: It was a more difficult sell than I ever imagined; Mickey Harte as Derry manager. It just did not fit with too many people.
Players are still privy to outside noise. As much as you say you can drown it out, it doesn’t help when it is relentless. And the noise around Mickey Harte last year was relentless.
It dimmed down a bit when we were winning games, but we weren’t even getting the credit in division one for winning it last year and going right through the year.
I just felt the day was coming. That ‘God forbid the day you were beat.’ Because there’s an entourage coming here that will say that Mickey Harte shouldn’t be the manager.
With Mickey Harte before Derry's national league final win over Dublin. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
I understand we fell below the expectations we had in the championship last year. But we still won the McKenna Cup. We still won division one in the league, and we still made the quarter-final of the All-Ireland championship.
People will say, ‘Aye, but you lost three games in the championship.’
But everyone knew the rules before we went into it that you only had to finish third in your group to get a knockout game. And the last time I checked, the teams to beat us last year were three out of the four best teams in Ireland; Galway, Donegal and Armagh.
That’s where a balance needs to come into the thing as well.
DB: Was it impossible for Harte to come in after his predecessor?
CMcK: We just found Mickey Harte to be a lovely man. So respectful of the players. So wise and the general licence he gave us.
Players absolutely adored Gavin Devlin. Adored him as a coach. And we would still pick up the phone to him this day, would meet him for coffee.
It wasn’t a year that brought home Sam Maguire to Derry. I understand that. But I don’t think it was the catastrophe of the year that many people are portraying.
DB: There were rumours that there was a severe falling out among the panel when you travelled to Portugal for a training camp after the league final win over Dublin, and it showed thereafter.
CMcK: Well, if the players had have fallen out, in that manner, there would be no recovering a situation like that. It’s like the Kieran McGeeney-Rian O’Neill rumours.
In Portugal, and time will tell, but if something did happen, the truth would be out. Because there are players that have left the panel now and nothing has ever been said.
I suppose the biggest thing that happened was that Donegal beat us in the championship. And we found it difficult to recover from that.
DB: Did you think your season was gone after that Donegal loss, or did you think you could recover?
CMcK: I thought we maybe could, but the Armagh game was damaging. And the manner of the defeat there. It was hugely damaging. The players had rallied together after that and said, ‘No matter what happens this year, let’s make sure we go and beat Westmeath.’
And after we beat Westmeath, we found ourselves in a last-12 game.
After we beat Mayo, we were right back believing again.
That’s the honest truth. Whatever about feeling vulnerable after the Donegal game, the Armagh game left us treading on eggshells.
Our confidence was shot. People didn’t realise the level Armagh was at but because it was the same manner of goals again, with the goalkeeper out, it just deflates.
Donegal, we were hugely disappointed. And then Galway beat us but the sending off skewed that. We were looking a massive response and thought the Armagh game would turn it around for us. But we were shell-shocked afterwards.
DB: I thought Mickey Harte might stick it out. But was it clear to management and players that it wasn’t the right fit?
CMcK: It just became a thing, where people felt there was nothing but negativity around this. And if that’s gonna take a new person at the helm to create a bit of positivity again, maybe that’s the best thing for Derry football.
Then you heard all the rumours about different managers being entertained for the post. And if you hear that, it never ends well.
I think it was the right decision for both parties to head their own directions. It was a mutual decision.
DB: Were the players keen on a return for Rory Gallagher?
CMcK: I suppose players only – and rightly so – players only judge Rory Gallagher on what he was as a football manager, a football coach.
And was there a possibility he was going to come back in? There were rumours. But nobody really knew how much substance the rumours had.
As time moved on, it became evident that he wasn’t an option, for various reasons that are well-documented.
(In May 2023, Gallagher stepped down as Derry manager in the wake of domestic abuse allegations made by his estranged wife, Nicola Gallagher. The Police Service of Northern Ireland investigated the allegations, and forwarded two files to Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service in 2022, but no charges were brought).
