“DUNLOY THIS SUNDAY,” says the former Portaferry and Down hurler and manager Marty Mallon as he takes a break from serving customers in his butchery.
And a half-beat later, the exhale and the deflation.
“Ciara will play her part in it. They need look no further for inspiration.”
Portaferry has been at a loss for a week now. The daughter of Ireland, as her husband Thomas Moran labelled her in his touching tribute, Ciara Mageean has been laid to rest after cancer took her.
In such circumstances, anyone could be excused for not having the stomach for sport. Only this Thursday night when Derval O’Rourke was being interviewed on RTÉ radio, she talked of talking to Sarah Lavin and how while neither of them felt like going for a workout, it’s what Ciara Mageean would have wanted.
In the days around her funeral last week, the sight of runners around Portaferry was everywhere. For the last week, Ulster has been blessed with the clearest of skies, with a crusty frost each morning. With the autumnal colours on the foliage, it’s been a stunning time to say farewell to one of Ireland’s greatest athletes.
If things were different, she would have been there in the Athletic Grounds this Sunday, at a typically-fractious, blood and thunder Ulster club hurling semi-final as the St Patrick’s take on Dunloy.
A few years back, she started giving talks to the senior hurlers. Nothing major, just about mindset, diet and such. But also about playing with a smile on their faces.
“It’s the complete opposite of the way you think it should be,” says Mallon.
“It’s just life. Hard to put your finger on it. Even when the news came out. I spoke to her father, Christopher would visit me quite often here in the butcher’s shop. He found it very, very difficult to tell us at the time, he found it hard to believe it was happening.
“And then when it came out, we thought it would be a matter of getting her a bit of treatment. Get it sorted. Get her on her feet and going again.
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“Then once you hear Stage 4, it’s always an uphill battle.
“It’s very, very tough on the parish here. A lot of people, not even the GAA community, a lot of people from everywhere were just taken aback by it and it is pure grief over the last couple of weeks.”
Mallon was at her wedding in Belfast. The Mallons and Mageeans are close. Mallon’s own daughter Niamh played up an underage grade with Ciara. She has gone on to play for Galway and started this year’s All-Ireland final, as well as serving the Galway hurlers as a nutritionist.
“A fabulous day, joy, full of fun,” says Mallon.
“She made it happen. How she did it was beyond. All that athletics, all that drive, the pushing and shoving… How she’s done that on her wedding day was unbelievable. At half two in the morning, in the resident’s lounge, still singing and all.
“The next day, it was just staring down the barrel, to be honest, the next morning. It just floored her.
“She knew it was coming. She was more or less saying goodbye. We met her in the car park the next morning and my God, I was shocked.”
When the news came that she was gone, it wasn’t a surprise.
“Because I knew she had nothing left to give. She gave all she had.
“Typical Ciara. She was never going to lie down. She inherited her father’s drive and passion and all that sort of thing. Oul’ thickness. She inherited that from her father and carried it right through.”
Her father, Christopher, was christened ‘The Hunter’ in his playing days with the club and Down. He just simply never saw a cause that was lost. A man-marker to the end.
“She was the same,” Mallon says.
“Very like her father in many ways, personality and so on. Christopher was a big softie at heart and Ciara had that in her. But a natural winner by nature.
“She was an incredible girl. She put Portaferry on the map and we are very proud of her.”
Celebraring with her Gold medal from the 2024 European Championships. Morgan Treacy / INPHO
Morgan Treacy / INPHO / INPHO
She would have, in the way we say these things, ‘made county’ in camogie.
“Very, very good. A proper intercounty player if she had stayed at it, no bother,” is Mallon’s verdict.
“Her last game was the minor final here. I think we had no right to win. Ballycran had won the Féile All-Ireland title and that team came through unbeaten from U8s, 10s, right through.
“Ciara played midfield or centre-back and my daughter played up front and we beat them in the minor final, and she rode off into the sunset for UCD and a running scholarship. That would have been our biggest achievement in the camogie club at that point.
“We had always hoped that she would have come back here and play a little more camogie at some point. When the Olympics was done for her, we thought she would come back and play a couple of seasons. That was an ambition.
“Didn’t happen that way.”
**
Portaferry have been building to this. They have won the last five Down hurling championships. The margins of victory in the Jeremiah McVeagh Cup final keep growing; 2, 4, 9, 9 and 11.
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In Ulster, they were one miserable goal off Slaughtneil in the 2024 final. They’ve thrown away some fantastic positions and commanding leads over this period.
Karol Keating had them in their first ventures of that period. Mallon himself and Gerard McGrattan, a hurling All-Star in 1992, took the team for a spin.
Down's 1992 hurling All-Star Gerard McGrattan, as former Portaferry manager. Leah Scholes / INPHO
Leah Scholes / INPHO / INPHO
“At the time they were very young. They weren’t ready for it. They weren’t conditioned. But they are big lumps of lads now and they have really bought into the thing,” says Mallon.
“We should have won an Ulster by now. We were nine up against Cushendall, eight up against Slaughtneil going down the stretch and they are still there. A lot of aspirations and they are in good shape. The new management have changed it up a bit. There is a wee bit of freshness about it.”
Connor O’Prey is the latest manager. Another clubman. Little enough choice really, given the geographic isolation out on the very tip of the Strangford peninsula, and the aversion of recruiting a manager from the other Down clubs.
