THE craic was good in the ‘Hut’ at Davitt Park as the Clan na Gael boys celebrated an unexpected win. Their neighbours Clann Eireann had been beaten in the 1968 Armagh championship final and a few hard-earned, well-deserved pints were being supped.
There was a bit of a hush when the Clann Eireann boys came in.
Full-back Seamus McConville graciously congratulated the winners and, so the story goes, bought Aidan Patterson a drink.
Aidan had every reason to enjoy it. That day he’d sent a rocket past Seamus’s late brother Willie into the Clann Eireann net and added four points in a man of the match performance.
Fast-forward half-a-century and the tables were turned.
This time it was the Clann Eireann men who were celebrating. 58 years’ of hurt ended when the class of 2021 won the club’s first championship since Seamus’s playing days in 1963.
Aidan Patterson has a good memory.
He made his way to the Clann Eireann social club and there was Seamus and Liam McCaffrey a few of the Clann Eireann old guard.
53 years after that night in ‘68, Aidan bought Seamus one back...
AS soon as I mention the 1968 Armagh Championship final and the purpose of my call (an interview), Aidan Patterson chuckles…
“Aye, go ahead kid,” he says.
The game – which was the last time Lurgan’s auld firm Clan na Gael and Clann Eireann met in the Orchard County decider – brings back fond memories for Aidan. Then 24, he scored 1-4 out of his club’s 1-8 as the Clans beat their neighbours to win only their third-ever senior championship.
“It was a hell of a mighty game,” says Aidan, now a sprightly 80.
“Clann Eireann were very firm favourites. Danny McCrory and Kevin Browne in the middle of the field, two county players at that time, and they were a good team.
“We had a lot of young lads coming in at that time and we won the intermediate a couple of years before and then came up into the big time. Everybody thought the final was going to be a walkover but we dug in and we played good open football.
“Why I got so much of the ball: I played centre three-quarters and we had big men in the midfield and so had Clann Eireann. I’m a wee man and I can’t jump and when I saw two or three men jumping for the ball, I realised that very seldom is there going to be a clean catch so I just stood back and waited on the breaking ball.
“Every time it broke I managed to get the hold of it and I was able to get it to somebody else or I went through their defence and took a score. That’s the way it panned out that day.
“For the goal I got the break again, I ran at the defence and they went on the back foot. They retreated and retreated and, once I got to the 21-yard line, I hit it a belt… Lucky enough she went into the onion bag!”
Aidan success that final was down to something he only discovered in the build-up to the game – training. Before then his social life took priority over football but he found out that putting in a bit of extra work paid off.
“That was the first time I really trained to play football,” he said.
“I was a bit of a rough-and-ready sort of a guy. I liked a pint and I liked the dancing… Over at St Mary’s Hall in Portadown every Sunday night they had the showbands in. It was great. Sometimes I went to Belfast, or down to Dundalk… Anywhere there was a good band, a bit of rock-n-roll.
“I worked hard as well, I was working with plasterers and I was up and down stairs with hods and all that craic.
“Then I started training and I stopped smoking, stopped drinking… I was far quicker to the ball and after that game they started to pick me for the county so I stayed with the county for two or three years.
“We had a nice team at that time with the Clans and it was a forerunner to the team that went on to win it again in 1969 and then up into the ‘70s when they won four in-a-row (1972-’75).
“Jimmy Smyth and Colm McKinstry and them all came on and they were the backbone of the Clans. Jimmy was a big fella, plenty of power, plenty of vision, he could play a good ball and he was a gentleman player.
“There was none of the ‘oul early-60s heavy hitting or dirty tackling that I was well used to. In the early-60s the football was half-brutal… There was hardly a match that went by that there wasn’t a whole row. We had it with Collegeland a few times, but mostly Crossmaglen.”
Jimmy enjoyed his time with the county but his work took him to Germany, then England, then Guernsey and then he spent three and-a-half years in Jersey.
“I got married in Jersey and then the wife got pregnant for some reason or another, I don’t know how that happened,” he says with another chuckle.
“We were living in an accommodation and there was a stipulation on it: No children and no pets.
