Football

"If I had gone to the Armagh game I would have broken down crying" - Down cruciate victim Ryan McAleenan on his recovery

Ryan McAleenan had made a home for himself in the Down team before suffering a torn ACL last year. Picture by Margaret McLaughlin
Ryan McAleenan had made a home for himself in the Down team before suffering a torn ACL last year. Picture by Margaret McLaughlin Ryan McAleenan had made a home for himself in the Down team before suffering a torn ACL last year. Picture by Margaret McLaughlin

“Pop. When you tear or rupture the cruciate ligament in your knee, you hear a pop. It’s the first thing you’ll tell a physio when they rush to your aid. I’d heard the pop twice by the time I was 23.”


Cork forward and three-time cruciate victim, Colm O’Neill

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FIFTEEN minutes from time, there was little in the way of buzz left among the small travelling troupe of supporters in Pairc Tailteann.

Down were six points back on Meath, their slide down the chute to Division Three close to secured. A knock ends Darren O’Hagan’s game and there is no fanfare about the 56th minute substitution. The away fans are desolate and the home ones are oblivious.

But for Ryan McAleenan, it is a release like no other. Three hundred and sixteen days of inching his way back into the red and black, having officially joined the cruciate club last May.

On May 13, to be exact. The last 10 minutes of a club league game against Ballyholland Harps, which would be the county players’ final outing before being wrapped in cotton wool for the derby meeting with Armagh, and McAleenan gets into a wrestle for space.

His was more of a crunch than a pop.

“Me and another fella were tussling. He went to put me on the ground, I tried to stay on my feet and in doing that, my knee got stuck. I pretended that I didn’t hear a crunch but I did.

“I’d jarred it before and thought it was alright and tried to play on, but this was different, when I tried to play on there was no stability in my knee, it just kept buckling. I eventually came off and I knew myself, it swole up like a balloon straight away,” he says, stressing that he bears no grudge and that it was simply a normal tussle that went wrong.

It was almost three weeks before the scan results came back and in that time, the Warrenpoint defender had convinced himself that it wasn’t as bad as it first looked.

Within a few days he was back able to do his work in the gym, to squat, to deadlift, all the usual.

“I had it in my head ‘frig, I might be alright here, strap it up and it’ll be ok’.”

But eventually the news came back that he had torn his Anterior Cruciate Ligament. And while the damage had been completed in that tussle against Ballyholland, it turned out that he’d actually done much of it on February 25 – against none other than Meath.

“The way it worked, the surgeon said I’d actually done it about three months before the Ballyholland game.

“I had partially done the cruciate but the muscles in my quad held it together for so long. I just felt like I jarred it, like there was a bit of fluid behind the knee but you know yourself, you just plough on. Eventually against Ballyholland, it buckled.

“I thought I’d just jarred it against Meath, the first 15 minutes of that game. After a few minutes the pain went away and I thought it’d be alright.

“It was swollen up a wee bit the next day but after a few rubs, I felt like I was alright. It didn’t feel like anything serious. I thought if it was serious I’d be in agony, but I was able to play on pain free. My knee felt stiff at times but I thought it’d be alright.

“The cartilage is usually floating about but when the surgeon went in to do my knee, it was like a ghost town, there was nothing there. But the operation went well and he said if I do the rehab I’d be grand.”

Exactly a month to the date after the Ballyholland game, a piece of his hamstring is stripped and used to piece the torn ligament back together, and the comeback trail begins.

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IT’S safe to say that most observers outside Down wouldn’t be that au fait with McAleenan’s track record.

His first step towards a wider prominence was in Warrenpoint’s run to the Ulster intermediate club title in 2014, when his performances earned him a Gaelic Life Allstar as they narrowly lost out on a place in the All-Ireland final, beaten by a point by Ardfert of Kerry.

But events have transpired the last few years to curtail his footballing progress. A dislocated shoulder in 2015 robbed him of most of the season barring a bit of club championship, and he most of the whole of the following year out while studying for his PGCE in Newcastle.

His performances at the tail end of the year were enough to alert the eyes of Eamonn Burns and Cathal Murray, the latter whom he got to know while doing a six-month placement in St Colman’s College.