“There’s a lot of grief. A lot of loss and sadness. But the community have been fantastic and pulled together and showed the family what we are made of. I think they have appreciated that, there’s no doubt,” says Mallon.
“You kind of knew what was going to come and what was going to happen. She never let us down. Portaferry GAC, the camogie club, she never let us down once.”
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'Ciara will play her part in it' - Portaferry coming to terms with loss through sport
“DUNLOY THIS SUNDAY,” says the former Portaferry and Down hurler and manager Marty Mallon as he takes a break from serving customers in his butchery.
And a half-beat later, the exhale and the deflation.
“Ciara will play her part in it. They need look no further for inspiration.”
Portaferry has been at a loss for a week now. The daughter of Ireland, as her husband Thomas Moran labelled her in his touching tribute, Ciara Mageean has been laid to rest after cancer took her.
In such circumstances, anyone could be excused for not having the stomach for sport. Only this Thursday night when Derval O’Rourke was being interviewed on RTÉ radio, she talked of talking to Sarah Lavin and how while neither of them felt like going for a workout, it’s what Ciara Mageean would have wanted.
In the days around her funeral last week, the sight of runners around Portaferry was everywhere. For the last week, Ulster has been blessed with the clearest of skies, with a crusty frost each morning. With the autumnal colours on the foliage, it’s been a stunning time to say farewell to one of Ireland’s greatest athletes.
If things were different, she would have been there in the Athletic Grounds this Sunday, at a typically-fractious, blood and thunder Ulster club hurling semi-final as the St Patrick’s take on Dunloy.
A few years back, she started giving talks to the senior hurlers. Nothing major, just about mindset, diet and such. But also about playing with a smile on their faces.
“It’s the complete opposite of the way you think it should be,” says Mallon.
“And then when it came out, we thought it would be a matter of getting her a bit of treatment. Get it sorted. Get her on her feet and going again.
“Then once you hear Stage 4, it’s always an uphill battle.
“It’s very, very tough on the parish here. A lot of people, not even the GAA community, a lot of people from everywhere were just taken aback by it and it is pure grief over the last couple of weeks.”
Mallon was at her wedding in Belfast. The Mallons and Mageeans are close. Mallon’s own daughter Niamh played up an underage grade with Ciara. She has gone on to play for Galway and started this year’s All-Ireland final, as well as serving the Galway hurlers as a nutritionist.
“A fabulous day, joy, full of fun,” says Mallon.
“She made it happen. How she did it was beyond. All that athletics, all that drive, the pushing and shoving… How she’s done that on her wedding day was unbelievable. At half two in the morning, in the resident’s lounge, still singing and all.
“The next day, it was just staring down the barrel, to be honest, the next morning. It just floored her.
“She knew it was coming. She was more or less saying goodbye. We met her in the car park the next morning and my God, I was shocked.”
When the news came that she was gone, it wasn’t a surprise.
“Because I knew she had nothing left to give. She gave all she had.
“Typical Ciara. She was never going to lie down. She inherited her father’s drive and passion and all that sort of thing. Oul’ thickness. She inherited that from her father and carried it right through.”
Her father, Christopher, was christened ‘The Hunter’ in his playing days with the club and Down. He just simply never saw a cause that was lost. A man-marker to the end.
“She was the same,” Mallon says.
“Very like her father in many ways, personality and so on. Christopher was a big softie at heart and Ciara had that in her. But a natural winner by nature.
“She was an incredible girl. She put Portaferry on the map and we are very proud of her.”
She would have, in the way we say these things, ‘made county’ in camogie.
“Very, very good. A proper intercounty player if she had stayed at it, no bother,” is Mallon’s verdict.
“Her last game was the minor final here. I think we had no right to win. Ballycran had won the Féile All-Ireland title and that team came through unbeaten from U8s, 10s, right through.
“Ciara played midfield or centre-back and my daughter played up front and we beat them in the minor final, and she rode off into the sunset for UCD and a running scholarship. That would have been our biggest achievement in the camogie club at that point.
“We had always hoped that she would have come back here and play a little more camogie at some point. When the Olympics was done for her, we thought she would come back and play a couple of seasons. That was an ambition.
“Didn’t happen that way.”
**
Portaferry have been building to this. They have won the last five Down hurling championships. The margins of victory in the Jeremiah McVeagh Cup final keep growing; 2, 4, 9, 9 and 11.
In Ulster, they were one miserable goal off Slaughtneil in the 2024 final. They’ve thrown away some fantastic positions and commanding leads over this period.
Karol Keating had them in their first ventures of that period. Mallon himself and Gerard McGrattan, a hurling All-Star in 1992, took the team for a spin.
“At the time they were very young. They weren’t ready for it. They weren’t conditioned. But they are big lumps of lads now and they have really bought into the thing,” says Mallon.
“We should have won an Ulster by now. We were nine up against Cushendall, eight up against Slaughtneil going down the stretch and they are still there. A lot of aspirations and they are in good shape. The new management have changed it up a bit. There is a wee bit of freshness about it.”
Connor O’Prey is the latest manager. Another clubman. Little enough choice really, given the geographic isolation out on the very tip of the Strangford peninsula, and the aversion of recruiting a manager from the other Down clubs.
“There’s a lot of grief. A lot of loss and sadness. But the community have been fantastic and pulled together and showed the family what we are made of. I think they have appreciated that, there’s no doubt,” says Mallon.
“You kind of knew what was going to come and what was going to happen. She never let us down. Portaferry GAC, the camogie club, she never let us down once.”
***
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