HE WOULDN’T GO for the full skin-fade favoured by many players, but usually when New York have a game, their manager Johnny McGeeney would have the hair freshly cut, or at least a bit of gel to tidy himself up.
But after the 16-point defeat to Sligo in Markievicz Park in the Connacht semi-final, he was so drained of energy, people told him he looked horrendous with his hair flapping in the wind.
A fortnight after his greatest accomplishment in management in earning New York’s first championship win after penalties against Leitrim, he was fit to collapse.
“It was the worst week I ever had,” he says this week.
He and his family had just been left off at the airport to fly to Ireland when one of his three sons began vomiting. Johnny wasn’t going to panic and put it down to the spin in the car from Woodlawn.
On the flight however, his other two sons started vomiting and his wife went down with it too.
When they touched down, McGeeney had a cup of tea and a lie down for an hour. It was Thursday ahead of the game on Saturday.
“When I got up, I felt sick too and I actually had to get a doctor to give me an injection the night before the game so I could actually stand up.”
The days following were a blur. The team stayed at The Great Northern Hotel in Bundoran, Brian McEniff’s establishment.
On one of the evenings, McEniff appeared in an old Donegal top from the 1992 All-Ireland final. McGeeney could barely take in what he was saying and was also keeping his distance in case he passed on the virus.
“I couldn’t stop puking. When I did get the injection, it was to stop me from being sick and it was the worst thing I ever got because all I wanted to do was vomit,” he said.
As for the game? Well, he couldn’t be too hard on anyone. Not when they had made history the previous fortnight.
“I don’t think we showed up at all to be honest. We didn’t do ourselves justice.
“We never looked at that fixture because it had never been done before. There was that much needed to be done about where we were staying, where we were training.”
Logistics aside, he found it hard to expect players to get their heads around another team after pouring so much of themselves into Leitrim. He had been a player before with Culloville in Armagh and St Barnabas in New York, and the idea of studying a couple of hours of video was never appealing.
“A lot of boys leave Ireland and they get away from football,” he explains.
“Then you are asking them to come and play. And they do, but the last thing they want to do is sit down and look over games. I used to hate that part of playing myself, sitting behind after training to watch videos and that.
“We could point out what we could expect. But you could see Sligo, they were a well-drilled team. Tony Mac (McEntee) has done some job on them, he really has.”
In any case, he and his players haven’t the luxuries that managers and players expect in Ireland. He works as an electrical contractor and when we talk, he has just been up to visit a job in Brooklyn and set up some men for their day’s work.
“It’s dog eat dog. There’s no stop in it. You won’t be fit to do it all your life. There’s so much hustle and bustle to it,” he states. “At five o’clock in the morning, I would be getting texts, boys asking me what is the story with this job or that job.
“I have three young boys and I would be up anyway, but that’s not the point.”
Even approaching the preliminary round in the Tailteann Cup creates a world of logistical problems. Knowing they were in it was one thing, but they only found out they had Carlow last Sunday. They then had to go and source hotels and book flights.
With the game on the Saturday evening, it will be a quick turnaround to get a flight on Sunday morning back to New York.
“American companies don’t understand that these guys are going home to play an amateur sport. You have to be at work on Monday morning, and that’s it,” he explains.
Their progress has also created a strain on resources. New York chairperson Joan Henchy is run off her feet trying to organise fundraisers for the rebuild of Gaelic Park. The junior team, of which McGeeney is also manager, require a fundraiser to get home for their series later this summer.
Even arranging to get home for the Sligo game was madness. Henchy was putting the calls into players for their passport numbers while half of them were still in full party mode two days after the Leitrim win.
He won’t shy away from it. The goal at the start of the year was to win in the championship and they weren’t looking past that.
Now that they have, it’s been complicated.
Earlier this week, New York had to train at St Barnabas on a field more suited to 11 or 13-a-side as Gaelic Park was booked for a Junior B championship game.
The clubs are playing away and the players have not been in a bubble of the county team.
“Collectively, we were probably only together once a week when we could get everyone. We have training during the week but maybe seven or eight boys might be playing a game in the park that night, whether it be hurling or football,” says McGeeney.
In the future, should this need arise again, he proposes setting a venue for the New York game and a date, so the organising could look after itself. But after giving two years of body and soul to this job, and the all-American born junior team, it will be a problem someone else will inherit.
Before all that, there is still a championship game to play against Carlow. They finished three points behind Leitrim in Division Four, drawing their opener against Wicklow, then beating Waterford in the second round.
Their only other points after that came against London.
Their championship ended in the preliminary round of Leinster with an eight-point defeat to Wicklow. A rematch win over Wicklow and then Longford in the Tailteann Cup have them feeling good about themselves, and they have the benefit of New York playing in two games that became high profile.
Can lightning strike twice in one season?
“I would be honest, I would be a realist,” says McGeeney; south Armagh men generally are.
“Carlow would have been the best draw you could hope for. No disrespect to Carlow, it’s just that they are a Division Four team and the rest are above that.
“When we met the boys last night, some were saying we would be looking to win this. You’re not. You want to perform. If we can perform and stay in the game, I would be very happy with that. We have achieved everything we wanted to achieve and if we can perform you don’t know what can happen on the day.
“I want them coming off the pitch happy with their performance. That’s all we are looking for, I would imagine. We are not looking for anything more than that.”