DANIEL CLEARY STOPS to compose himself and gently wipes the tears forming in his eyes.
He takes a deep breath, followed by a slow gulp of his throat to allow for some of that hurt and worry and stress that has been stored up to clear.
Then comes a smile.
It grows bigger and more powerful as he talks about his five-year-old son, Crú.
“He’s the most loving boy you’ll ever meet,” Cleary says.
“He’s so loving. So loving. He loves hugs, he loves kisses, he loves attention. He loves messing, he loves playing, he loves being social. He loves fighting. He’s a proper loving kid.”
Before Crú was able to respond to his name or tell his Mammy, Kerri, that he also loves her, he would instead repeat the names of dinosaurs.
Brontosaurus
Giganotosaurus
Dilophosaurus
Tyrannosaurus
“He can laugh and joke. If he does something bold, he will laugh at you now and say ‘I’m just joking’. He’s a messer,” Cleary says.
“His little personality is coming out. He is beginning to express himself whereas before he would be getting frustrated.”
Crú loves watching Toy Story and his Mondays at equine therapy. He’s started swimming lessons and over the last three weeks has got involved with hurling on Saturday mornings.
Daniel Cleary with the league trophy. Dan Clohessy / INPHO
Dan Clohessy / INPHO / INPHO
“To see him like this now, there were times where I didn’t think he was going to be like that. But as he gets older, you can see his personality coming out. We’re just loving the person he is.
“I would never change him. I would never say that I would love to get rid of autism from him because that’s who he is. That’s the little boy he is. That’s the boy I love.”
…
The charter plane bringing the Shamrock Rovers players home from Prague after their opening Uefa Conference League game against Sparta last month was due to take off at around 1.30am.
As well as some fans, a handful of journalists were also on board.
The airport was pretty much deserted except for those travelling back to Dublin. Duty Free remained open as some of the Rovers players loaded up on jellies, chewing gum, and bottles of water.
The 42 stood with a colleague and joked about being up for the school run within a few hours of landing home.
For disclosure, my own son is seven years old and autistic.
Cleary was behind us in the queue and heard part of our discussion relating to services in the Autism Spectrum Disorder unit of the school which my son attends.
Cleary explained how Crú had also managed to get a place in an ASD unit in a local school in Drimnagh.
We briefly spoke about some shared experiences before going our separate ways at the gate.
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The openness and vulnerability within the conversation lingered.
With Rovers in the FAI Cup final against Cork City tomorrow and the league title eventually secured, The 42 reached out to Cleary to see if he would like to chat in a bit more depth.
An initial text was met with a positive response. He spoke to his partner, Kerri, and was also encouraged by Rovers boss Stephen Bradley to detail the family’s journey to this point.
Bradley feels Cleary is one of his leaders in the dressing room, describing the powerful defender as someone who commands respect when he speaks and as a future manager in his own right.
“You can go a lot within yourself and not talk, I would just bottle things up,” Cleary says.
“The main reason I’m doing this is hopefully it can help a parent, a family, a couple, anyone that is going through something similar, to know you are not on your own because there are times it feels like you are.”
Cleary says that from a place of complete understanding of how fortunate they are to have both sets of grandparents living on the same road in Drimnagh.
Cleary (right) in action for Ireland U15s against Belgium. Ryan Byrne / INPHO
Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
But still, there can be moments and days and experiences that leave you feeling isolated.
“I watched Paul Scholes speak about his own son the other day and the challenges he has faced. It was a tough, tough watch. You can see the pain in his face.
“I have to be honest and say if I didn’t have Kerri, I don’t know what I’d do. She has been the one dealing with stuff like emailing TDs, fighting for services, trying to get on the lists, trying to get speech and language, occupational therapy. She has rang people, emailed, she can do everything.
“There are times when you are in it and you think, ‘What is next here?’ There can be dark times, so that is really why I wanted to do this, to hopefully help anyone out there.”
…
Cleary reckons he was around 11 when he went on his first trial with an English club. He can’t remember where it was but does know that before he joined Liverpool at the age of 15, he had already been to the likes of Manchester City, Everton, Stoke City, Leicester City and Nottingham Forest.
No doubt a few more that he has forgotten along the way. A very typical story for the best Irish youngsters in a pre-Brexit time.
At the end of his scholarship year with Liverpool – Steve Cooper was his first coach – he was told he could leave if he wished. Wolverhampton Wanderers wanted to sign him. Cleary still had two years of a professional deal remaining and chose to fight it out.