The 26-year-old only made his inter-county debut in the McKenna Cup win over Queen’s last January, but went on to play every single minute of their 10 games between pre-season and National League.

The introduction to it all was nearly enough for some. Of the six starting debutants in a humbling defeat by Fermanagh, only McAleenan and Shay Millar would stick it out and hold their jerseys in a team that improved rapidly as the ground hardened.

He had nailed down a starting slot in Eamonn Burns’ defence and had he been around for the summer that Down went on to have, there’s a good chance the general population would know a lot more about him now.

A primary school teacher, had someone built a bridge over Carlingford Lough he would have been merely a hop and a skip from his last gig in Silverbridge.

He’s been just a few weeks in Kilcoo primary school, where the black and white flags adorn every corner of the football-obsessed village, and he plans to start into some coaching when the kids return on Monday.

His grá for the game is rediscovered but for a few weeks after the injury, it was touch and go.

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BY the time McAleenan got the operation done, Down were sitting in an Ulster semi-final, waiting to spring an ambush on Monaghan.

Nine days before he went under the knife, Newry was a sea of red ‘n’ black delirium. A first designated home championship game in 18 years, a fancied Armagh side and the sun beaming down. Down put on a show. It was the perfect afternoon.

But Ryan McAleenan couldn’t bring himself to go and watch it. He nearly didn’t see it at all. He was so downhearted that he couldn’t bring himself to go to Páirc Esler.

“I wasn’t around the squad at that time, I shied away from it. I actually didn’t go to the Armagh game.

“I’d put in so much effort to it and, it might come across as a wee bit selfish, but if I had gone I would have broken down crying.

“Because that was so early and the initial phase of it, I just couldn’t face it. I gave my tickets away to my family. I went to the semi-final.

“My mum actually forced me to watch it on TV, I wasn’t going to. But I was roaring and shouting at the TV when I was watching it then.

“When I did the injury, my head would have been fairly down and I sort of wanted to get away from football for about a month after I did it.

“It would have been the likes of Eamonn got me back into the fold in terms of helping out in the lead up to the Ulster semi-final and final.”

For a few weeks, he didn’t want much to do with football at all. His cousin Niall McAleenan is in charge of Warrenpoint and tried to coax him out to training sessions to lend a supportive voice to the team.

“I said to him ‘my head’s all over the place, I just want to stay away from football a wee bit’.

“It’s a very lonely place. No matter what the manager says to you, it’s like if you’re not doing the training, you don’t feel part of the group.

“You’re trying to put as much into as possible but there were times where I just felt like a third wheel.”

The feeling did ease as the weeks went past and once he had absorbed the news, Burns and Murray did their best to keep him involved in whatever way they could, as his cousin did with the club.

He ended up on the pitch at Clones with Down in the Ulster final, but not in the capacity he would have liked. Instead of the number two jersey, he ended up wearing one of the Maor Uisce bibs.

“I found it hard,” he admits.

“The likes of Colm O’Neill doing it three times and coming back, I’ve so much respect for him. I dunno how I would do that three times.”

By the time a vengeful Monaghan brought down the curtain on their run to the last 12, he was stuck into his rehabilitation at the Abbey, doing his runs with physio Michael Walsh while the team was training.

His only setback came in the early weeks, when the knee felt fine after the operation and he agreed to take a day’s pay doing security at a concert.

“I was on my feet for about 10 hours that day and the next day when I came home, it was swollen up. I thought Michael was going to kill me,” he laughs.

“It set me back about a week but it was a blessing in disguise, a lesson that this is gonna happen if you don’t listen to the physio.”

The squad broke up on the last weekend of July and by the time they were back into heavy work, McAleenan had turned the corner.

Straight line running from the middle of October. Back on grass in late November. Ball-work in mid-January. In the third week of February, they let him off the leash and back into full-contact training. A couple of challenge games with club and county.

And then finally, on March 25 in Navan, the comeback.

“It makes all the rehab worthwhile. It was a pity about the result but it was nearly a relief getting back on the pitch at that level.”