Peter Canavan with sons Ruairí (left) and Darragh. John McVitty/INPHO
GOD ON OUR SIDE
'There was a silo pit and we used it to kick against it' - the making of Peter Canavan
From humble beginnings 35 years ago in Tyrone’s division three, the Canavan family have driven Errigal Ciaran to the pinnacle of club football in Ireland.
IT’S HARD TO imagine an everyday picture of a division three team containing as much history as the one you find yourself yakking about with Peter Canavan.
The year is 1990. The two opposing factions of St Ciaran’s Ballygawley and the unaffiliated Glencull St Malachy’s have just come together to form the brand-new entity of Errigal Ciaran.
As one of the terms of the surrender, the club would enter an Errigal ‘Thirds’ team. But, really, it was a de facto team of players from Glencull. It’s already extensively covered, but Glencull was the area that pulled out of the old St Ciaran’s Ballygawley club over a Civil War caused by a row in an inter-club townland league.
Whether that eight-year spell in the wilderness was the making of all parties, or time lost, we can never know. All that is certain is that St Ciaran’s Ballygawley were a middlin’, unsuccessful outfit, while Errigal Ciaran have had a rich bounty of success.
But back in 1990 there was still enough sulphur in the air to grant the Glencull men this concession for one season before complete and total integration.
For those playing, having been robbed of football for several seasons, it was a novelty to be able to see your weekend game listed in the papers, and mentioned in match reports.
Canavan’s first year in representative football was punctuated by a trip to Toronto to play for Tyrone in an exhibition game against Dublin in the Toronto Skydome on St Patrick’s Day. Just 18, he received a punch in the throat that day in a game that collapsed into almost comical Paddywhackery violence. Needless to say, the Exiles lapped it up.
Back on home turf with Errigal, and not being used to the lower reaches of the county, it was the first time they had been to many of the clubs in question. Some of them, such as Windmill, Dregish and Dunamanagh are either defunct or swallowed up into amalgamations.
Errigal Ciaran Thirds, 1990. Back row, left to right; Fr Sean Hegarty. Pascal Canavan, Christopher McGirr, Eamon McNelis, Denver Farrell, Cathal McAnenly, Peter Canavan, Ciaran McAnenly, Plunkett McNelis, Joe Canavan, Brian Quinn, Seamus Mallon, Sean Canavan (manager). Front row, left to right; John Joe Campbell, Barry Canavan, Frank McNelis, Peter Horisk, Mickey Harte, Eoin Canavan, Stevie Canavan, Niall McCullough, Peter Quinlivan, Barry Mallon.
On the evening the picture was taken, it was prior to the final game of the league, away to Strabane’s old pitch at Melmount. They were already ahead of second-placed Urney on points and with a second half goal by Peter Canavan killing off the Strabane challenge, they won 1-13 to 1-7. The league was secured with a single defeat to Urney the only blemish.
The captain was Cathal McAnenly – whose son Darragh has inherited his goalkeeper jersey and will be there for the All-Ireland final. When he took the trophy, he thanked the management team of Canavan’s father Sean, his brother Stevie, and Fr Sean Hegarty, the wily Priest who had united the factions in support of the Errigal idea.
It had four Canavan brothers and their father. It had Eoin Gormley, who would star in county finals for Errigal and play International Rules for Ireland. And, along with Peter Canavan, it had Mickey Harte, two men who changed the course of Tyrone football.
The championship, seeing as you’re asking, ended in a defeat to Derrytresk at Derrylaughan’s ground. “Controversial circumstances,” Canavan explains.
Earlier in the year, Canavan had captained the Errigal U21 team to the county final where they lost to defending champions, Moortown. He was getting any amount of football now.
Before then, the experience of those men for the previous eight years was scrounging challenge matches off clubs in neighbouring counties.
“For me, it was the first time. I never got playing any underage football, so you were heading to places you had never been to,” recalls Canavan now.
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“And for the older boys, Stevie (Canavan), Mickey Harte, they had been playing division one football up to that point. Strabane, Urney, Newtownstewart, Derrytresk, all those places in Division three.”
Without an underage team to play for, Canavan’s skills were sharpened at home. He previously has mentioned that he feels there is an overkill of underage football now, with the glut of development squads and all-consuming county minor panels and schools systems.
