Football

Down leader Peter Turley relishing another Championship campaign

Down's Peter Turley strides away from Tipperary's Jack Kennedy. Picture: Philip Walsh
Down's Peter Turley strides away from Tipperary's Jack Kennedy. Picture: Philip Walsh Down's Peter Turley strides away from Tipperary's Jack Kennedy. Picture: Philip Walsh

DOWN midfielder Peter Turley knows better than most of us why it’s so important to enjoy every moment of the football years.

The Russell Gaelic Union (RGU) Downpatrick clubman begins his ninth Championship season in the red and black jersey against Antrim on May 26 and, at 34, he’s well aware that time will eventually catch up with him.

But it's his job with the Fire Service that has taught him how precious health and happiness can be, because he has seen how both can be snatched away in the blink of an eye.

“I love my job, but you do see some bad sights,” said Turley.

“We would specialize in car accidents in my station and you see some bad sights.”

Understandably, he’s reluctant to talk about too much his work as a fireman, but he does recall one of the incidents that affected him deeply.

“There was a road accident a couple of years ago and we were first at the scene,” he recalls.

“A wee girl died. She was a big Down fan and we had a minute’s silence at the next home game.

“I played in that game and, as we stood for the minute’s silence, you remember going to that call and seeing it all and then you have to play a match… It can be difficult at times.”

Turley and his colleagues in the Fire Service have saved many, many lives in the course of their vital work. Dealing with life and death situations puts football into perspective, but playing for his club and his county is an important change of pace for Turley.

Six foot plus and built like a tank, he’s a bull of a man and, just like ‘My brother Sylveste’ in the song, you could pin a row of 40 medals on his chest.

Unfortunately, Turley hasn’t got that many although he’s come close over the years. Last season’s Ulster final against Tyrone was the latest in a series of deciders in which he finished on the losing side going back to his soccer days when, as a midfielder for Downpatrick FC, he saw dreams of Border Cup, Clarence Cup and Junior Cup final dashed.

Good enough to make the amateur league select XI, Turley was better known as a soccer talent until his uncle, former Down senior Timmy Slavin, took over as manager of the Downpatrick U16s. Young Peter was his first recruit.

“I hadn’t played from I was 10,” Turley explained.

“My uncle didn’t know too many so he told me to make sure I came and to bring as many people up with me as I could. That got me back into it.”

He was called into the Down minor panel in 2000 and also lined out for the U21 side before then manager Ross Carr gave him and his Downpatrick team-mate Peter Telford up for their senior debuts in the 2007 Dr McKenna Cup.

Thirteen years earlier, Turley had been one of the Down hordes who had cheered Carr on to All-Ireland glory.

“I remember watching the game in my auntie’s house,” he said.

“As soon as we won it we all got into the car and drove around Downpatrick beeping the horn, which everybody else was doing.

“We waited down town for the bus coming home but it didn’t get back in time and we had left by the time they got there.”

Carr – who succeeded Paddy O’Rourke in the role – cast his net as far as Downpatrick as he scoured the county for fresh talent and Turley was one of the young hopefuls from less fashionable clubs who benefitted.

“It was massive for me to get called up,” said Turley.

“Fair play to Ross, he had loads of trials.

“A lot of people at the time were saying that the clubs in east Down weren’t getting a fair crack. He came in and made sure that everybody did get a fair crack at it.”

Turley returned to university in Preston soon after that McKenna Cup run-out but he returned to the Down fold the following year and cut his Championship teeth as a sub when Carr sent him out to curb the aerial threat posed by Laois forward Donie Kingston.

“I hadn’t played full-back before but they needed somebody big to mark Kingston and they threw me in,” he recalled.

“I did well. We beat Laois that day, we were a bit under the cosh and I won a few balls that were kicked in and they sort of ran out of ideas. That sort of turned the ride. Well, I like to think it did anyway.”

Turley was a fixture for Down until 2010. By that time he had joined the Fire Service and his work commitments meant he couldn’t get away to training.

Carr had kept him on the panel throughout the 2009 season, but when James McCartan took over, Turley decided to step away.

“Of course that was the year that they got to the All-Ireland final!” he observes with an ironic laugh and he might have been lost altogether if it hadn’t been for the flexibility and encouragement shown to him by his boss Maurice ‘Mo’ Field.

A former Ulster and Ireland rugby international, Field understood how important a life outside the service was and he had grown to appreciate Gaelic Football while lecturing at Ulster University.