With former manager Rory Gallagher. Lorcan Doherty / INPHO
Lorcan Doherty / INPHO / INPHO
I can only speak on Rory as a coach and manager. And he’s hands-down the best I have ever had. And something tells me he will be the best I will ever have. He was that good.
His motivation, his tactical awareness. His ability to build a team, a team culture, his ability to organise things. His skills at video analysis are unparalleled.
DB: How so?
CMcK: He doesn’t do clips. He doesn’t say, ‘Go to clip 5 minutes 4 seconds.’ His ability is to say, ‘Right, we are going to watch the opposition.’
Ben McGuckin is the video man for Derry. ‘Throw it on Ben and we will watch ten minutes.’
And then he will dissect bits of it, he will get a flavour of how they attack, how they defend, what they do for their kickout, what they do for the opposition kickout, couple of their key players, bang, away you go.
He might go into a more detailed approach on different days when he might look at say, Fermanagh in the championship last year, then Fermanagh in the first league game, then in the middle of the league.
His ability lies in seeing things and breaking things down into the most simplistic terms, that requires an unbelievably high level of intellect. To keep things simple is an art.
(He’s the) best motivator I have ever had. His drills are the most simple drills but done at unbelievable intensity.
"To our supporters...We’ll have good days and we’ll have bad days, but I ask that you stick with this team because this is a team worth believing in."
He’s not one of these coaches that wants to set out a pitch like an airfield. His biggest strength and the one that very few coaches can mimic because they don’t have the personality, is that he brings an unbelievable intensity to training to every drill, every single night.
He will be like that in pre-match, in the dressing room, in the bus journey on the way down.
It’s bringing that intensity. I can only imagine Jim McGuinness has the same template.
DB: You seemed very close as a group and a management team.
CMcK: I never thought it would have been possible to develop the camaraderie and togetherness in a Derry team that he did. Because it was not prevalent in my Derry career.
I suppose when you spend that much time together as players, it was only natural to develop that bond. But he pre-empted that so many times. I would say when he was manager that there wasn’t a day when the two of us wouldn’t have spoken to each other on the phone.
I know that wasn’t the case with all the players, but I would have happened to be a bit freer than some of the players. He spoke to me just about every single day and sometimes the conversation would have been over an hour.
‘What do you think of this? What happened there before? Why did that not work?’
I done a PhD in Gaelic football, under Rory Gallagher. That’s the best summarisation I could do.
DB: When you say he built a culture, what does that mean exactly?
CMcK: Building a culture for me is a friendship within the Derry group. I would say when in my first ten years with Derry, there’s not one person I would have went away saying, ‘I am really, really friendly with that person.’
There’s now so many boys in that group that I am so friendly with, even though I am not playing any more.
He was the one that built it. But it is a time investment. He was the first person that taught me you have to spend that time together to foster that. Not grabbing your kitbag as soon as training ends and rushing out the door.
We would have gone to away games. The typical thing of Derry in the past if you had a national league game on a Sunday at 4pm, you would have been leaving at the crack of dawn on a Sunday to get more time at home.
Rory went the complete opposite. We were away at the crack of dawn on the Saturday. So you get to enjoy each other’s company. You are throwing darts, playing table tennis, just the craic was mighty and then you became so used to each other’s company that it gave you a sense of peace and ease before the game.
And that trust translates onto the pitch. You are settled in each other’s company.
I was so naïve to think that didn’t matter. But it matters massively. I bring that to school’s teams now where you try to be in each other’s company as much as possible. Because it makes for a more harmonious group.
DB: Do you speak to him now?
CMcK: Not as much, no.
That’s inevitable. We pre-empted that once our football relationship ended, we weren’t going to have much of a relationship outside of football. We are very much tunnel-visioned on our football.
But the same goes for Ciaran Meenagh, the same goes for Peter Hughes. It’s the exact same.
DB: A lot of people simply couldn’t imagine you retiring from county football, as your identity was so tied up in it. How do you manage to find your own self away from it so far?
CMcK: Probably well, and not well. It’s a vicious circle.
