Football

Lavey's time will come, but it's more of an essence for Eoghan Rua

Eoghan Rua won their first Derry SFC title eight years ago, and 11 of the 16 players they used that day will feature in tomorrow's final having been ever-presents since. Picture by Margaret McLaughlin.
Eoghan Rua won their first Derry SFC title eight years ago, and 11 of the 16 players they used that day will feature in tomorrow's final having been ever-presents since. Picture by Margaret McLaughlin. Eoghan Rua won their first Derry SFC title eight years ago, and 11 of the 16 players they used that day will feature in tomorrow's final having been ever-presents since. Picture by Margaret McLaughlin.

O’Neills Derry SFC final: Eoghan Rua, Coleraine v Erin’s Own, Lavey (tomorrow, 3.30pm, Celtic Park)

LAVEY would equate their 25-year wait to win back John McLaughlin to a lifetime, but Eoghan Rua are the ones that know how long a lifetime really is.

Never mind winning anything, just keeping a GAA club going in such a staunchly unionist area as Coleraine was enough of a challenge. Mere existence was an achievement from their formation in 1957 until their first junior title 40 years later.

Theirs is still not the widest of nets given the population at hand, but it’s growing. This, a third senior final, is all the culmination of decades of persistence, coupled with the fortune to have a remarkably dedicated crop all come along at once.

Of the 16 players they used in the 2010 final, 11 will play tomorrow. They have maintained remarkably high standards since. The acquisition of Gavin McWilliams from Kilrea and the growth of, in particular, Liam McGoldrick and Ruairi Mooney have been hugely important in that.

They won almost everything going in 2017 - Ulster League, Derry league, All-Ireland sevens, Dr Kerlin Cup. But they were caught cold by their old nemesis Ballinascreen in the championship semi-final.

That left an overwhelming sense of a great chance lost, one that might never come their way again.

With each winter that comes, that feeling grows. Of their starting team tomorrow, 10 of them will be 30 or older.

Their ingrained gym culture has been a massive influence. They took Derry football by storm in 2010 because of it. They were faster and more powerful than anyone else. Others have caught up, but not overtaken.

Yet the window for the current generation, which has stayed open for eight years, is starting to swing back on itself.

The same only applies to a smaller crop of the Lavey team. They have eight starters that go back to the infamous 2010 semi-final defeat by Ballinderry, yet only Damian Chivers (34) and Michael Drumm (33) – the former on the latter’s wedding yesterday – would probably concede this could be their big chance.

Those two have been magnificent servants in the orange, endlessly devoted in a decade of swimming upstream.

Lavey spent most of the 2000s near the bottom end of senior football, winning relegation playoffs here and there to keep their heads above water.

It’s eight years now since they opened the massive Termoneeny Centre, built in conjunction with the local community group at the cost of £2.4million. It was a bold project, providing a small village with a facility more at home in the big city.

It has all the mod cons but the big one is the indoor 3G pitch. Close to full-size, it allows them to keep their underage coaching going 12 months of the year.

Same as in Coleraine, where they’ve long trained out of the more modest St Joseph’s Hall. Sean McGoldrick, an Alex Ferguson-type figure, instigated the year-round plan a while back, but long-term that’s in limbo now with the hall set for closure when St Joseph’s school finishes up over the next two years.

This year, Lavey won their second consecutive Derry U16 championship. Their minors reached the county final, where they lost a game of exceptionally high quality by a point to Bellaghy. Lavey finished with seven U16s on the pitch.

They’d gotten there by beating Magherafelt by six points. Four years previous, they’d lost a Féile na nÓg final to the same Rossa side by 20 points.

Some 30 years on from his first county title with his native club, John Brennan, who’s won all 10 of his previous county championship finals, came back in this term alongside his nephew Seamus Downey.

Along with his brother Henry, the Downeys have spearheaded so much of the underage work that’s been done to get them to this point.

Yet there’s a sense that this year, in terms of the timeframe in which they’d have been targeting championships, has come somewhat out of the blue for Lavey.

Finding their wings and imposing another dynastical period on Derry football might be something for down the line.

And yet for a club like them, to win tomorrow could be enough to set a fire raging. When you have tradition at your back and you rediscover the art of winning, everything thereafter seems to just get that little bit easier.

Lavey played the semi-final to perfection, and a large part was their match-ups. Getting them right tomorrow looks a more onerous task, and one which have a big bearing.

Conor Mulholland, set for a call-up to the Derry squad after a fine summer, will likely pick up Coleraine skipper Colm McGoldrick.

At the other end, Cailean O’Boyle may again be held in reserve by Downey and Brennan, who saw their low, diagonal style in to Niall Toner pay such dividends the last day. Ciaran Mullan’s the man for that job.

Eamon McGill, so good against Ciaran McFaul, will go on Sean Leo McGoldrick. Niall Holly and Kevin O’Neill will slug it out in the air. Everywhere you look, there are 50-50 battles.

Perhaps if Shea Downey’s fit after missing the championship following a complicated appendix operation, that bit of unknown could be a major swing in Lavey’s favour.

And yet Eoghan Rua come with both regret and experience. They left it all in the changing room for 45 minutes in 2015. They only started when they were six down, and they cut Slaughtneil’s winning margin to just one before the clock ran out.

It’s their adaptability that makes them so difficult to beat. They’ll play you at chess and they aren’t shy about a gunfight.

They found themselves six down again to the Emmet’s in their replay last month, but in a brilliant man-for-man encounter, they’d enough time on the clock and fuel in the tank this time to swing it and win by one.

As a club, Lavey’s cycle is a different one from Eoghan Rua’s, and yet as two crops of players, there are as few guarantees for those in their mid-20s as for the mid-30s.

The legacy of Lavey’s work will be the John McLaughlin Cup spending many a winter in Gulladuff over the next two decades.

But Eoghan Rua’s once-in-a-lifetime generation have no time left to spare. This one should be theirs.