AS MONAGHAN aim to become the latest Ulster winners of the All-Ireland U21 Football Championship, Kenny Archer talks to a man who was on the first team from the north to triumph at that level, Derry's Adrian McGuckin...
THE 1968 All-Ireland U21 semi-final between Derry and Kerry included one future Ireland rugby icon - and perhaps it could have been two.
Adrian McGuckin recalls: "One of their players that day, playing full back for them, was 'Moss' Keane, who went on to become a rugby legend."
Yet, Adrian himself "was mad about the rugby" and played for Ulster schoolboys. Indeed, he was once part of a front-row who all went on to become well-known, with future BBC boxing and rugby commentator Jim Neilly and hooker Ronnie Flanagan, a future chief constable of the RUC/PSNI.
"I propped one year, but my normal position was flanker or number eight, it was just one year they were short of someone in the front-row. To tell you the truth, I hated the front-row, that was a one-off. I usually played number seven or eight."
To reiterate though: "I loved the rugby. I was at the Rainey and playing for Derry seniors in my upper sixth year, captain of the Rainey that year, so I would have been playing rugby on the Saturday and for Derry on Sunday in the National League.
"Whenever I went away to [De La Salle] college in Manchester, Derry flew me home for matches. I'd have been away over the Pennines, playing in Leeds or some place and rushing to get a plane home at six or seven o'clock on a Saturday evening to play for Derry the next day. I just thought that was par for the course.
"I remember you only had the one kit and coming home plastered with muck from head to toe; your mother would have been washing it by hand and getting it dried for the next morning. At that time, you had 'the Ban', but if you went to a school or college that didn't play GAA, it was acceptable to play rugby. I never, ever felt that people thought anything less of me for playing rugby; most people thought I was different by doing it. My brothers all went to the Rainey and loved the rugby, but we were all big into the GAA."
Even so, Adrian admits that "for a long time, I would have been considering going in the rugby direction. As a matter of fact, I'd signed to play rugby for Wigan. Rugby league was only semi-professional, so combining it with teaching would have been nice.
"But Derry were going so well and the GAA was very much in my DNA… I'm quare and glad, I've no regrets whatsoever. You always wonder what might have been, if I could have reached the highest level in rugby, but I've no regrets at all.
"I had a great Gaelic career in every area: Ballinderry, Derry, St Patrick's, Maghera and Jordanstown. Nothing only unbelievable memories of everything I've been involved in."