“It was very hard to get anywhere else at that time in Jersey so we had to pack our bags and come home. We were intending to stay for a while and then go back to Jersey but we got settled here and we just stayed here.
“My wife Vivienne passed away in 2019 but I’m still here and I’ll be at the Athletic Grounds on Sunday with my daughter, son-in-law and the three grandchilder (sic).
“We’ll all be there and I’ll be shouting and roaring like a bull. I fancy the Clans, they’ve moulded together very well this year and they’re playing better as a team.
“Clann Eireann might have more big names but big names doesn’t mean nothin’. The only thing that matters is the performance, it’s all about what happens on the day.
“And don’t forget what happened in 1968!
“We were only a wee, middlin’ team but we beat the favourites and we can do that again. I’ll don’t there’ll be too much in it but I think we’ll win. We shall see.
“Anyway… I’d love to be playing.”
SEAMUS McConville was full-back for Clann Eireann that Sunday afternoon in 1968. He had to keep his eye on Clans full-forward Kevin France while Aidan Patterson was doing the damage from further out the field.
Like today, Clann Eireann were a force to be reckoned with back then. They reached five county finals in-a-row from 1959 to 1963 and seven between 1959 and that Lurgan derby in 1968 but only won one of them.
“I was near the end of my career then,” says Seamus, a MacRory Cup winner at St Colman’s College, Newry who played in the 1957 All-Ireland minor final with Armagh.
“I was nearly 30 and most of our players were getting on a bit at that stage. We had been playing in county finals from ‘59 and then ‘60, ‘61, ‘62, ‘63, ‘65 and ‘68 and we only got one out of whole lot – ‘63.
“We had a good enough season in 1968 and we would have been going into that game favourites but were probably a bit flat on the day. I remember Aidan coming through with the ball and scoring that goal and it turned the game on its head.
“It was nearly inevitable that they (Clan na Gael) were going to come through because of our age profile. We didn’t think that at the time obviously but when you think back on it, they were on the way up and we were on the way down. We had been going well for a long time and Clan na Gael had been in the doldrums and then they started to come again.
“That was the start of a very good Clan na Gael team at that time and they went on to take over for the next 10 years.
“We went down to see them after the match and enjoyed the craic and when we won the championship again in 2021 there a lot of them came over to Clann Eireann and did the same. We respect each other, there’s always been that rivalry, but there’s a mutual respect.”
Clann Eireann had beaten Clan na Gael in the 1954 county final and Lurgan came alive with championship buzz before that 1968 decider.
Since Clan na Gael’s semi-final victory over Madden was followed by Clann Eireann’s success against defending champions Crossmaglen a fortnight ago, the hype around the town has grown steadily.
Seamus’s grandsons Conor and Aodhan were part of the Clann Eireann championship-winning team in 2021. Midfielder Conor is the team captain. He began the championship with 1-1 against Maghery and continued that excellent form throughout the campaign with a superb performance in the Clann Eireann engineroom alongside Tiernan Kelly in the semi-final victory over Crossmaglen.
Seamus is a fixture at the games.
“I go all the time, I never miss,” says the former Armagh star whose grand-daughters are also having success with the Clann Eireann ladies.
Of course he’ll be there on Sunday but is he confident that the Gerry Fagan Cup will be making its way back to Clann Eireann’s home in Lake Street?
“I’d say we’ll be favourites,” he said.
“Local derbies are hard to call but we’ve a very strong panel of players. Three of the lads (Barry McCambridge, Tiernan Kelly and Conor Turbitt) started for Armagh in the All-Ireland final and we had another couple on the panel.
“So there’s a good, strong squad there. When the county boys have been away for so long they can disrupt the team when they come back in but we’ve had four or five games now and they’ve gelled in well so we’re hoping that will be good enough to get us over the line.
“They played very well against Cross in the semi-final – the whole team played well – so hopefully that will continue on Sunday.”
After 56 years went by in a flash, Clan na Gael and Clann Eireann meet once again in the Armagh county final.
This time Aidan and Seamus will both be in the stand.
Who’ll be buying the drinks on Sunday night?