“I had that belief in myself to stick at it.”
Daniel Cleary during his Liverpool days. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
He then started playing regularly for the U18s and was a regular in the reserves. By 19, Brendan Rodgers was first-team manager when he was brought on a pre-season tour of the Far East in 2015.
In September of the same year, he was included in the travelling squad for a Europa League match away to Bordeaux.
His belief that he could forge a career in the game was strengthening. Rodgers was replaced soon after by Jurgen Klopp and ahead of an FA Cup tie with Exeter City, an injury-hit squad looked like it would need to be bolstered by the academy.
In the build up to that game, Cleary suffered a severe leg injury in training when tackled by a team-mate, Tom Brewitt. A legal case taken by Cleary against both Brewitt and Liverpool is ongoing, so he is unable to comment. Both Brewitt and Liverpool have denied liability.
…
Now 29, Cleary has needed to dig deep into his resolve to rebuild a professional career in the League of Ireland.
Stephen Kenny signed him for Dundalk just a couple of days before the 2018 season. He won two titles at Oriel Park and was part of the side that qualified for the group stages of the Europa League in 2020, not to mention beating Rovers in the FAI Cup final.
Crú was born in May of that year, and life – on and off the pitch – was beginning to take a different course. Cleary’s performances earned him a move back to the UK when St Johnstone signed him on a two-and-a-half-year deal.
He arrived in January 2022 and helped the club avoid relegation. He spent those first six months away from Kerri and Crú, and it was during this time that she began to have concerns about milestones her son missed and certain behaviour.
“He was going into a stage where he was banging his head and stuff. It wasn’t like out of anger, more so just as a habit,” Cleary recalls.
“He wasn’t talking. I’m not really seeing it because I’m only getting back for a day here and there. I’m just kind of trying to stay positive at this point, just kind of brushing it aside and thinking he’s just a bit behind. But obviously Kerri was living it every day.
“Like, you would call his name a few times and he wouldn’t turn around, but then he might turn around the first time you called the next time. And because you’re always trying to find something to prove autism actually is not there, you’d do anything to mask it at the start.
“But as it went on, we couldn’t really ignore it any more and we weren’t going to either. We were ready to deal with it.
Then came a different, more exhausting battle. Despite having two years left on his contract, St Johnstone agreed to allow him return home to Rovers on a free transfer. It’s a gesture he remains grateful for.
“I couldn’t stay, and I couldn’t expect them to come over with no support around us. I couldn’t be that selfish and it wasn’t the right thing to do,” he says.
The public health service in this country would prove to be the first obstacle to overcome as he and Kerri – who grew up on the same road – started on a different journey together.
The first step is to undergo an Assessment of Need, the process set out under the Disability Act 2005 to identify a child’s health and educational requirements.
By law, a child must be assessed within six months of a family making contact. Earlier this year, Taoiseach Micheál Martin admitted in the Dáil that the HSE was not in a position ‘to fulfil the law’.
As of September, the HSE confirmed that 15,000 children are waiting for an Assessment of Need. They also project that the number will pass the 25,000 mark by the start of 2026.
To try to reduce waiting lists, it was confirmed that the HSE is “currently seeking private service providers to support autism diagnostic assessments for children and adolescents”, as reported by The Journal, among others.
Navigating such a dysfunctional system brings a mixture of fear, helplessness, desperation, and anger when all you want is a sense of hope and support.
There is a strange mixture of relief and guilt at taking things in their own hands to use the private medical sector to get Crú’s autism assessment and vital early intervention services like speech and language and occupational therapy.
From the age of two-and-a-half, they began the process privately. A year or so after he was diagnosed, they were contacted by the HSE to begin those public protocols for the Assessment of Need.
The nature of the system means, in effect, parents must play dumb to an assessment that was already done privately before. That is because in order to get the public services and entitlements, and to become part of their local Children’s Disability Network Team, you require a public assessment.
“We want to give Crú the best chance in life. No different to any parent, and we were lucky enough to go privately, but I know a lot of people aren’t. Financially, it’s difficult for some people as well.
“I’m going to these places, I’m looking around and I’m like, these people are breaking their backs to come here.”
“I’ll do anything I can for him, but when I actually look at people that probably wouldn’t earn as a family, as much as us, you know, it’s horrible, it’s horrible to see.”
At the same time as the HSE provided their assessment, there was also a startling admission.
Crú with the league trophy.