When he was brought to the Ulster final of 1984, he watched Frank McGuigan kick five points off his left foot; five off his right, and punch another one over as Tyrone beat Armagh. Upon his return home, he had decided he would make himself two-footed.
“The roof of the house,” he recalls, “kicking the ball up onto the roof of the two-storey house and then you had to catch it, and jostle for the ball with the brothers.
There was an empty garage that was our goals. There was a silo pit and when it was empty, we used it to kick against. It was numbered and used for shooting practise and that was it.”
Such intense focus on skills made Canavan the first ‘street footballer’ of Gaelic football, with an array of tricks, vision and imagination in abundance. He became the first Gaelic football highlights reel as Errigal emerged as a major force in Tyrone, claiming Ulster titles in 1993 and 2002. As good as he was for Tyrone, he was other-worldly for Errigal.
Bring things on to the present day, when Canavan’s two sons, team captain Darragh and Ruairí are two of the most entertaining Gaelic footballers at the top of their game, preparing to face Cuala as part of the first Tyrone club to play in an All-Ireland senior club final.
Occasionally when they are playing, the television cameras will pick out Peter in the crowd, his face set in a nervous grimace.
Playing, he could handle. Watching is more difficult.
“You used to frown upon these people that when you were playing, who said, ‘Ah, I couldn’t watch. I left at half time,’ or, ‘With ten minutes to go.’
“I used to think there was something not right with those people. Why would you be leaving a game of football?” he says.
“But when you are heavily invested in it, when it’s your own playing, you totally get it. I know plenty of mammies and daddies at this stage that get up and leave during games or find it unbearable to watch when their own is playing. So I totally get it.
“As nervous as you are when you are playing, as soon as the ball is thrown up, after your first run, your first thump, you get on with it. The tension is released out of your body and you are consumed in the game.
“Sitting watching it, you think you are going to remain calm and you can do nothing about it. They cannot hear you on the pitch so you can do all the shouting and roaring you want. It will make no difference.
“So you know that. You are well aware of that.
“But did I end up shouting at the referee at the weekend? Absolutely. Me and everybody around me. It’s easier said than done.”
Having served as a player, coach and manager, his current role is club vice-chairman, supporting chairman Emmett McGinley, a brother of manager Enda.
That dynamic is revealing in itself. Enda brings a backroom team that is entirely in-house, just as his successors, Mark Harte and Adrian O’Donnell.
“I’ve been there as manager and you have to be upfront with players,” he says.
“There’s always a certain amount of pressure when you take on anybody, but I think when people know you are doing it for the right reason and they know the effort you are putting into it, sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.
“Of course you want to win things, but it is bringing along a group of boys and for him as the management, to do the best he could do.”
He adds: “But if we had a decision to make at the start of the year, and it could well happen that if we were picking the best person to manage our senior club team and the person was someone from outside our parish, then I think we would have to make that call.
“Because the boys who are playing deserve every opportunity to win. When I was playing, if I had the choice of getting somebody local to manage us and win nothing, or get somebody in that is going to make a difference and give us a better chance of winning a championship, I would be selfish and say, ‘I want to win.’
Darragh Canavan in possession with Ruairí in support. James Lawlor / INPHO
James Lawlor / INPHO / INPHO
“Once Mark Harte and Adrian O’Donnell stepped down, Enda McGinley, nothing to do with his name, it’s to do with the fact he managed these boys at minors and won a championship with the boys enjoying that experience. It helps when you win it but there was never any doubt that it was the best decision.
“So it is easier when you have somebody of that calibre from within and you know the people they are going to bring with them.
“The happiest man from a committee point of view is the treasurer. Because there is no doubt about it, the past four or five years, of the top ten clubs in Tyrone, Errigal have spent the least amount of money in terms of management teams.”
Happily, it has coincided with a period of success with two Tyrone titles in the last three years and now their first outing in Croke Park.
Canavan knows that their record engenders envy. But he cannot and won’t invest energy or dwell on that.
It’s a bit like Tyrone. It only matters if you are happy doing what you are doing yourself. There would be a perception that the fact we have won Ulster, there is an arrogance there. I’ve seen that word being used once or twice.
“And I suppose when it comes to some of our supporters debating with other clubs, they can always throw up that we were the first to win Ulster titles.
“That would irk other teams. I’d say there is a perception there that the problem with Errigal a few years back was that there were two clubs there and we have a massive pick. Despite the fact that many clubs in the county have a bigger pick than we do.”
