IT’S the smaller details that have thrown Ruairi Lavery a bit in recent weeks.
When you reach this stage of a campaign, the football, the training, all that takes care of itself. If men can’t get motivated for an Ulster championship, after leading Clann Eireann to a fourth county crown last month, they may as well not be there.
The admin that comes with it is an unseen, unsexy side effect of success – and somebody has to do it.
“Submitting squad lists, what time you’re travelling, what time you’re arriving, how many people, interesting facts for the programme.
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The club secretary has been on looking a report for next week’s AGM too, though what goes in that could be radically altered by the outcome of Sunday’s provincial semi-final showdown with Errigal Ciaran in Newry.
Because these are heady days for the Lurgan club. So far this year both the boys and girls’ minor teams have lifted league and county crowns; ditto for the respective senior sides.
Last Saturday the Clann Eireann ladies won a second successive Ulster SFC title, with Lavery’s daughter, Anna, coming off the bench to help them across the line.
“She just loves it; she lives for it - and that team she has come up with are something else now, I have to say. Greg [McGonagle] has them very well drilled…”
But there was far more than paternal pride at play in Omagh.
Every step, every stride Clann Eireann take in a forward direction resonates deeply because of family connections that stretch back to the club’s inception over a century ago.
Lavery’s mother Aideen was a McCrory, and her father Joe played back in the 1940s and ‘50s. Aideen played camogie for Clann Eireann and Armagh, before finding a place at the very heart of the club through the youth club.
“When we were growing up, mum would have been leader in charge.
“That’s where myself and a lot of guys my age spent our lives. In the evenings you were down training or playing with the club, but in the afternoons or any night you didn’t have training you were in the youth club, and my mum was at the centre of that.
“You knew it was a big part of your life but when you become a parent, and when you see what it does for your children, it really inspires you to go and do your bit.”
The Lavery side is steeped in the club too, with dad Jimmy playing in the 1968 championship final – the last time, prior to this year, that town rivals Clann Eireann and Clan na Gael faced off in a county decider.
Ruairi wanted to follow in those footsteps, and a promising underage career that delivered a colleges’ All Star during his time at St Michael’s also saw him rub shoulders with the next generation of superstars on the Armagh minor side.
However, the abiding memory from that time is one of sadness above all else.
Because he was playing the day an Orchard side boasting the likes of future All-Ireland winners Steven McDonnell and Paddy Keever went into Ulster championship battle with a Tyrone side, managed by Mickey Harte and Fr Gerard McAleer, containing so many of the golden generation to come.
Yet nobody talks about that game, or the score, or what was at stake.
Instead, June 15, 1997 is remembered for the tragic loss of Red Hand forward Paul McGirr, the 18-year-old who died from injuries received following an accidental collision during the game.
Lavery’s counterpart on the line at Pairc Esler on Sunday - Errigal boss Enda McGinley - didn’t come into the Tyrone minor set-up until the following year, but a mark was left on all who would later form part of those remarkable sides.
“Paul McGirr is a name, of course, synonymous with Tyrone football,” wrote the three-time All-Ireland winner in these pages five years ago, “and his tragic passing was a seminal moment in the ensuing glory years Tyrone experienced.”
“It was surreal,” recalls Lavery.
“We were going there to try and win a football match, during the game it became apparent that Paul had suffered a serious injury, but never any more than that.
“As I recall, there was no more concern other than that he was injured… it wasn’t until we were coming back into Armagh later that Brother Ennis told us the lad hadn’t made it.
“That just changed the whole context of the day immediately. You were going from planning where you were going that night, as you do when a championship run comes to an end, to ‘God no, listen, I don’t think we’ll bother with that’.
“When you’re young, and you’re out there playing, you nearly think football’s a matter of life or death. You feel indestructible. But when something like that happens, it brings a different perspective to the whole thing.
“Another guy playing that day was Cormac McAnallen, he just went from strength to strength - he was so fit, so dedicated, the way he looked after himself… and then the circumstances in which he passed.
“It definitely makes you look at life a lot differently.”
After those couple of years with the county minors, though, Lavery’s career would not carry on the same trajectory.
Rather than becoming a stalwart of Clann Eireann sides, having first played senior football at 15, he drifted off the scene with coming anywhere close to fulfilling his potential. Injuries played their part, but so too did bad decisions “in terms of how committed I was”.
That haunts him still but, in a roundabout way, also led Lavery to where he stands today. The value of establishing a pathway from underage to senior is something that he, and many others at the club, have worked hard on.
The bulk of the current side – including Armagh All-Ireland winners Barry McCambridge, Tiernan Kelly, Conor Turbitt and Sean McCarthy - were part of his U21 championship-winning side from 2019.
Before that, he was involved alongside Kieran Robinson as Clann Eireann won an intermediate title and achieved consecutive promotions, leading them back to Division 1A. In the last two years, they have finished top of the pile.
Recent times have also seen the introduction of a second team that is more than holding its own at intermediate level.
“That’s one of the things we’re particularly proud of – we knew we had huge numbers coming through, so it was making sure we established a structure that gave a clear pathway for these young lads, all really good footballers, to transition from underage to senior.
“Which takes me back to my point; when I was playing we didn’t have the luxury of the players we have at the minute, and the fact we have an intermediate level team, guys coming out of minors are pushing for that, the pathway is clear, then if you’re good enough…
“Ethan McKenna, for example, did really well in that team last year and has been a massive part of our senior team this year. We train as one group as much as we can, so those lads coming through are getting exposed to the established senior players, and the standards that they set.
“Sometimes when you are an underage player with potential, and you’re exposed too early to the demands of senior football – and the expectation that brings – it can be a negative experience.
“Of course a lot of people thrive on it, but the fact that our club is in a position to develop these players hopefully will be a big benefit in the long-term.”
Whether Lavery was part of that future, however, was less than certain in the wake of last year’s championship semi-final exit to Clan na Gael. Having failed to kick on as expected after finally making the breakthrough in 2021, that one stung.
With such a rich crop, Clann Eireann had to capitalise. Whether or not Lavery and his management team would return for a third year became a talking point in the weeks and months that followed.
In the end, they did - and here they are.
Twelve months on, a decision vindicated in some fashion as revenge was reaped on the Clans, before a world of possibilities opened up in Ulster.
And there no-one more proud than the man at the head of it all.
“If you want the truth, for someone who had never managed at senior level, for anybody coming in to take over the county champions that had just won it for the first time in 58 years, it’s a daunting task.
“But you only ever regret the things in life that you don’t do, and the opportunity to manage my own club might never have come around again. I wasn’t going to pass that up.
“The first year was a very hard learning curve, in the second year we managed to win the league, got to the semi-final of the championship fairly handily then we were all very disappointed the way that game went.
“After that, you can look at it two ways – you can run away from it, or you can learn from it. While it was disappointing that we didn’t get to the final, I think it’s one of the reasons we’ve been able to go that extra step this year.
“Obviously it was very important we got that championship win this year because, I’ll be honest, whether I wanted to stay on or not, I don’t think that would’ve been the issue.
“But sometimes the biggest failure is stepping away when you’re close to success… now what you have is a special time, and a special club.
“The biggest sign of success is the fact it’s the middle of November and we’re still fighting over getting a pitch to train on - and I mean that in a good way.
“You don’t take days like these for granted.”
