Age: 38
Club: Four Masters
When did you play for Donegal? 1999-2010
What do you do nowadays?
We have a tyre company in Donegal town, Donegal Tyre Centre. It’s a family business.
Are you still involved in Gaelic football?
I still play senior football for Four Masters. We dropped down from Division One to Division Two, and it’s probably a better level when you’re at my stage.
What do you remember about your first game for Donegal?
We played Offaly in Ballybofey in a League game pre-Christmas, one of Mickey Moran’s first games in charge. I started in the middle of the field marking Ciaran McManus, so I was thrown in at the deep end. That was October/November time – I’d say if I’d been marking him in the middle of June I’d have had a bit more bother. At that time Tony Boyle was still playing but I remember he came up before the match and just had a few words for me, which was a big help.
What’s your best memory?
We won the League under Brian McIver in 2007, but we also had a great win against a very good Galway team in the Qualifiers in 2003. We drew with them in Croke Park and were taken back to Castlebar for the replay – a lot of people weren’t happy about that because they would have been very familiar with Castlebar, but there was a huge Donegal crowd there and we got the win. It was satisfying coming back on the bus.
And the worst?
We played Armagh in the Ulster final at Croke Park in 2007, and that was very disappointing. I also remember the year under John Joe Doherty, in 2010, we went to Croke to play Cork and they gave us a bit of a thumping.
Are you glad you played in your era rather than today?
It depends what you have on in your personal life, but it definitely has gone up another 40 or 50 per cent on what we were doing. For any inter-county player now, it’s a major lifestyle choice.
Any regrets?
Ah yeah, listen, you want to win as much as you can. Our regrets would be that we don’t have the medals to show for our careers, bar that League win in 2007. In terms of how I went about it myself, no, I did everything I thought was right at the time.