He adds: “But that’s a perception out there. When we weren’t winning anything, it was never a problem. When you start winning, once or twice, it was great. But when you win a few county championships you go down in popularity.
“Not that we are concerned. I think the players themselves have come through a lot in recent years and they work damn hard and do a lot of things right. You can’t win every year but as long as the effort and dedication is there, I think that’s the most important thing.”
The past is a different country. One where Peter Canavan didn’t play. Then he did play, and changed history.
The past was his, the future belongs to Ruairí and Darragh.
There’s one last thing Errigal Ciaran have left to do, 35 years on.
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'There was a silo pit and we used it to kick against it' - the making of Peter Canavan
IT’S HARD TO imagine an everyday picture of a division three team containing as much history as the one you find yourself yakking about with Peter Canavan.
The year is 1990. The two opposing factions of St Ciaran’s Ballygawley and the unaffiliated Glencull St Malachy’s have just come together to form the brand-new entity of Errigal Ciaran.
As one of the terms of the surrender, the club would enter an Errigal ‘Thirds’ team. But, really, it was a de facto team of players from Glencull. It’s already extensively covered, but Glencull was the area that pulled out of the old St Ciaran’s Ballygawley club over a Civil War caused by a row in an inter-club townland league.
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Whether that eight-year spell in the wilderness was the making of all parties, or time lost, we can never know. All that is certain is that St Ciaran’s Ballygawley were a middlin’, unsuccessful outfit, while Errigal Ciaran have had a rich bounty of success.
But back in 1990 there was still enough sulphur in the air to grant the Glencull men this concession for one season before complete and total integration.
For those playing, having been robbed of football for several seasons, it was a novelty to be able to see your weekend game listed in the papers, and mentioned in match reports.
Canavan’s first year in representative football was punctuated by a trip to Toronto to play for Tyrone in an exhibition game against Dublin in the Toronto Skydome on St Patrick’s Day. Just 18, he received a punch in the throat that day in a game that collapsed into almost comical Paddywhackery violence. Needless to say, the Exiles lapped it up.
Back on home turf with Errigal, and not being used to the lower reaches of the county, it was the first time they had been to many of the clubs in question. Some of them, such as Windmill, Dregish and Dunamanagh are either defunct or swallowed up into amalgamations.
On the evening the picture was taken, it was prior to the final game of the league, away to Strabane’s old pitch at Melmount. They were already ahead of second-placed Urney on points and with a second half goal by Peter Canavan killing off the Strabane challenge, they won 1-13 to 1-7. The league was secured with a single defeat to Urney the only blemish.
The captain was Cathal McAnenly – whose son Darragh has inherited his goalkeeper jersey and will be there for the All-Ireland final. When he took the trophy, he thanked the management team of Canavan’s father Sean, his brother Stevie, and Fr Sean Hegarty, the wily Priest who had united the factions in support of the Errigal idea.
It had four Canavan brothers and their father. It had Eoin Gormley, who would star in county finals for Errigal and play International Rules for Ireland. And, along with Peter Canavan, it had Mickey Harte, two men who changed the course of Tyrone football.
The championship, seeing as you’re asking, ended in a defeat to Derrytresk at Derrylaughan’s ground. “Controversial circumstances,” Canavan explains.
Earlier in the year, Canavan had captained the Errigal U21 team to the county final where they lost to defending champions, Moortown. He was getting any amount of football now.
Before then, the experience of those men for the previous eight years was scrounging challenge matches off clubs in neighbouring counties.
“For me, it was the first time. I never got playing any underage football, so you were heading to places you had never been to,” recalls Canavan now.
“And for the older boys, Stevie (Canavan), Mickey Harte, they had been playing division one football up to that point. Strabane, Urney, Newtownstewart, Derrytresk, all those places in Division three.”
Without an underage team to play for, Canavan’s skills were sharpened at home. He previously has mentioned that he feels there is an overkill of underage football now, with the glut of development squads and all-consuming county minor panels and schools systems.
When he was brought to the Ulster final of 1984, he watched Frank McGuigan kick five points off his left foot; five off his right, and punch another one over as Tyrone beat Armagh. Upon his return home, he had decided he would make himself two-footed.
“The roof of the house,” he recalls, “kicking the ball up onto the roof of the two-storey house and then you had to catch it, and jostle for the ball with the brothers.
