THE parents of young Tyrone GAA star Paul McGirr have spoken of their final moments with the teenager before he died from injuries received during a Gaelic football match two decades ago.
The 18-year-old passed away in hospital hours after an accidental collision while playing for his county in an Ulster minor championship clash in June 1997.
His death had a profound impact on his teammates - many of whom went on to be part of Tyrone’s golden generation of Gaelic footballers.
While the county’s rise to All-Ireland senior success in the 2000s is a story of skill and determination, it also came against a background of tragedy and personal loss.
The death of Paul McGirr was compounded weeks later when Paul Hughes - a brother of Tyrone player Kevin Hughes - was killed in a car accident.
Kevin, who was a key member of the ’97 squad, played an All-Ireland semi-final just days after his brother’s death.
The inside story of that squad is revealed in a new documentary due to be broadcast tomorrow.
The makers of ‘Tír Eoghain: The Unbreakable Bond’ chart the dramatic rise in Tyrone’s footballing fortunes between 1997 and 2003 - when the county won its first All-Ireland senior title.
It reveals how 11 members of the defeated ‘97 minor team went on to form the backbone of Tyrone’s success in the noughties as the county claimed the Sam Maguire trophy three times in just six years.
Paul McGirr was a rising star and a pivotal member of the county’s minor panel when his life was cut cruelly short during the championship match against Armagh in Omagh.
His devastated mother Rita reveals how she looked on as her son suffered his injury as he scored a goal.
“I was at the other side of the pitch on the terrace,” she said.
“We saw the goal and we saw Paul going down and he didn’t get up again.”
Rita revealed how her son asked her not to leave him as he hung on to life.
“He was able to speak to us before he went and he said ‘Don’t leave me’ and that was the last words we spoke to him,” she said.
His father Francis also recalled how, despite being seriously injured, Paul asked about the result of the game before he slipped away.
“He spoke to me, he asked me ‘Any result of the game?’ and I said ‘Yes, Tyrone won and they won by the four points that you scored’,” he said.
Mark Harte, son of Tyrone manager Mickey Harte, was playing alongside Paul the day he died.
In an emotional account he speaks of the guilt he feels over the death of his former friend.
“I could see Paul was in pain but I also felt he was in good hands, if that makes sense,” he said.
“And so he got a round of applause as he was taken off the field.
“I turned my attention back to the game and I feel guilty because of that.”
Triple All-Ireland winner Brian McGuigan also tells how he shed tears for his former teammate.
“I hadn’t cried at all up until that point when I saw Paul in the coffin and it just hit me how a man so young could be took,” he said.
“You start questioning yourself, you start questioning God.”
Mickey Harte, who was joint manager of the ‘97 minor team, speaks too about his shock.
“I remember thinking ‘This cannot be true’ but it was,” he said.
“I remember going up to the hospital, up to the bed and seeing Paul there in the bed still in his Tyrone gear and I thought to myself ‘This is just a complete nightmare. This is not what happens to young men when they go out to play football on Sunday afternoon, there’s something wrong here'”.
At his funeral both the Tyrone minor and Armagh teams formed a guard of honour.
In the months that followed Paul's teammates progressed to the All-Ireland semi-final when they played Kerry in a drawn game at Croke Park.
Days after the match, death visited the squad for a second time when Paul Hughes was killed in a crash on the road between Ballygawley and Dungannon.
His brother Kevin was a key member of the panel and bravely decided to line out in the replayed game.
He tells the documentary makers it was a “very simple decision”.
He said his sibling was “one of those brothers that would never actually tell you that you were doing well”.
“I suppose personally I just wanted that acceptance from him, to say well done,” he said.
“It’s funny, the night of the drawn Kerry game when I got off the bus my brother was there waiting for me and he came out and gave me a big hug and says ‘I’m so proud of you our boy’.
“That really comforted me at the time, it surprised me at the time because it was the first time he had ever said anything like that to me.
“For him to say that to me, that he was proud of me and that was the last time he ever saw me play football, it made it an easy decision to go out and make him even prouder.”
Kevin Hughes suffered a second personal blow in 2001 when his sister Helen was killed in a collision on the same stretch of road where his brother died four years earlier.
While the ’97 team failed to win the All-Ireland, the following year many of the players were part of the squad that did claim the minor title in a victory that acted as a springboard for the county’s future successes at under-21 and senior level.
However, there would be more trauma in the years that followed with the sudden death of Cormac McAnallen in 2003.
Eight years later, Mickey Harte’s daughter Michaela, who also features in the documentary and was close to many of the players, was murdered while on honeymoon in Mauritius.
* Tír Eoghain: The Unbreakable Bond, which has been made by EMM Productions, will be screened on TG4 tomorrow at 8.30pm.