“Obviously we knew it was coming so we were like, ‘Right, OK, what’s the plan for us now? What can we do?’ And we were told there was not even a waiting list for public services, they hadn’t got the staff to provide anything for us.
“And then in the next sentence, we’re told that if there is no language by five, that is normally a tough road back from there.
“I got a bit rude asking how could they tell us that, how could they just say that. How can they do that to kids that need the services. Like, it’s just abandoning a whole group of kids and individuals.
“Every specialist will tell you it’s so important to have early intervention, yet there are kids that aren’t getting seen until they’re eight. That’s too late. That’s a lot of their life now taken away from them because the government can’t provide services for them. I know it’s hard to say, but that’s the truth.
“You hang on to anything to keep a bit of positivity.”
For all of that positivity and trying to do as much as you can correctly, being lucky, in the right place at the right time, sometimes feels like the most important thing of all.
Finding a school place that is not just appropriate for your child’s needs but is also close to home is like having the winning lottery ticket.
Around 30,500 students were enrolled in special classes and special schools this September, an increase of more than 12,000 students (67%) since 2020, according to the Department of Education.
Kerri had Crú on waiting lists and was fortunate to get a call a year ago that a place in the preschool ASD unit attached to the local school had opened up.
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“We both knew he wasn’t ready for it but we couldn’t say no and the school needed an answer. We couldn’t risk not taking it and then missing out because there could be nothing for him a year later.
“Thankfully, it was the best thing we ever did. He’s been going in for the last year and his class is beside the girls’ school, he’s loved that and now he’s actually asking us can he play with the big girls at yard time.
What a night in Inchicore winning the league🏆🥳 Special group to work with 💪 My boy is a Hoop 😍💚🕺 pic.twitter.com/zjEO1ruWcx
“Even that, having a place in school, we just feel so lucky for him because there are families who have kids at six or seven and how are they meant to go and work if they can’t get their kids into school?
“Every child should be able to get a school place no matter the disability. Imagine if you didn’t have school and how different life would be?
“I can drop him off and know he is in a safe place with the right care and attention. If he didn’t have that, I don’t know if he would be the boy he is now. My heart goes out to every family that is still fighting for that because it’s still happening in this country now.”
…
There are a couple of photographs in Cleary’s bedroom that he has seen first thing in the morning and last thing at night since late 2023.
Crú is dancing on the pitch at Richmond Park celebrating with his father after Shamrock Rovers won the League of Ireland Premier Division.
He is holding him in his arms and smiling. At the time, that outward happiness belied a deeper fear that has only begun to subside thanks to the strides Crú has made.
“He can tell you what he wants. That just makes such a difference. That was probably my number one worry, what always kind of stuck with me was, ‘Is he going to ever be able to tell me what he wants? What’s hurting him or what’s wrong?’
“It can take a toll on you as a person, mentally. It can definitely drain you because it’s just constantly on your mind and obviously that will affect your relationship with each other, your relationship with your family.
“It’s opened my eyes to the world completely differently. The way I speak, the way I think and my thoughts of further on in life as well. It’s completely changed. Being more helpful to people when I can, helping others when I can, and obviously living through my experience, doing something like this hopefully can help someone else for them to say, ‘Right, you know what, I’m actually not alone here’, because you can feel alone at times.”
Crú will be one of the at least 30,000 at Aviva Stadium tomorrow. He was also at Tallaght Stadium to watch his dad lift the Premier Division trophy for the fifth time in his career.
Those photographs in the bedroom at home acted as motivation all season because Cleary envisaged holding Crú in arms on the pitch along with the trophy.
Sitting in the stand with his mam, fireworks that were let off took him by surprise.
“He got really upset. It would have been OK if he knew it was going to happen and we could tell him what was happening beforehand, but he started screaming ‘I want to go home, I want to go home’. This is while the match was going on. So the fireworks stopped for a bit, the match was finished.
“I went to get him,” Cleary says. “To comfort him and bring him down onto the pitch with me. And he wouldn’t come near me. He was very upset. Kerri took him inside to help him settle. I was looking at the rest of the people with their kids on the pitch . . .”
“He was down by the tunnel looking out on the pitch but he didn’t want to go near it so we waited and just went inside the dressing room instead and he had the craic in there instead.”
The next day Cleary posted that photo with Crú and had the caption: ‘Moments like this.’
It was the kind that are captured following so many unseen moments of struggle and patience that can leave the most lasting of impacts.
