‘He’s big,
‘He’s red,
‘His feet hang out the bed…
‘Conor Glass…Conor Glass…’
- Derry supporters’ anthem.
******
IT’S A FULL-BLOWN cult hero thing by now. When the Derry support fall for midfielders, they fall hard.
There are a succession of Superman figures dating back to Jim McKeever from the 1940s and ’50s, through Tom McGuinness in the ’70s, onto Brian McGilligan and Anthony Tohill of the 1993 All-Ireland winning side.
In fallow times, they always felt they were in a game with Patsy Bradley in the skies.
Now, it’s Conor Glass. In a very 21st century, online way – and in person. In Derry, a local business called ‘FerryClever’ have Glass’ image on Father’s Day cards with the Derry-centric message, ‘Have a pure Glass Father’s Day.’ They have extended the range now to birthday cards, T-shirts and mugs.
He’s owning the whole shock of ginger hair thing. Children are inspired by him. He’s going around the place smiling at everyone, making time for all sorts of requests, radiating a healthy positivity and showing that his involvement with elite inter-county Gaelic football is something he actually loves and enjoys.
And he wears it lightly, you suspect, because he’s been a professional sportsman. He lived that pressured environment in Melbourne where ‘footie’ is king.
The ideal person then, to take part in the two-day promotion extravaganza for the All-Ireland quarter-finals.
To some extent, it brought him back to his days in the AFL with Hawthorn.
“Gaelic players are amateurs and it is out of love of the game that we play. Whereas in the AFL, it is your job, so people are more critical,” he says.
“I think in the AFL, I’m not completely certain on this, but there was some statistic that had it there were two journalists for every player. There are a lot of journalists looking for access, and I don’t know the ins and outs of journalism and that sort of thing.
“They probably are more critical. But at the end of the day, it was our job.”
His decision to return home wasn’t entirely his own. Push hard enough and there’s still a part of him misses Aussie Rules.
“I watch it religiously. Every week. With my new job, the action is on in the morning so I can’t necessarily follow the games live as I am in work. But I stay in touch with the AFL App and see who is going well,” he says.
“I follow all the Irish boys and the friends I made out there and of course I am in touch with the Hawthorn boys.
“There are a few on the Derry squad who enjoy it as well, so we talk about it within our set-up; who’s going well, who’s not, that sort of thing.”
When he stepped away, he couldn’t have been more impressed with Hawthorn. They sold the dream to him and his family as being ‘the family club’ and they lived up to that with the emphasis put on the support and company for Glass and his education.
He made 21 appearances and there was plenty to be proud of. He looks at Dingle’s Mark O’Connor breaking the 100-appearance mark for Geelong in awe.
“Especially for an Irish player!”
“Less than a handful have made 100 games in the AFL. You’re talking about Jim Stynes, Zach Tuohy, that kind of company.
“That says it all. There’s not that many players who made it and there’s a lot of players who went out and have not reached that 100 mark so it shows what kind of player and what kind of character he is.
“He is also in their leadership group, after four or five years on their list, which is unbelievable from an Irish point of view. Mark did not have that background at all, but has the team and the club behind him to be in a leadership group. It speaks volumes about the fella.”
The Covid pandemic forced his hand to return. He wasn’t going to remain in Melbourne, but he would bring a lot of Melbourne back with him to Maghera.
Last October, he opened the doors of Café 3121, named after the postcode he lived in and inspired by the Melbourne Café culture.
A week later, he won Glen’s second Derry Championship. Five days on from that and he was in the Convention Centre picking up his first All-Star.
A hectic time, and it’s seldom been a harder time to run such a business in medium sized towns around Ulster. Business subsidies are a pipe dream. Grants are as common as unicorns. Rates are ridiculous. Obstacles aren’t so much in the road, as blindly pursue business owners.
And, well, a place like Maghera wasn’t built on smashed avocado and desiccated coconut.
“It probably wasn’t good timing with the rates rising and everything going on. And Maghera isn’t a massive town. We don’t get a lot of footfall going past. No market or anything like that,” Glass says.
“It was one of the questions people were asking me before we were opening, people asked, ‘Do you think this will work?’
“I don’t know what the success rate of cafés were in Maghera before we opened but I suspect it wouldn’t have been great. Other ones would have been openly questioning me, thinking I was stupid to be opening it.
“But I knew what I wanted to do. If the product is good and people are nice, people are going to travel regardless.
“We have emulated that and it has been amazing so far. Hopefully, long may it continue.”
You suspect it might. The pandemic lockdowns gave time an elastic quality as it stretched out in front of us, before snapping into place and accelerating everything.
Around rural Ulster, pubs barely open now midweek. Finding staff is a constant struggle to cater for weekend demand. Gyms are opening up at a rate never before seen. People’s habits are evolving. Glass was smart enough to see it.
“In Melbourne, cafés are so much a part of their way of life. That’s their go-to,” he says.
“In the mornings, every café is packed. It felt to me that nobody worked as the cafés were bunged during working hours. And there was a lot of people going into cafés and doing their work.
“A lot of people do their work from home now, so it gives them that flexibility.”
