WITH four thriving clubs in the town, Lurgan’s GAA geography can feel as complicated as its history to the outsider.
Stefan Campbell was brought up in Taghnevan so he played his early underage football in the green, white and gold of St Paul’s.
However, Clan na Gael is the Campbell family’s club so his football path was destined to lead him down Francis Street.
What a talent the Clans gained when 11-year-old ‘Soup’ walked under the arch at Davitt Park.
He has been the best forward in Armagh for a decade. Is there a more complete player in the game? Last season, there wasn’t a defence in Ireland that could handle his burst of pace, his accuracy off either foot, or the vision and game intelligence that created score after match-winning score.
Armagh wouldn’t have won the Sam Maguire without him and he can count himself unlucky to miss out on an Allstar… but that’s another story.
The only one that concerns us now is Sunday’s senior football final.
The All-Ireland Campbell won in July was his first senior championship medal and he’ll add a second hot on its heels if the Clans beat their Lurgan rivals Clann Eireann in the Orchard County showpiece.
STEFAN’S elder brother John was a talented player too, maybe just as good as him. Had things worked out differently, John could have been the first Campbell sibling to win the Sam Maguire.
Plenty of his team-mates from the Armagh sides of the late 1990s went on to glory in 2002 and many good judges will tell you that John Campbell could have been part of that side.
Life took him in another direction and he missed out.
But he made sure his wee brother didn’t make the same mistakes.
“He was highly-rated,” says Stefan.
“But he struggled to decide what he wanted between the Gaelic and the soccer (he played for Glenavon and Lurgan Celtic) and you know how the Saturdays can go after the soccer is over. It doesn’t lend itself to the Sunday game I suppose.
“I’m sure he has a few regrets but he passed on those experiences to me.”
Stefan made his senior championship debut for the Clans as a 17-year-old against Crossmaglen 16 seasons ago. He broke into the team just 18 months after the Clans had reached the championship final in 2006 and might well have expected more success to follow.
“We had a good team but Cross were competing for All-Irelands back then,” he says.
“The closest we ever came to beating them until this year was my debut. I remember we were two points up and Cathal Short went for a point down into the ‘subway’ goals and the ball dropped it short and went into the net. They beat us by a point.
“After that we couldn’t get near them.”
Having said that, the Clans didn’t cross paths with their traditional rivals for a decade and more. While Cross remained the team to beat, the Clans spent eight years down at intermediate level and dropped as low as Division 2B for a season.
The Clans narrowly avoided an ignominious drop to junior football and they have been on an upward trajectory since. Subsequent management teams added layers of development and the Clans returned to the senior championship in 2021.
“The first game we got back at senior was Crossmaglen in the preliminary round,” Stefan recalls.
“They beat us but they couldn’t blow us away, so we came away from it thinking: ‘We’re not too far off it here’.
“The second year we lost to Killeavy after extra-time and then the third year (last season, with Ronan McMahon in as manager) we went to the final. This year we have backed it up so, yeah, the club is on the up, we’ve got a lot of young talent here and the plan is to go one step further on Sunday.
“We have a lot of youth coming through and that’s giving us an extra bit of quality. They were Feile winners at U14, 16 and back-to-back minors.
“They’ve been well coached right through and they’re fearless.”
SUNDAY’S opponents are of course the boys from up the road, Clann Eireann. These Lurgan neighbours have met twice in Armagh finals previously: 1954 (Clann Eireann won) and 1968 (Clan na Gael).
Memories of those famous jousts were rekindled last year when they met at the semi-final stage and all bets were off when Clann Eireann – looking the better team – eased into a six-point lead midway through the second half.
That’s when Campbell really began to get going and, as Clann Eireann lost their way, ‘Soupy’ took over. He finished with 10 points and his club reached the county final for the first time in 17 years.
“It was a big night for us,” he says.
“It was the biggest result we’d had in years. The penny dropped that night that the hard work of all the people behind the scenes – I’ll not name them because there’s too many of them – was paying off.
“It was a break-out game for a lot of the young talent in the club and it got us to our first championship final since 2006. Nobody gave us a chance going into that game, but we’ve been able to back it up. I know we’re underdogs for the final but I think we’re back where we deserve to be in the top three or four teams in Armagh.”