I keep on finding something that is sort of outside of sport but it is directly involved.
So my role now in St Pat’s Maghera, there are a lot of different parts outside of GAA coaching; we are doing a lot of organisation, a big development programme, building a brand new gym in the school. Heavily involved in communications with the clubs, board of governors, it’s an over-arching thing. But still very much involved in the GAA. It’s a GAA job.
Again, the biggest thing for me is not having the demands of intercounty, and I don’t even mean from a time investment, I mean from a mental investment. County football, and I missed two years in Australia, but it was 17 years straight of constantly in your head, thinking of games two or three weeks in advance and now I don’t have that.
That’s a welcome thing. A new thing.
DB: Recently, Tyrone’s Conor Meyler has admitted to ending personal relationships because it didn’t fit into his obsession with Gaelic games. Have you felt like that?
CMcK: There’s a realisation that I am not going to change that much, or want to change that much. Sport has given me so much, it makes me so happy.
But I realise that everybody doesn’t think the same way as me. I started realising that towards the latter part of my career in being involved in a leadership capacity of a team. You can’t be a tunnel-visioned individual. You have to have an over-reaching perspective where you have to learn to care for people and give little bits of guidance.
Because you don’t know how much it means to them. If you were at their stage of their career, it would have meant a lot to me. So, you become better at that.
I probably realised I am getting slightly better at it in that, when you come home from the hours doing involved in sport, you have to detach yourself away from that, and attach yourself to stuff in the real world, the normal world outside of sport. That’s the biggest adaptation.
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'The noise around Mickey Harte last year was relentless' - The Chrissy McKaigue interview
THE END FOR Chrissy McKaigue with Derry didn’t come after they lost to Kerry in the All-Ireland quarter-final on 30 June.
By then, he had two Ulster titles, a National League and an All-Star in the bag.
But before he had any of that, he knew the end was coming. The only question is how far he might go to meet it.
Let’s go back to the sixth round of the National League, 2022.
Derry had won their first four games before a draw in round five to Roscommon. They needed a result against Galway in Owenbeg to make sure of promotion.
Galway wiped them off the pitch, 4-11 to 0-12. That evening, he made a vow to himself that he would just simply see out the rest of the season. That he would be a good teammate and not drag anything down. But he felt in his heart that Derry just did not have what it took to win titles.
Time would prove him wrong, but there was also something else. His Achilles on both ankles were killing him.
“That infamous day when Galway hockeyed us in Owenbeg. We ran out on the pitch that day and I thought, ‘Jeez, I’m sore here,’” McKaigue recalls.
“But I thought it would go away. I’d run it off. And it never did.”
It had been at him for some time. The year before they played Glen in the Derry semi-final after beating Bellaghy in the quarter-final.
Nine weeks before the Bellaghy game and the week after, he only trained twice on grass.
He sought advice from specialists. Numerous specialists. They all told him the same thing. Just retire.
“To be honest with you, in the second Ulster-winning campaign, from the Ulster final on I should have called it quits then. Obviously with how things ended with Rory (Gallagher, former Derry manager), I felt duty-bound to hang in,” he says.
“Having seen a couple of specialists, they have said it’s chronic tendinopathy on right and left Achilles.
“It’s not even tightness. Just unbearable pain. I was getting injections, but you can’t actually get injection on the tendon so there is no real pain numbing, it was to flush out inflammation.
“It was making no real difference and I tried everything in my power but even Slaughtneil, I feel guilty about them because what I have been able to give them is nothing. I just was physically done.”
The recommendation came that he could get an operation to scrape his tendons. But he went against that. Wouldn’t you? It sounds positively medieval. Having been under the knife a few times, he didn’t want to do it again.
For training, he would tinker about in the gym. He could go swimming. Eagle-eyed fans spotted a trend that when he did warm ups on the pitch, he was always wearing trainers.
This is how retirement came for McKaigue; a sequence of events. Utter frustration with your body that is betraying you at the same time as you are producing some of your greatest football in perhaps the most challenging position on the pitch.