“But honestly, when you see the progress he has made, the only thing we can ask is to just keep giving him the tools to help him keep growing and understand the world, to learn and be happy.
“We still got to enjoy that moment with the trophy, just in a different type of way.”
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Shamrock Rovers defender Dan Cleary on fight for his autistic son - 'That's the boy I love'
DANIEL CLEARY STOPS to compose himself and gently wipes the tears forming in his eyes.
He takes a deep breath, followed by a slow gulp of his throat to allow for some of that hurt and worry and stress that has been stored up to clear.
Then comes a smile.
It grows bigger and more powerful as he talks about his five-year-old son, Crú.
“He’s the most loving boy you’ll ever meet,” Cleary says.
“He’s so loving. So loving. He loves hugs, he loves kisses, he loves attention. He loves messing, he loves playing, he loves being social. He loves fighting. He’s a proper loving kid.”
Before Crú was able to respond to his name or tell his Mammy, Kerri, that he also loves her, he would instead repeat the names of dinosaurs.
Brontosaurus
Giganotosaurus
Dilophosaurus
Tyrannosaurus
“He can laugh and joke. If he does something bold, he will laugh at you now and say ‘I’m just joking’. He’s a messer,” Cleary says.
“His little personality is coming out. He is beginning to express himself whereas before he would be getting frustrated.”
Crú loves watching Toy Story and his Mondays at equine therapy. He’s started swimming lessons and over the last three weeks has got involved with hurling on Saturday mornings.
“To see him like this now, there were times where I didn’t think he was going to be like that. But as he gets older, you can see his personality coming out. We’re just loving the person he is.
“I would never change him. I would never say that I would love to get rid of autism from him because that’s who he is. That’s the little boy he is. That’s the boy I love.”
…
The charter plane bringing the Shamrock Rovers players home from Prague after their opening Uefa Conference League game against Sparta last month was due to take off at around 1.30am.
As well as some fans, a handful of journalists were also on board.
The airport was pretty much deserted except for those travelling back to Dublin. Duty Free remained open as some of the Rovers players loaded up on jellies, chewing gum, and bottles of water.
The 42 stood with a colleague and joked about being up for the school run within a few hours of landing home.
For disclosure, my own son is seven years old and autistic.
Cleary was behind us in the queue and heard part of our discussion relating to services in the Autism Spectrum Disorder unit of the school which my son attends.
Cleary explained how Crú had also managed to get a place in an ASD unit in a local school in Drimnagh.
We briefly spoke about some shared experiences before going our separate ways at the gate.
The openness and vulnerability within the conversation lingered.
With Rovers in the FAI Cup final against Cork City tomorrow and the league title eventually secured, The 42 reached out to Cleary to see if he would like to chat in a bit more depth.
An initial text was met with a positive response. He spoke to his partner, Kerri, and was also encouraged by Rovers boss Stephen Bradley to detail the family’s journey to this point.
Bradley feels Cleary is one of his leaders in the dressing room, describing the powerful defender as someone who commands respect when he speaks and as a future manager in his own right.
“You can go a lot within yourself and not talk, I would just bottle things up,” Cleary says.
“The main reason I’m doing this is hopefully it can help a parent, a family, a couple, anyone that is going through something similar, to know you are not on your own because there are times it feels like you are.”
Cleary says that from a place of complete understanding of how fortunate they are to have both sets of grandparents living on the same road in Drimnagh.
But still, there can be moments and days and experiences that leave you feeling isolated.
“I watched Paul Scholes speak about his own son the other day and the challenges he has faced. It was a tough, tough watch. You can see the pain in his face.
“I have to be honest and say if I didn’t have Kerri, I don’t know what I’d do. She has been the one dealing with stuff like emailing TDs, fighting for services, trying to get on the lists, trying to get speech and language, occupational therapy. She has rang people, emailed, she can do everything.
“There are times when you are in it and you think, ‘What is next here?’ There can be dark times, so that is really why I wanted to do this, to hopefully help anyone out there.”
…
Cleary reckons he was around 11 when he went on his first trial with an English club. He can’t remember where it was but does know that before he joined Liverpool at the age of 15, he had already been to the likes of Manchester City, Everton, Stoke City, Leicester City and Nottingham Forest.
No doubt a few more that he has forgotten along the way. A very typical story for the best Irish youngsters in a pre-Brexit time.
At the end of his scholarship year with Liverpool – Steve Cooper was his first coach – he was told he could leave if he wished. Wolverhampton Wanderers wanted to sign him. Cleary still had two years of a professional deal remaining and chose to fight it out.