Whether or not the Clans are underdogs is open to debate. A campaign that began with a rousing victory over old rivals Crossmaglen at Davitt Park continued with a clean sweep through the group stage and on to knockout wins over Killeavy and Madden.
On the other hand, Clann Eireann did lose in the group stage but they came back impressively to dethrone defending champions Cross at the semi-final stage. On the face of it, there isn’t much between the finalists but Clans fans will look to ‘Soup’ as their matchwinner.
With young legs around him, the Armagh star, now 33, doesn’t have to be absolutely everywhere on the field for his club. If Clann Eireann shut him down, they’ll fancy their chances of winning but it’s not that simple.
Armagh team-mate Shane McPartlan has been a tower of strength in midfield, the likes of Niall Henderson and Michael McConville are capable campaigners and the talented crop of Clans youngsters coming through includes Callum O’Neill, James Austin, Jack Lavery and Shea McCann.
“Looking at the Cross-Clann Eireann game, I thought there was too much expected of Rian and Oisin,” says Stefan.
“That can happen – there can be too much asked of certain players in the county.
“Thankfully we’ve got the quality pushing through that allows me to maybe sit a bit higher and stay fresher closer to the goals. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I’ve a free role or anything, but I’m enjoying it.
“They want me on the end of calls, they want me on the end of plays and the burst that we’ve got from the young players who have come in allows me to do that.”
HE went away on holiday for a week after Armagh won the Sam Maguire. Parties were raging around the county while he was sunning himself and recharging his batteries on the beach.
When he came home, the thought of Crossmaglen in the first round of the championship was all he needed to get his head back into football but he admits he found the transition between Armagh’s orange jersey and the blue of the Clans a challenge.
“The format of the season – we had Cross first in the championship – was ideal to get me back in,” he says.
“Because Cross was coming up I knew I had to get back at it and I had a good week’s training going into that game.
“The transition was seamless but it was more the chemistry. You’re running plays with Aidan Forker and Rory Grugan for six-seven months and then you’re coming back to the club and the boys have a different way of playing. There’s different calls and I found my timing was off – I struggled with that.
“It became telepathic with the lads at Armagh and then you go back to the club and it was frustrating at the start but I never lose my enthusiasm for kicking a ball about the field.
“We’re in back-to-back county finals, Armagh has been in back-to-back Ulster finals, we won the Sam Maguire… What’s not to enjoy?
“We had some tough days but it’s not always about the result. We’ve been on a serious journey in the club and with the county and there’s no sign of that slowing down.”
SO where will the party be in Lurgan on Sunday night? Will it be the blue quarter of the town on Francis Street or across the railway tracks in Clann Eireann’s Lake Street heartland?
Both clubs are packed with county stars supplemented by up-and-coming young talent and battle-hardened quality club players.
And there are seven members of Armagh’s All-Ireland-winning panel on show. Campbell and McPartlan for the Clans on one side and Conor Turbitt, Barry McCambridge, Tiernan Kenny, Daniel Magee and Sean McCarthy on the other.
“They’re strong,” says Campbell.
“I think their three county starters were struggling a bit when they came back but they got a break and Clann Eireann were able to cope without them.
“There’s five All-Ireland winners in their team, let’s not forget that. They were champions in 2021 and I think within the group they probably thought they would have had another title by now but Cross took over.
“I think they took losing to us last year bad. From what I heard they were one of the first clubs back training in the winter and that has paid off for them. They put a lot of work in and you throw the five All-Ireland winners in with Ryan Owens and Shea Heffron… They’re a formidable outfit and ‘Turbo’ and ‘TK’ were unbelievable against Cross, that was the best I’d seen from them.
“It’s a healthy rivalry - we haven’t played each other enough for it to be bitter. Maybe that will change over time because it’s a rivalry that will light up Lurgan over the next 10 years because Clann Eireann have as much youth bursting through as we do. They have their championship – that’s what we want - and of course I respect them and hopefully it’s mutual.
“We’re confident; you have to be confident. We’re the only unbeaten team in the championship. We’re hard to beat, we’re well set up, we have a great management who I think are out-working every other management team in the county, if not Ulster.
“We have experience, youth, pace… I hope it counts but we’re going to have our work cut out.”