He continues: “People are no longer going to pubs. They are going for a coffee to catch up.
“Thankfully, I feel I was ahead of the curve. I felt it was going that way anyway, but the pandemic helped. In my own experience, a lot of trends that you see starting in Australia eventually wash up here. It maybe takes about two or three years, but you see it with fashion trends, fitness trends and cafés are just another part of it.
Coffee has become a national obsession, so we ask the obvious question: What is the barista’s brew?
“I chop and change. That’s the benefit of being the barista; you try different things.
“We sell a coffee called ‘The Magic’. So it’s like a flat white in size, but you serve two ristretto shots in a five-ounce cup. It’s quite a strong coffee but a lot of the coffee lovers do enjoy it.”
Running a café in the town means he cannot, even if he wanted to, escape the daily morsels of chat, scandal and gossip that lubricates the everyday interactions of rural Ireland.
In late January, Maghera and the Glen club were at the heart of the national conversation. They and Glass reached an All-Ireland club final. Lost it. Then it looked like a replay could be granted after Kilmacud Crokes were found to have broken the rules in the closing stages.
In those dark days, Café 3121 became an unofficial speakeasy, customers glancing over either shoulder in case a Marty Morrissey might be on the next table, nursing a latte on his latest stakeout before grabbing a few vox-pops.
Since Glass came back, he’s won everything apart from All-Ireland honours. This sting remains.
“I wouldn’t say I think about it every day. Or even every week now,” he says.
“There are certain things that trigger it. You heard the commentators saying during the game against Armagh that Shane Walsh was an All-Ireland winner with Kilmacud and that took me back. Or else external things with Glen.
“The hurt is still there, but the focus at the minute can only really be on Derry.
“It has gone to the back of my head, but it will be fuel for when I go back to Glen this year.”
Everyone had their take on the issue, but in jig time, the trenches were cut. Glen either deserved a replay, or they were embarrassing themselves. It wasn’t quite Keane-McCarthy and Saipan, but it dragged on and debates raged across tables while Glass scrambled eggs and waited on tables. He listened to everyone but didn’t let a thought burrow too deep.
“That’s the GAA summed up though. Everyone is going about their jobs and you see them on the street. I will be playing in an All-Ireland quarter-final, but I will be making them coffee the day after. And people can ask me what they want; that’s the GAA summed up.
“The way Glen handled it was unbelievable. Their full support rested with the players. Whatever we wanted to do, that was the route regardless.”
Whatever controversy that brought, another incident of a much graver nature was to happen within Glass’ orbit when Derry manager Rory Gallagher stepped back the week of the Ulster final, before stepping down after allegations of domestic abuse.
After they beat Armagh, players and management played a straight bat. They wouldn’t let issues outside of football affect their football. Their template had been long settled and they continued on down the road, only with Ciaran Meenagh now as their manager.
“Ciaran and Rory are very similar in the way they coach. Ciaran has been with us for the last couple of years, so the way in which the team is ran is not much different from the way it was before,” says Glass.
“As cliched as it sounds, trying to keep things similar, we have. But Ciaran is his own man, he’s not going to copy how Rory coached, he goes about it himself.
“And the playing group is solely behind Ciaran. The spirit is unreal and around training it’s brilliant.
“The Ulster final was tough with everything that went on. It might have affected our performance against Monaghan but we managed to get a point, which was huge.
“And then we had the best of what was in front of us for the rest of the season.”
Becoming only the second Derry team to defend an Ulster title was relegated to something of a footnote as the final itself became the first provincial decider to be determined by penalties.
Glass took Derry’s third kick. Just before him, his team mate Paul Cassidy had his saved, and then so too did Armagh joint-captain Aidan Nugent.
Altogether, three efforts out of five had been saved. It needed something emphatic. Glass thundered his one into the roof of the net. A bullet. As if he had decided it a week out.
The truth was a little different.
“I did what you should never do, and changed my mind,” he says.
“There is more room for air if you open up the body. You don’t know what you are going to do until you are in those circumstances. No matter what the preparation is in training, nothing emulates the real thing.”
But it hit the net and Glass pogoed back to his team mates like it was set to a Sex Pistols soundtrack. Occasionally – well, often – he relives that feeling.
“It pops up on my Twitter and I can’t resist watching it. I have probably watched it about 200 times now to be honest. You still get the same feeling.”
Last year, he lifted the roof of the net against Clare with a goal from play in the quarter-final. They are back in the same position now, unexpected Munster opposition again in Cork.
Their semi-final against Galway was the opportunity their detractors needed to say their game doesn’t work in Croke Park, as if they hadn’t won there many times before. It fuels their motivation.
“We felt now that we were playing not to lose, rather than trying to win. We held back a wee bit,” he’ll admit.
“That happens. We have come to accept that and realise that when we are in that situation again this year we will play to win and put our best foot forward.
“It still hurts. It was a massive learning curve for ourselves. The players who were playing that day have come on a long way. We have blooded a few new players, Eoin McEvoy has come on and is playing well this year.
“We are gradually building and hopefully the next three games are the best ever for this team.”