At a time when he was at his most successful, gobbling up the honours and medals and baubles. At a time when he couldn’t even get onto the pitch and became intimately acquainted with swimming goggles. At a time when David Clifford and Con O’Callaghan are bouncing around the training pitch like spring lambs.
Throw in the chaos around Rory Gallagher and his departure. The installation of Mickey Harte that looked like the greatest-ever masterstroke right up to the point it became a complete disaster.
Fulfilled?
It’s hard to say.
***
Declan Bogue: What kind of toll have injuries taken on your body now?
Chrissy McKaigue: I never had an injury in my life until I was 30. Not one. I would say it was just an accumulation of load that caught up with me after that.
It all started that time we played Armagh in the Ulster championship the year of Covid (2020) in Celtic Park.
I played that game with two meniscus tears in my knee. I had surgery the week after and Armagh played Donegal two weeks after that. If we had beaten Armagh the first day, I couldn’t have played against Donegal. I could barely walk.
And doing things like that across my career, especially after I was 30, didn’t help things.
It took me a long time to come back from knee surgery. When I came back after to training, I was having tough times. I hadn’t the same turn or anything. But I got back again until other things started coming up. Soft tissue injuries coming out of nowhere, taking longer to come back from.
It probably dawns on you that you are mortal.
DB: With a new manager coming in with Derry in Paddy Tally, some might say that was a factor.
CMcK: People have asked me how I am finding retirement. But I have never been more happy with a decision and more assured of my decision.
A lot of people I spoke to have said, ‘you will know the day’.
And I suppose it’s a very true word. I thought it might have been tricky, watching the first couple of games. But when you don’t get a feeling in your stomach that you wished you was out there, you know it was the right decision.
DB: You’ll get it when the Derry team are running out to play the preliminary round in Ulster against Donegal.
CMcK: I doubt it. I doubt it.
DB: 2024 was such a strange year for Derry. You obviously know Gavin Devlin well having been involved with him in coaching Ardboe in Tyrone. Was it a surprise to hear him talking recently on a podcast about how it was his idea to push everyone up against Donegal which ultimately led to your Ulster championship defeat?
CMcK: Knowing Gavin Devlin, he is a very selfless individual. And there’s a large part of that, where he is taking all of the blame.
There’s a noble thing about Gavin Devlin. The way he did that interview, there is a charisma about him that anyone that knows him can tell.
There’s a nobility to it. You can call it ego, whatever it was. But that’s how much Gavin backed the players. How much he thought of the players.
There might have been a naivety to it, but the players are culpable too. They have to own it.
He wasn’t telling the players to leave 50 yards of space behind them either. There has to be a bit of ownership from all parties. It didn’t work out last year.
DB: Why?
CMcK: It was a more difficult sell than I ever imagined; Mickey Harte as Derry manager. It just did not fit with too many people.
Players are still privy to outside noise. As much as you say you can drown it out, it doesn’t help when it is relentless. And the noise around Mickey Harte last year was relentless.
It dimmed down a bit when we were winning games, but we weren’t even getting the credit in division one for winning it last year and going right through the year.
I just felt the day was coming. That ‘God forbid the day you were beat.’ Because there’s an entourage coming here that will say that Mickey Harte shouldn’t be the manager.
I understand we fell below the expectations we had in the championship last year. But we still won the McKenna Cup. We still won division one in the league, and we still made the quarter-final of the All-Ireland championship.
People will say, ‘Aye, but you lost three games in the championship.’
But everyone knew the rules before we went into it that you only had to finish third in your group to get a knockout game. And the last time I checked, the teams to beat us last year were three out of the four best teams in Ireland; Galway, Donegal and Armagh.
That’s where a balance needs to come into the thing as well.
DB: Was it impossible for Harte to come in after his predecessor?
CMcK: We just found Mickey Harte to be a lovely man. So respectful of the players. So wise and the general licence he gave us.
Players absolutely adored Gavin Devlin. Adored him as a coach. And we would still pick up the phone to him this day, would meet him for coffee.