“Mo said to me one day: ‘Would you not think about going back (to Down)?’” Turley explained.

“I told him I couldn’t give the commitment with work.

“He wasn’t given leave to go and play for Ireland and it still annoyed him and that he was never given the time. He said if I got back on the panel he’d help me out any way he could

“Lucky enough, Aidan O’Rourke rang me to go back and so I went and told Mo. He said: ‘Go ahead, we’ll do everything we can’. And he did do a lot for me.”

With the backing of Field, Turley soon established himself as a fixture in the Down ranks. ‘Mr Consistency’ AKA ‘Mr Dependable’, he was a combative presence in midfield and became a folk hero with the Mourne county fans.

“I give it my all and they seem to recognize that when I play,” he says.

“I always try to give it everything and they appreciate that more than anything.”

Often he looks like he has given everything well before the final whistle, but that’s an illusion. Neil Collins, part of the Down management team, remarked after the Division Two campaign that Turley often looked exhausted, but that he was somehow able to make another run or tackle, or catch another ball.

“It’s my body language,” says Turley.

“I always give the perception that I’m out on my feet.

“James (McCartan) or Jim McCorry said to me that I always looked really, really tired but I’m not as tired as I look. You always get a wee bit of a rest and then you can go again.

“The first time I ever was out on my feet was in the Monaghan game in Ulster last year and I said to Cathal (Murray) that I had given my everything and to take me off – that’s the only time I have ever said it.

“I was actually wrecked that day and the longer the game went on the more I was fouling making tackles.

“I didn’t want to give away any more fouls so I said: ‘Get me off, get somebody else on here’. It seemed like another five or 10 minutes after it that he actually did get me off.”

Against all the odds, Down won that Ulster semi-final. The previous year the Farneymen had hammered Down by 19 points in Clones, so they were overwhelming favourites on the day.

“Of course it was unexpected,” Turley readily concedes.

“We maybe caught Monaghan on the hop last year but we’ll not get away with it this year – we’re going in favourites against Antrim and we need to make sure we’re not the victims this time.

“I watched Antrim against Donegal last year and I know Donegal won by a high margin in the end but Antrim put it up to them in the first half and they had a few goal chances. I always think that when you miss a chance, your heads drop and the other team gets a lift – if they had taken them it would have been a lot more competitive.

“Antrim will be coming the same way we went in against Monaghan last year – with nothing to lose. They’ll come in to give it their best shot so we have to be focused for it, it will be a difficult game and hopefully we’re ready for it.”

Last year’s run was attributed by some to Down’s fingertip survival in Division Two. This year they were relegated despite taking three wins from their programme.

“We’re very similar now to where we were last year,” says Turley.

“Last year we were very lucky to turn things around. A lot of it was to do with luck.

“We finished on five points and that kept us up. Against Cork, although we played very well, we still only scraped a draw – we got an equalizer in injury-time.

“This year it has been the opposite and it shows you what football is like. I wasn’t playing against Clare, but the amounts of chances we missed in that game… The penalty we missed…

“I knew it wasn’t going to be our night but if a few scores had gone over early in that game it could have been a completely different night. The more chances we missed, the more our heads started to drop but if we had got something from that game we wouldn’t have been the bother we were in.

“But that’s football and once the League is done and dusted you just draw a line under it and move on. Every Championship year is different and you go in and give it your all.”

In his early days with Down he was always made welcome by the likes of Benny Coulter, Dan Gordon, Liam Doyle and Danny Hughes but says “you had to earn your place”.

“Lucky enough my role was just to get it to those boys and let them do the football,” he says. His role is still primarily about winning the ball, but he is a real leader in the side.

“I suppose that comes with being around so long,” he said.

“You always try to pass on what you’ve learned and when things are going wrong you try to calm it down and get them focused again.

“Whenever you’re young, you’re conscious that every time you get on the ball in a Championship match people are watching and you can be a wee bit afraid to make a mistake.

“I would always be saying to them: ‘Everybody makes a mistake, it’s how you react to it – lift your head and go for the next ball. Don’t be afraid to make a mistake, just go out and play’.

“At the end of the day, yes, it’s Championship football, and, yes, it’s a higher pace, but it’s still just another game and you go out and do what you do in any other game.”

Finalists last year, Down start this campaign believing that if they produce their best they can compete with the top sides in Ulster.

Peter Turley knows that anything is possible and, whether he looks knackered or not, the fans, the management and his team-mates will know that there’s always more fight in him.

He's a man you’d always want on your team.