“I played Fermanagh in the last game of the McKenna Cup for Donegal in Ballyshannon and woke up in the morning and couldn’t get out of bed.
“I couldn’t move. I had no power over the bottom half of my body. In an hour’s time I came round and was able to ring my mother.”
That was, and probably always will be, the most important ’phone call ever made by Eoin McHugh.
It may well have saved his life.
Eoin McHugh was the latest hot prospect in Donegal football in early 2015, elevated to the senior panel for the Dr McKenna Cup. The then 20-year-old was set to follow in the recent boot-prints of his cousins and Kilcar clubmates Ryan and Mark McHugh. His father James was an All-Ireland winner in 1992.
Eoin was so prodigious he had already started in two Ulster U21 Finals, albeit losing both to Cavan, and had another year at that grade still to go.
He certainly impressed in that senior game against the Ernemen. This paper reported that his “incisive runs repeatedly troubled Fermanagh’s defence.”
Initially named at wing-back, he played in attack, scored two points from play, and might have netted two goals only for superb saves from Fermanagh goalkeeper Thomas Treacy, who was named ‘man of the match’.
As it turned out, McHugh didn’t feature for the Donegal senior side again that year.
He puts a huge amount of pace and energy into his game, but when he simply couldn’t get out of bed that following morning in mid-January three years ago, he knew something was wrong.
This wasn’t simply the strain of the step up onto the senior stage, or student lethargy, with Eoin at that time studying at Sligo IT.
His mother recognised that, although he was a more reluctant patient, as he recalls:
“We went down to the doctor in Killybegs and she said she wasn’t sure but thought I should go to the hospital.
“I remember sitting in the car with my mother for 10 minutes, debating going or not. I said to her I didn’t want to go, I was thinking ‘I’m going to miss training or miss a game or something out of this’.
“My mother said ‘No, you’re going to hospital’.”
How right she was. It could have been far worse than being forced to sit out a training session or two, or a match.
“I spent two weeks in hospital then, in Letterkenny. Two weeks in isolation over the head of it. Thank God we went to the hospital that day.”
The reason released publicly was a ‘viral infection’. The precise problem was meningitis.
With the blessed benefit of hindsight, Eoin knows now the danger he was in, but back then his major concern was about getting back playing for Donegal.
His worries were about his physical fitness to play football, not the threat to his life.
Now at Ulster University, he opened up about the subject when talking about his previous experiences in the Sigerson Cup:
“I actually missed out on the Sigerson with Sligo. I took meningitis in 2015, my first year with Donegal, took meningitis in the January. That was pretty much the season gone.
“I tried to play with Donegal U21s, tried to play with the seniors, but I’d lost that much weight it ruined my season, ruled me out.
“I suppose I didn’t understand it was that big of a deal, but when I look back on it and my family looks back on it, it had a massive effect on me.
“I was down to maybe nine stone, I was skin and bones. Normally I would be 11, 11-and-a-half stone.”
Even blood ties, with his famous uncle Martin McHugh as one of his bosses then, couldn’t get him back onto a pitch, despite Eoin’s desire to do so: “Martin was actually manager of Sligo [IT] at the time, but I couldn’t play for him, I had to pull out of it.”
Still, with the impetuousness of youth, he didn’t stay away from football for long.
“The doctor was giving me six months before I could play football again – and I went back after 10 weeks, to play for the [Donegal] U21s. But again I was susceptible to ‘flus’ and everything because I was so run-down.”
He was running risks with his health, though. “I played in the Ulster [U21] Final against Tyrone – they ended up winning the All-Ireland – but they’d to take to me to Nowdoc [out-of-hours GP service] from training on the Monday before the Wednesday [of the final] because I took a kidney infection. I’d just been run-down.
“It was probably a silly move from myself to think about going back because the doctors had told me not to go back.
“Of course, being as stubborn as we are in Donegal, I said ‘No, I’m going back to play, this is my last year [of U21]’.”