Such intense focus on skills made Canavan the first ‘street footballer’ of Gaelic football, with an array of tricks, vision and imagination in abundance. He became the first Gaelic football highlights reel as Errigal emerged as a major force in Tyrone, claiming Ulster titles in 1993 and 2002. As good as he was for Tyrone, he was other-worldly for Errigal.
Bring things on to the present day, when Canavan’s two sons, team captain Darragh and Ruairí are two of the most entertaining Gaelic footballers at the top of their game, preparing to face Cuala as part of the first Tyrone club to play in an All-Ireland senior club final.
Occasionally when they are playing, the television cameras will pick out Peter in the crowd, his face set in a nervous grimace.
Playing, he could handle. Watching is more difficult.
“You used to frown upon these people that when you were playing, who said, ‘Ah, I couldn’t watch. I left at half time,’ or, ‘With ten minutes to go.’
“I used to think there was something not right with those people. Why would you be leaving a game of football?” he says.
“But when you are heavily invested in it, when it’s your own playing, you totally get it. I know plenty of mammies and daddies at this stage that get up and leave during games or find it unbearable to watch when their own is playing. So I totally get it.
“As nervous as you are when you are playing, as soon as the ball is thrown up, after your first run, your first thump, you get on with it. The tension is released out of your body and you are consumed in the game.
“Sitting watching it, you think you are going to remain calm and you can do nothing about it. They cannot hear you on the pitch so you can do all the shouting and roaring you want. It will make no difference.
“So you know that. You are well aware of that.
“But did I end up shouting at the referee at the weekend? Absolutely. Me and everybody around me. It’s easier said than done.”
Having served as a player, coach and manager, his current role is club vice-chairman, supporting chairman Emmett McGinley, a brother of manager Enda.
That dynamic is revealing in itself. Enda brings a backroom team that is entirely in-house, just as his successors, Mark Harte and Adrian O’Donnell.
“I’ve been there as manager and you have to be upfront with players,” he says.
“There’s always a certain amount of pressure when you take on anybody, but I think when people know you are doing it for the right reason and they know the effort you are putting into it, sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.
“Of course you want to win things, but it is bringing along a group of boys and for him as the management, to do the best he could do.”
He adds: “But if we had a decision to make at the start of the year, and it could well happen that if we were picking the best person to manage our senior club team and the person was someone from outside our parish, then I think we would have to make that call.
“Because the boys who are playing deserve every opportunity to win. When I was playing, if I had the choice of getting somebody local to manage us and win nothing, or get somebody in that is going to make a difference and give us a better chance of winning a championship, I would be selfish and say, ‘I want to win.’
“Once Mark Harte and Adrian O’Donnell stepped down, Enda McGinley, nothing to do with his name, it’s to do with the fact he managed these boys at minors and won a championship with the boys enjoying that experience. It helps when you win it but there was never any doubt that it was the best decision.
“So it is easier when you have somebody of that calibre from within and you know the people they are going to bring with them.
“The happiest man from a committee point of view is the treasurer. Because there is no doubt about it, the past four or five years, of the top ten clubs in Tyrone, Errigal have spent the least amount of money in terms of management teams.”
Happily, it has coincided with a period of success with two Tyrone titles in the last three years and now their first outing in Croke Park.
Canavan knows that their record engenders envy. But he cannot and won’t invest energy or dwell on that.
“And I suppose when it comes to some of our supporters debating with other clubs, they can always throw up that we were the first to win Ulster titles.
“That would irk other teams. I’d say there is a perception there that the problem with Errigal a few years back was that there were two clubs there and we have a massive pick. Despite the fact that many clubs in the county have a bigger pick than we do.”
He adds: “But that’s a perception out there. When we weren’t winning anything, it was never a problem. When you start winning, once or twice, it was great. But when you win a few county championships you go down in popularity.
“Not that we are concerned. I think the players themselves have come through a lot in recent years and they work damn hard and do a lot of things right. You can’t win every year but as long as the effort and dedication is there, I think that’s the most important thing.”
The past is a different country. One where Peter Canavan didn’t play. Then he did play, and changed history.
The past was his, the future belongs to Ruairí and Darragh.
There’s one last thing Errigal Ciaran have left to do, 35 years on.
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Errigal Ciaran GAA Gaelic Football GOD ON OUR SIDE Peter Canavan