It wasn’t a year that brought home Sam Maguire to Derry. I understand that. But I don’t think it was the catastrophe of the year that many people are portraying.
DB: There were rumours that there was a severe falling out among the panel when you travelled to Portugal for a training camp after the league final win over Dublin, and it showed thereafter.
CMcK: Well, if the players had have fallen out, in that manner, there would be no recovering a situation like that. It’s like the Kieran McGeeney-Rian O’Neill rumours.
In Portugal, and time will tell, but if something did happen, the truth would be out. Because there are players that have left the panel now and nothing has ever been said.
I suppose the biggest thing that happened was that Donegal beat us in the championship. And we found it difficult to recover from that.
DB: Did you think your season was gone after that Donegal loss, or did you think you could recover?
CMcK: I thought we maybe could, but the Armagh game was damaging. And the manner of the defeat there. It was hugely damaging. The players had rallied together after that and said, ‘No matter what happens this year, let’s make sure we go and beat Westmeath.’
And after we beat Westmeath, we found ourselves in a last-12 game.
After we beat Mayo, we were right back believing again.
That’s the honest truth. Whatever about feeling vulnerable after the Donegal game, the Armagh game left us treading on eggshells.
Our confidence was shot. People didn’t realise the level Armagh was at but because it was the same manner of goals again, with the goalkeeper out, it just deflates.
Donegal, we were hugely disappointed. And then Galway beat us but the sending off skewed that. We were looking a massive response and thought the Armagh game would turn it around for us. But we were shell-shocked afterwards.
DB: I thought Mickey Harte might stick it out. But was it clear to management and players that it wasn’t the right fit?
CMcK: It just became a thing, where people felt there was nothing but negativity around this. And if that’s gonna take a new person at the helm to create a bit of positivity again, maybe that’s the best thing for Derry football.
Then you heard all the rumours about different managers being entertained for the post. And if you hear that, it never ends well.
I think it was the right decision for both parties to head their own directions. It was a mutual decision.
DB: Were the players keen on a return for Rory Gallagher?
CMcK: I suppose players only – and rightly so – players only judge Rory Gallagher on what he was as a football manager, a football coach.
And was there a possibility he was going to come back in? There were rumours. But nobody really knew how much substance the rumours had.
As time moved on, it became evident that he wasn’t an option, for various reasons that are well-documented.
(In May 2023, Gallagher stepped down as Derry manager in the wake of domestic abuse allegations made by his estranged wife, Nicola Gallagher. The Police Service of Northern Ireland investigated the allegations, and forwarded two files to Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service in 2022, but no charges were brought).
I can only speak on Rory as a coach and manager. And he’s hands-down the best I have ever had. And something tells me he will be the best I will ever have. He was that good.
His motivation, his tactical awareness. His ability to build a team, a team culture, his ability to organise things. His skills at video analysis are unparalleled.
DB: How so?
CMcK: He doesn’t do clips. He doesn’t say, ‘Go to clip 5 minutes 4 seconds.’ His ability is to say, ‘Right, we are going to watch the opposition.’
Ben McGuckin is the video man for Derry. ‘Throw it on Ben and we will watch ten minutes.’
And then he will dissect bits of it, he will get a flavour of how they attack, how they defend, what they do for their kickout, what they do for the opposition kickout, couple of their key players, bang, away you go.
He might go into a more detailed approach on different days when he might look at say, Fermanagh in the championship last year, then Fermanagh in the first league game, then in the middle of the league.
His ability lies in seeing things and breaking things down into the most simplistic terms, that requires an unbelievably high level of intellect. To keep things simple is an art.
(He’s the) best motivator I have ever had. His drills are the most simple drills but done at unbelievable intensity.
He’s not one of these coaches that wants to set out a pitch like an airfield. His biggest strength and the one that very few coaches can mimic because they don’t have the personality, is that he brings an unbelievable intensity to training to every drill, every single night.
He will be like that in pre-match, in the dressing room, in the bus journey on the way down.