Despite that illness before the final, he still started, and scored two points from play against Tyrone, but the demands he was placing on his body were too much.
“It pretty much ruled me out, through sickness and injuries, I didn’t get a kick of the ball with Donegal [seniors] and that was my own fault, really. I should have just pulled away for the year. Touch wood, I’m all right now.”
His physical recovery was complete by 2016, and he quickly established himself as a key player for Donegal over the past two seasons, with his speed and his finishing ability.
Yet long before 2015 was out he became all too sadly aware of the threat posed by the illness he had.
McHugh occasionally collects fellow UU man Gareth McKinless from Ballinderry en route to Belfast, and had done so the day we spoke, but no one in Ulster GAA needs even such a reminder to recall the tragic death of the latter’s clubmate Aaron Devlin in July 2015 - from meningitis.
“At the time I didn’t realise how serious meningitis was,” says Eoin. “It was only six months later Aaron Devlin died with it.
“I remember the Donegal doctor, Kevin Moran, who was in hospital every day looking after me, he came up to me when I was sitting on the physio bed at training and said to me ‘Have you heard about Aaron Devlin? You had the same thing. He just didn’t catch it in time.’
“When I look back on it – thank God, touch wood, I’m all right at the minute. But when you hear that about such a young fella, who was in the exact same position I was, coming into the start of his career... I played against him at U21level. I got away with it, I was extremely lucky.
“It was worrying, especially for my mother and father. My mother doting over me, I suppose – I’m the only boy in the house – she was worried about it.
“At the time I didn’t realise it. At the time I had no notion how serious it was. Thank God, now, I’m back to normal and healthy living.”
It’s no surprise, then, that Eoin McHugh looks after himself nowadays. His experiences three years ago clearly influenced his decision to step away from the Donegal senior set-up for this season, as he completes his finals at Ulster University.
Back in 2015 he put far too much strain on his system, leaving himself susceptible to illness.
“It was my first year playing with Donegal at senior level. I was going through my exams at Sligo and I used to take exam stress very badly.
“I was in the library from morning to night, trying to panic study, I suppose. I was living off coffee, living off bars of chocolate, not eating properly.
“I basically let myself get run-down and then, along with that, I was trying to cope with the hectic lifestyle of [senior county] training that I’d never dealt with in my life.
“I got run down from doing more than I’d ever done, not eating [properly]. The doctor reckoned it was airborne [virus], doing your exams with maybe 300 people in the place. I was so run-down I was susceptible to it.”
All that he went through in 2015 has made him re-assess his priorities in life. When he revealed his decision to leave the Donegal seniors this year, he explained:
“I’m looking forward to, hopefully, getting a degree – that’s the plan – getting into the real world, getting a job somewhere.”
Travelling right across Ulster, from the west to the east, was also a factor: “In Donegal, you’re so far away from everybody… If you want to be in Belfast, I was still leaving college at maybe four or five [to get back to training] and you’re still stuck in the middle of traffic for three hours to get home.
“It’s a lot of pressure on players, there’s a lot of extra things. It’s not just the training and gym aspects, there’s a completely different side where you might have to sit in a car for six hours just to get to and from training.
“Then Donegal itself, from Kilcar you’re talking an hour driving to training in your own county. People don’t understand that, in midland counties that aren’t so far away, that have better roads and infrastructure to Dublin and Belfast and these places.”
His passion for the game remains undiminished, not least because he helped his club Kilcar win the Donegal SFC last year for the first time since 1993, before he was even born.
“I’m fanatical to an extent, I think we all are, especially in Kilcar at the minute.
“But football’s not a life or death thing, you have to look at it that way.
“I would have been fanatical about it but I’m 23 now and I’ve got to the stage where you’ve to look at it that nobody dies over the head of football.
“Enjoying yourself in your lifestyle, having a good time, and being happy in your work, is far more important than any football game can be to you.”
Eoin McHugh has made it clear he wants to return for Donegal next year. This year, though, he’s doing the right thing for himself and his health.