“I had that belief in myself to stick at it.”
He then started playing regularly for the U18s and was a regular in the reserves. By 19, Brendan Rodgers was first-team manager when he was brought on a pre-season tour of the Far East in 2015.
In September of the same year, he was included in the travelling squad for a Europa League match away to Bordeaux.
His belief that he could forge a career in the game was strengthening. Rodgers was replaced soon after by Jurgen Klopp and ahead of an FA Cup tie with Exeter City, an injury-hit squad looked like it would need to be bolstered by the academy.
In the build up to that game, Cleary suffered a severe leg injury in training when tackled by a team-mate, Tom Brewitt. A legal case taken by Cleary against both Brewitt and Liverpool is ongoing, so he is unable to comment. Both Brewitt and Liverpool have denied liability.
…
Now 29, Cleary has needed to dig deep into his resolve to rebuild a professional career in the League of Ireland.
Stephen Kenny signed him for Dundalk just a couple of days before the 2018 season. He won two titles at Oriel Park and was part of the side that qualified for the group stages of the Europa League in 2020, not to mention beating Rovers in the FAI Cup final.
Crú was born in May of that year, and life – on and off the pitch – was beginning to take a different course. Cleary’s performances earned him a move back to the UK when St Johnstone signed him on a two-and-a-half-year deal.
He arrived in January 2022 and helped the club avoid relegation. He spent those first six months away from Kerri and Crú, and it was during this time that she began to have concerns about milestones her son missed and certain behaviour.
“He was going into a stage where he was banging his head and stuff. It wasn’t like out of anger, more so just as a habit,” Cleary recalls.
“He wasn’t talking. I’m not really seeing it because I’m only getting back for a day here and there. I’m just kind of trying to stay positive at this point, just kind of brushing it aside and thinking he’s just a bit behind. But obviously Kerri was living it every day.
“Like, you would call his name a few times and he wouldn’t turn around, but then he might turn around the first time you called the next time. And because you’re always trying to find something to prove autism actually is not there, you’d do anything to mask it at the start.
“But as it went on, we couldn’t really ignore it any more and we weren’t going to either. We were ready to deal with it.
Then came a different, more exhausting battle. Despite having two years left on his contract, St Johnstone agreed to allow him return home to Rovers on a free transfer. It’s a gesture he remains grateful for.
“I couldn’t stay, and I couldn’t expect them to come over with no support around us. I couldn’t be that selfish and it wasn’t the right thing to do,” he says.
The public health service in this country would prove to be the first obstacle to overcome as he and Kerri – who grew up on the same road – started on a different journey together.
The first step is to undergo an Assessment of Need, the process set out under the Disability Act 2005 to identify a child’s health and educational requirements.
By law, a child must be assessed within six months of a family making contact. Earlier this year, Taoiseach Micheál Martin admitted in the Dáil that the HSE was not in a position ‘to fulfil the law’.
As of September, the HSE confirmed that 15,000 children are waiting for an Assessment of Need. They also project that the number will pass the 25,000 mark by the start of 2026.
To try to reduce waiting lists, it was confirmed that the HSE is “currently seeking private service providers to support autism diagnostic assessments for children and adolescents”, as reported by The Journal, among others.
Navigating such a dysfunctional system brings a mixture of fear, helplessness, desperation, and anger when all you want is a sense of hope and support.
There is a strange mixture of relief and guilt at taking things in their own hands to use the private medical sector to get Crú’s autism assessment and vital early intervention services like speech and language and occupational therapy.
From the age of two-and-a-half, they began the process privately. A year or so after he was diagnosed, they were contacted by the HSE to begin those public protocols for the Assessment of Need.
The nature of the system means, in effect, parents must play dumb to an assessment that was already done privately before. That is because in order to get the public services and entitlements, and to become part of their local Children’s Disability Network Team, you require a public assessment.
“We want to give Crú the best chance in life. No different to any parent, and we were lucky enough to go privately, but I know a lot of people aren’t. Financially, it’s difficult for some people as well.
“I’m going to these places, I’m looking around and I’m like, these people are breaking their backs to come here.”
“I’ll do anything I can for him, but when I actually look at people that probably wouldn’t earn as a family, as much as us, you know, it’s horrible, it’s horrible to see.”
At the same time as the HSE provided their assessment, there was also a startling admission.
