ELEVEN months before he made a memorable Championship debut for his club, Brendan Rogers was kicking his heels quietly on the fringes.
Not even the fringe of the senior team. Rather, he was only on the bench for Slaughtneil reserves for their Championship clash with Loup. That was as recently as 2013. A talented young hurler and footballer, there was perhaps a lack of self-belief about his abilities with the big ball. So he threw himself into the county hurling setup as a teenager.
Chrissy McKaigue cajoled and prodded at him until, eventually, Rogers decided to give football a proper rattle: “I actually was on the bench for the reserve championship the year before against the Loup. I was playing Derry hurling all the time. Chrissy was adamant with me for about two years, saying I’d get on the senior football team," he said.
“I was just out of minors and playing reserve football, like most people do. Then you get asked to play county hurling and I thought why not, the experience would do me the world of good.
“Chrissy was always adamant if I applied myself to football the way I went to county hurling, I’d get on the senior team. That year [2014] I thought I’d give it a go, and that’s where I ended up.”
It wasn’t that he would have categorised himself as a hurler. His youngest memory is of playing against Portglenone as a “seven or eight” year-old out on "the marsh", as he calls it, referring to - and indeed pointing towards - the old training pitch that meets you first on the right hand side as you pour through the gates of Emmet Park.
There, in his first ever game he marked Dermot McAleese, with whom he’d end up playing Sigerson football at Queen’s University. Under Pat Cassidy - father of Rogers’ young midfield team-mate Pádraig - Paddy Flynn and Francis McEldowney - a different one, not the current captain- he sprouted, but it was a long time before he bloomed.
He never played minor or U21 football for Derry, missing out on the latter twice for different reasons. He accepted Paddy Crozier’s invitation to a trial in late 2013, but quickly decided that with club football and hurling commitments, he had enough on his plate and bowed out.
The following year, he had found his way onto the Slaughtneil side and they just so happened to win Ulster. The day after Slaughtneil were beaten in the All-Ireland club final by Corofin, Derry U21s lost to Monaghan in Inniskeen in an Ulster semi-final.
By then, he had appeared on the radar. That first championship performance brought him from nowhere to being the man Slaughtneil were entrusting for their big man-marking jobs.
That first night, in a repeat of the first round from the year previous against Ballinascreen, he was handed the task of marking Benny Heron. Rogers was superb, one of the key catalysts in a four-point win that was the first step on their road to a first Derry title in 10 years and, eventually, an Ulster title too.
Picture by Margaret McLaughlin Rogers leads the three in-a-row celebrations after Slaughtneil beat Loup in the Derry Senior Football Championship final at Celtic Park
Picture by Margaret McLaughlin
He played in seven of their nine games that summer, missing the Ulster wins over Cavan Gaels and Clontibret with a hamstring injury. Across those seven games, he remarkably kept Benny Heron, Ryan Bell, Conor Murphy (twice), Benny Quigg and Omagh’s Jason McAnulla all scoreless from play. The only man to take him for a score was Dungiven’s Darrell O’Kane in the drawn semi-final, when he hit 1-1 off him.
He was quickly established as the resident number three. Rogers had played his underage football in defence and when Cathal Corey used him sparingly in the year before Mickey Moran came in, it was on the edge of his own square.
“I’m not sure how I got staying at full-back. The first day I played it was against Bryansford on our bottom pitch in an Ulster League semi-final, we got beat by 35 points. It was the day Jim Kelly retired. I got a wile hammering by Danny Savage. That was day one at full-back," he added.
“It can be a bit boring. The first year I played senior Championship we went to the All-Ireland. I know I missed two games with the hamstring but I think I kick-passed the ball once that year in the Championship. Seems very effective, doesn’t it?” he laughs.
Some afternoons bring the opportunity to throw off the chains. Derrygonnelly in October was one such example, when their retreat behind the ball offered Rogers space, which the scorer of two Championship points in his career made the most of in a man-of-the-match display.
“When you stretch the legs a bit, you get the freedom to kick it left and right a bit. I’d take the odd shot if I don’t get a nosebleed,” he said.
For all the success the now-famous club at the foot of Carntogher mountain has enjoyed, it’s the rare difficult afternoons they’ve endured that have really shaped them.
No matter how classy Corofin were, the All-Ireland final defeat did leave an indelible scar on the psyche. It seems so much longer ago now than 18 months.
“You don’t forget. You never forget that final whistle where they’re celebrating and you’re not. I got a brave runaround that day. You learn from it and you don’t forget," Rogers said.
“You look forward to those occasions all your life but you never think of what happens when you don’t win. Everybody’s learnt a lot from that as regards preparation and other things. Maybe that’s what put us where we are today; learning from mistakes. You don’t forget it.”
But it would be a little-known fact that Rogers already had an All-Ireland medal by then. Like all his siblings, he attended the Allen School of Dancing as a youngster.
In the days before he was old enough to know the difference, the Allen School danced for Slaughtneil’s near neighbours and on-field rivals Glen in Scór competitions.
They won the Ulster and All-Ireland titles in 2009, when he danced alongside seven others including his cousins Deaglan and Ronan Lowry, also from Slaughtneil. He has since represented his own club in the same competition in Scór, and it’s a passion he continues to pursue.
“I missed the Ulsters because we were playing Derrygonnelly there. I missed them last year with the Scotstown game as well, but I would still do the Worlds, that’s on Easter week.”
A man of many talents.
