15 YEARS AFTER he first managed at intercounty level, Malachy O’Rourke was made what many might have considered an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Think about it. He was offered the Derry job. The Ulster senior football champions of the last two years. A side that had pushed Kerry all the way in an All-Ireland semi-final.
A team that is packed with leaders and a decent age profile, with four players due to pick up All Stars a little while after.
A team that he would be entirely familiar with, having spent the previous year with Glen in Derry.
He turned it down.
Those that struggle to understand that, would miss the point of a man like O’Rourke.
Anything he ever achieved in football, he reached out and grabbed for himself.
Playing for Fermanagh was unfashionable within Ulster. Playing for Derrylin O’Connells was unfashionable within Fermanagh. But he still won junior and intermediate championships as a teenager in the mid-80s.
When he went to St Mary’s Teaching College and found himself surrounded by talent, he won a Sigerson Cup.
Having married and settled in Ballygawley – half way between home and his wife Judith from Coalisland – he joined Errigal Ciaran. They tested him in his first few weeks by sending him to play with the reserves. He took it in his stride and soon became one of the club’s key figures as they won the county title in 1997.
He brought Tyholland to their first season of playing senior club football in Monaghan.
He took on Derry club Loup, who hadn’t won a championship since 1936. They won Derry and then went on to win Ulster.
When he arrived in Monaghan in late 2012, they were marooned in division three. By the following summer they were Ulster champions, beating then-reigning All Ireland champions Donegal in the final.
After several years there, he took a rest for a season before being persuaded by an old college friend, Bronagh Mulholland, to consider taking perennial underachievers in Derry, Glen.
Stationed in the footballing hotbed of Maghera, with the famous St Patrick’s school, the club hadn’t won as much as a single senior county title. They were the ultimate enigma.
Under O’Rourke, they have put three Derry titles together. And an Ulster club, as well as a controversial All Ireland final defeat to Kilmacud Crokes.
He prefers building things. But all the same, having turned down Derry, is that the end of the intercounty thing for him?
“Look, there was an approach made. But to be honest I didn’t think the time was right. I was in the middle of the season, the boys were training very hard and were focussed and Derry is a very hard championship to retain,” he explains.
“I just felt no matter what way we handled it, it would have lost what we were doing.”
Did it cause him much agonising? No.
“I always say I am very privileged that people might come to me and ask me to look at some of these jobs.
“It’s a lovely position to be in, in many ways. And you take it on its’ merits and see if it fits at the right time. At this stage, we felt we wanted to continue on with Glen. So it didn’t torture me. It was clear cut.”
Now that we are picking at scabs, we turn the clock back to 22 January, and the All Ireland final. At the closing stages, Kilmacud were in the lead. Glen needed a goal. But Kilmacud had an extra man on the pitch.
In the aftermath, it seemed certain that the GAA were going to order a replay. Instead, they went a different path and adopted a hands-off approach.
Crokes weren’t willing to offer a replay. So eventually, Glen withdrew from the process themselves. It was a shameful episode, but Glen were the one party not at fault.
The question is, how much of it remains in the Glen psyche?
“To be honest, the club was very united,” O’Rourke explains.
“Right from the word go, the club committee said, ‘listen, it will be the players and management and we will take the lead from yous.’
“And it was very much the case of what was the right thing to do. I suppose we always said that if Croke Park stepped in and said there had to be a replay, then we would have taken that.
“Once it dragged on and there wasn’t going to be a satisfactory conclusion, I don’t think any of us felt it was going to serve us well. So the best thing to do was to park it and that’s what we did.”
There was a dignity in what they did. Even throughout the process, there wasn’t (frustratingly so for reporters) the hint of a leak out of the camp as chairman Barry Slowey dealt with the matter impeccably.
“You’d like to think there’s good values in the club. I suppose the boys appreciate that they’ve had tough times as well. There’s many a times when they were on the wrong end of defeats,” O’Rourke explains.
“It is just trying to go out, play as hard as you can and win the game. There’s days when that works out and days it won’t.
“I think it is important for the whole club that there is that attitude that you try and do things as best you can and in the right way. It doesn’t always work out. Emotions run high on occasions. The players, the management – you aren’t always going to get things right.
“You try and represent the club in the right way and that’s important as well.”
He’s been managing teams along with Ryan Porter as trainer for the last ten seasons. The two live close by in Ballygawley, and travel to all the sessions. It’s been like that for so long and the relationship is like what used to be said about the timing of Morecambe and Wise; you can’t see the join.
When they took over Monaghan, they made a quick decision. The youngster Rory Beggan was their goalkeeper, come what may. In the 2013 Ulster semi final against Cavan he ventured out of his goal to the obvious horror of thousands of Monaghan fans. But, they survived and Beggan then developed into the most impactful goalkeeper, perhaps player, of this generation.
Now, they face Beggan and other Monaghan players, Conor McCarthy, Kieran and Darren Hughes and Shane Carey, all of whom played under O’Rourke, when they meet in this Sunday’s Ulster club final.
Playing as an extra outfield player, Beggan ended up being man-marked for Trillick’s own kickouts.
“It‘s a sign of where the game has moved on to as well. It is only recently where the goalkeeper is coming out and creating the extra man and that makes a big difference,” acknowledges O’Rourke.
His obvious admiration for Scotstown’s players shines through, but he also notes that Kieran Hughes, while long hampered by niggling injuries was a ‘free spirit’ – you don’t score points like he does without serious adventure – and his brother Darren, “(It) was always the thing about Darren, he enjoyed training and football and he still is and he is still a massive force there at county level and club level.”
Such characters don’t require the latest hot topic of a ‘Player’s Charter’ to get themselves right to challenge for honours.
Given how Glen’s county players have been on the go practically non-stop for the last three years, player-welfare has featured highly in O’Rourke’s thinking.
“We would always try to give all the club lads the first two weeks in July off. Give them a break so they can have holidays or whatever else they want. We do realise that everyone has a life and I think you’ll get more out of fellas if you give them that bit of leeway,” he says.
“The boys are really, really committed. Anything we ask them, they’ll do it. So they don’t need to prove their commitment to us.
“If at times we feel, there’s something on that’s important to them or important to their families – there’s never a problem. We try and make sure, if fellas need a break, they get it. That’s the way we operate it.
“The thing about it too, we find the boys want that level of commitment. They want high standards, they are ambitious and, if the standards weren’t high, it would be them saying to us to tighten up.
“There’s never a problem there – it is trying to keep them fresh. They are a really committed bunch so there’s never a problem.”
Unfussy, calm and personable.