“Obviously we knew it was coming so we were like, ‘Right, OK, what’s the plan for us now? What can we do?’ And we were told there was not even a waiting list for public services, they hadn’t got the staff to provide anything for us.
“And then in the next sentence, we’re told that if there is no language by five, that is normally a tough road back from there.
“I got a bit rude asking how could they tell us that, how could they just say that. How can they do that to kids that need the services. Like, it’s just abandoning a whole group of kids and individuals.
“Every specialist will tell you it’s so important to have early intervention, yet there are kids that aren’t getting seen until they’re eight. That’s too late. That’s a lot of their life now taken away from them because the government can’t provide services for them. I know it’s hard to say, but that’s the truth.
“You hang on to anything to keep a bit of positivity.”
For all of that positivity and trying to do as much as you can correctly, being lucky, in the right place at the right time, sometimes feels like the most important thing of all.
Finding a school place that is not just appropriate for your child’s needs but is also close to home is like having the winning lottery ticket.
Around 30,500 students were enrolled in special classes and special schools this September, an increase of more than 12,000 students (67%) since 2020, according to the Department of Education.
Kerri had Crú on waiting lists and was fortunate to get a call a year ago that a place in the preschool ASD unit attached to the local school had opened up.
“We both knew he wasn’t ready for it but we couldn’t say no and the school needed an answer. We couldn’t risk not taking it and then missing out because there could be nothing for him a year later.
“Thankfully, it was the best thing we ever did. He’s been going in for the last year and his class is beside the girls’ school, he’s loved that and now he’s actually asking us can he play with the big girls at yard time.
“Even that, having a place in school, we just feel so lucky for him because there are families who have kids at six or seven and how are they meant to go and work if they can’t get their kids into school?
“Every child should be able to get a school place no matter the disability. Imagine if you didn’t have school and how different life would be?
“I can drop him off and know he is in a safe place with the right care and attention. If he didn’t have that, I don’t know if he would be the boy he is now. My heart goes out to every family that is still fighting for that because it’s still happening in this country now.”
…
There are a couple of photographs in Cleary’s bedroom that he has seen first thing in the morning and last thing at night since late 2023.
Crú is dancing on the pitch at Richmond Park celebrating with his father after Shamrock Rovers won the League of Ireland Premier Division.
He is holding him in his arms and smiling. At the time, that outward happiness belied a deeper fear that has only begun to subside thanks to the strides Crú has made.
“He can tell you what he wants. That just makes such a difference. That was probably my number one worry, what always kind of stuck with me was, ‘Is he going to ever be able to tell me what he wants? What’s hurting him or what’s wrong?’
“It can take a toll on you as a person, mentally. It can definitely drain you because it’s just constantly on your mind and obviously that will affect your relationship with each other, your relationship with your family.
“It’s opened my eyes to the world completely differently. The way I speak, the way I think and my thoughts of further on in life as well. It’s completely changed. Being more helpful to people when I can, helping others when I can, and obviously living through my experience, doing something like this hopefully can help someone else for them to say, ‘Right, you know what, I’m actually not alone here’, because you can feel alone at times.”
Crú will be one of the at least 30,000 at Aviva Stadium tomorrow. He was also at Tallaght Stadium to watch his dad lift the Premier Division trophy for the fifth time in his career.
Those photographs in the bedroom at home acted as motivation all season because Cleary envisaged holding Crú in arms on the pitch along with the trophy.
Sitting in the stand with his mam, fireworks that were let off took him by surprise.
“He got really upset. It would have been OK if he knew it was going to happen and we could tell him what was happening beforehand, but he started screaming ‘I want to go home, I want to go home’. This is while the match was going on. So the fireworks stopped for a bit, the match was finished.
“I went to get him,” Cleary says. “To comfort him and bring him down onto the pitch with me. And he wouldn’t come near me. He was very upset. Kerri took him inside to help him settle. I was looking at the rest of the people with their kids on the pitch . . .”
Cleary takes a moment to compose himself.
“He was down by the tunnel looking out on the pitch but he didn’t want to go near it so we waited and just went inside the dressing room instead and he had the craic in there instead.”
The next day Cleary posted that photo with Crú and had the caption: ‘Moments like this.’
It was the kind that are captured following so many unseen moments of struggle and patience that can leave the most lasting of impacts.
“But honestly, when you see the progress he has made, the only thing we can ask is to just keep giving him the tools to help him keep growing and understand the world, to learn and be happy.
“We still got to enjoy that moment with the trophy, just in a different type of way.”
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