It’s bringing that intensity. I can only imagine Jim McGuinness has the same template.
DB: You seemed very close as a group and a management team.
CMcK: I never thought it would have been possible to develop the camaraderie and togetherness in a Derry team that he did. Because it was not prevalent in my Derry career.
I suppose when you spend that much time together as players, it was only natural to develop that bond. But he pre-empted that so many times. I would say when he was manager that there wasn’t a day when the two of us wouldn’t have spoken to each other on the phone.
I know that wasn’t the case with all the players, but I would have happened to be a bit freer than some of the players. He spoke to me just about every single day and sometimes the conversation would have been over an hour.
‘What do you think of this? What happened there before? Why did that not work?’
I done a PhD in Gaelic football, under Rory Gallagher. That’s the best summarisation I could do.
DB: When you say he built a culture, what does that mean exactly?
CMcK: Building a culture for me is a friendship within the Derry group. I would say when in my first ten years with Derry, there’s not one person I would have went away saying, ‘I am really, really friendly with that person.’
There’s now so many boys in that group that I am so friendly with, even though I am not playing any more.
He was the one that built it. But it is a time investment. He was the first person that taught me you have to spend that time together to foster that. Not grabbing your kitbag as soon as training ends and rushing out the door.
We would have gone to away games. The typical thing of Derry in the past if you had a national league game on a Sunday at 4pm, you would have been leaving at the crack of dawn on a Sunday to get more time at home.
Rory went the complete opposite. We were away at the crack of dawn on the Saturday. So you get to enjoy each other’s company. You are throwing darts, playing table tennis, just the craic was mighty and then you became so used to each other’s company that it gave you a sense of peace and ease before the game.
And that trust translates onto the pitch. You are settled in each other’s company.
I was so naïve to think that didn’t matter. But it matters massively. I bring that to school’s teams now where you try to be in each other’s company as much as possible. Because it makes for a more harmonious group.
DB: Do you speak to him now?
CMcK: Not as much, no.
That’s inevitable. We pre-empted that once our football relationship ended, we weren’t going to have much of a relationship outside of football. We are very much tunnel-visioned on our football.
But the same goes for Ciaran Meenagh, the same goes for Peter Hughes. It’s the exact same.
DB: A lot of people simply couldn’t imagine you retiring from county football, as your identity was so tied up in it. How do you manage to find your own self away from it so far?
CMcK: Probably well, and not well. It’s a vicious circle.
I keep on finding something that is sort of outside of sport but it is directly involved.
So my role now in St Pat’s Maghera, there are a lot of different parts outside of GAA coaching; we are doing a lot of organisation, a big development programme, building a brand new gym in the school. Heavily involved in communications with the clubs, board of governors, it’s an over-arching thing. But still very much involved in the GAA. It’s a GAA job.
Again, the biggest thing for me is not having the demands of intercounty, and I don’t even mean from a time investment, I mean from a mental investment. County football, and I missed two years in Australia, but it was 17 years straight of constantly in your head, thinking of games two or three weeks in advance and now I don’t have that.
That’s a welcome thing. A new thing.
DB: Recently, Tyrone’s Conor Meyler has admitted to ending personal relationships because it didn’t fit into his obsession with Gaelic games. Have you felt like that?
CMcK: There’s a realisation that I am not going to change that much, or want to change that much. Sport has given me so much, it makes me so happy.
But I realise that everybody doesn’t think the same way as me. I started realising that towards the latter part of my career in being involved in a leadership capacity of a team. You can’t be a tunnel-visioned individual. You have to have an over-reaching perspective where you have to learn to care for people and give little bits of guidance.
Because you don’t know how much it means to them. If you were at their stage of their career, it would have meant a lot to me. So, you become better at that.
I probably realised I am getting slightly better at it in that, when you come home from the hours doing involved in sport, you have to detach yourself away from that, and attach yourself to stuff in the real world, the normal world outside of sport. That’s the biggest adaptation.
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big interview chrissy Chrissy McKaigue GAA Gaelic Football