THEY say aging is inevitable, growing old is optional.
Watching Alex Ferguson shuffle slowly into Old Trafford before Sunday’s Manchester derby - left foot in a moon boot, a crutch to control his balance – was a reminder of how swiftly time marches on.
Because it feels as though the years have flown by since the formidable Scot, now 84, was overseeing everything that moved at the Theatre of Dreams and, rivals would suggest, English football in general.
When people thought of Manchester United, they thought of Ferguson - their identities intertwined with the power of his personality, philosophies imbued on and off the field, reflected in the teams that ran out every Saturday.
The Premier League landscape was evolving and reshaping by the time he waved farewell in 2013, bringing the curtain down on a remarkable 26-year reign. But, like their departing manager, the club was creaking too.
Chief executive David Gill stepped away at the same time. Chelsea’s Russian billions had already broken up the United-Arsenal supremacy of the late 1990s and early Noughties. The chaos that initially greeted Manchester City’s new-found wealth had levelled out with one shrewd appointment after another.
The noisy neighbours no more.
Thirteen years on, Ferguson’s shadow continues to loom large over Old Trafford – not just because the North Stand bears his name, but because the subsequent failings are forever placed in the context of those remarkable achievements of previous decades.
Generations of supporters grew up accustomed to success, accustomed to expectation, accustomed to the belief that, even in the odd baron year, the good times were never too far away.
Now, as was the case in the wake of Wednesday night’s calamitous Carabao Cup exit to Brighton, they are accustomed to disappointment. It is a bitter pill to swallow, no matter the passage of time.
That’s why, although many factors have contributed to Manchester United’s fall from grace, they are also paying a price for an all-in investment, for so long, on such a totemic figure.
Succession-planning is key and, in Ferguson’s case, he has proved irreplaceable – because how do you reshape a club, and a team, built in one man’s image?
That same thought struck me when listening to Gavin Devlin earlier this month.
The Ardboe man joined myself and Cahair O’Kane on The Monday Club podcast to talk about everything from Louth’s remarkable year, which ended in All-Ireland semi-final defeat to eventual champions Mayo, to his Tyrone days on the playing and management front.
In between, though, came Derry.
The details hardly need outlined again at this point but, for anyone who lived in a cave around 2023/24, Devlin and Mickey Harte surprisingly left the Wee County to take over the reins at the Oak Leaf county as they sought a long-term successor to Rory Gallagher.
Before Gallagher’s shock appointment in September 2019 – two months after leaving his native Fermanagh – Derry had toiled through a decade of relative underachievement.
Yet, in the space of four years, they travelled from the doldrums of Division Four to back-to-back Ulster titles, becoming serious Sam Maguire contenders.
The bond between manager and players was at the heart of everything; a collective unified beneath the same belief system, Gallagher’s intensity and attention to detail reflected in everything Derry did.
Derry were days away from securing that second straight provincial crown in 2023 when Gallagher stepped down after his ex-wife, Nicola, made allegations of domestic abuse. A PSNI investigation subsequently brought no charges.
Rumours of a possible return to the sideline rumbled on throughout the summer after right hand man Ciaran Meenagh stepped into the breach, leading the Oak Leafs to the cusp of an All-Ireland final spot as they went hell for leather with Kerry.
But when Meenagh moved on too at the end of that campaign, Harte and Devlin stepped in. For Harte, it was perhaps a last opportunity to add to the three All-Irelands won with his native Tyrone, and an opportunity that couldn’t be refused.
According to Devlin, though, what they found was a group still yearning for the man who had brought them from obscurity to Gaelic football’s top table.
Winning a National League suggested a Gallagher-less future might be possible but, once cracks started to appear in the wake of a disastrous championship defeat to Donegal, those soon turned to chasms.
After that Donegal game, you just felt that there was an energy missing with the group.
“Rory Gallagher was there previous to us, he’d won a few Ulster titles, he’d took Derry from a really low ebb and built them into something.
“I do genuinely believe that team’s capable of winning an All-Ireland… I think they might have won it with Rory, because he’d built them and moulded them in the way he wanted to.
“There was four or five characters in the Derry team – and they were the main characters, the main players – he built them, he moulded them… it was whenever the thing started to shake.
“Like, I know I have that connection with the Louth players, Mickey had it with us back in the day, you’d have run through fire for him… I don’t know if you can have that two or three times over as a player.
“I think Rory was that to them four or five players.”
Once Harte and Devlin’s time ended after less than a year at the helm, rumours of Gallagher’s possible return continued until Paddy Tally’s appointment in late 2024. That also proved to be short-lived.
Outside of Kerry and Dublin, the window of opportunity for any other county with All-Ireland ambitions can be incredibly narrow; make hay, or forever wonder why. The core members of that Derry group remain under Meenagh, who was a hugely popular choice when coming back as manager in 2025.
But with new rules at play in a constantly evolving game, and new contenders jostling for position, they face a huge challenge to escape the shadow of what might have been.
