Football

Glory days: St Gall's thrilling run to the 2010 All-Ireland title

St Gall's players celebrate after they beat Clare's Kilmurry-Ibrickane to win the 2010 All-Ireland title. <br />Pic Seamus Loughran
St Gall's players celebrate after they beat Clare's Kilmurry-Ibrickane to win the 2010 All-Ireland title.
Pic Seamus Loughran
St Gall's players celebrate after they beat Clare's Kilmurry-Ibrickane to win the 2010 All-Ireland title.
Pic Seamus Loughran

From 2001 until 2013, Belfast’s St Gall’s was Antrim football’s superpower. The Milltown club won 13 out of 14 county titles, including a five in-a-row and an eight in-a-row and were crowned Ulster champions in 2005. They lost to Galway’s Salthill-Knocknacarra in a nail-biting All-Ireland final on St Patrick’s Day in 2006 and many feared that the club’s big chance had gone. But four years later Lenny Harbinson’s side returned to Croke Park and captured the Andy Merrigan Cup with a commanding victory over Clare’s Kilmurry-Ibrickane. Kevin Niblock looks back on those glory days with Andy Watters…

No more ‘city slickers’…

JOHN Rafferty (former manager) got rid of a lot of that, he called us out for it in 2006. He told us that’s what teams were thinking about us. I remember Raff giving us a speech before the Ulster final against Bellaghy, it was something along the lines of: ‘Yous are pansy, soft, city f**kers’ basically. Yes, a lot of us are from the city but there are a lot of influences outside of that. My father played for Derry and although we were city men there were a lot of boys with roots in the country.

You had to take the ‘city boys’ stick but it was never too bad and anyway you didn’t have time to focus on the verbals - it was more the physical stuff!

The rub of the green…

Between 2006 and 2010 there were games we should have won, like Cavan Gaels in 2009, but in that 2009/10 run we got the rub of the green. You need that bit of luck if you are going to be successful in a campaign that goes on for such a long period of time and I always go back to the Pearse Og match in the first round of Ulster.

That year Pearse Og had beaten Crossmaglen in Armagh and when we heard Cross weren’t coming out of Armagh we were delighted but I’ll always remember how close that game was and I remember Ronan Clarke having a one-on-one with Ronan Gallagher (goalkeeper) in the last minute. Ronan was probably the last man in Ireland you’d want one-on-one and he could have put us out that day but he missed.

Conor Clarke was at the back post but Ronan went for it himself and he had every right to do so. He tried a sidefoot shot aiming for the corner and he just missed it. Talk about relief went it went wide! My heart was in my mouth.

If that had gone in Pearse Og could have gone on to have a great season but our luck was in that day and we needed a bit of luck to give us a boot up the backside and get moving for the final two games in Ulster.

When you think back to those sort of moments you know how much luck you need to go along with the skill and the ability you have in the team. After we got over Pearse Og, Clontibret wasn’t easy but we pulled away, Rory Gallagher had a very good game that day, and then we hit our stride going into the Ulster final (against Loup).

It wasn’t that we were complacent against Pearse Og, we knew they were a very good side, but I just don’t think we performed the way we could that day and we owed it to ourselves and to a lot of people to put in performances against Clontibret and then the Loup who were two seasoned sides at that stage.

I played in 2003, our first Ulster campaign, when they beat us, so to beat the Loup in 2009 was great. It was a great Ulster campaign and we went through the gears initially and hit the ground running for what was a massive All-Ireland semi-final against Corofin, and we all know what they’ve done since.

Conquering Ulster…

PAT McEneaney – the best ref I came across – was the referee for the Ulster final against the Loup and in the first minute I was dragged down for a penalty but it wasn’t given and I remember thinking: ‘It might not be our day here’ but after that we were able to cut them open pretty well. Going in against Paul McFlynn and Johnny McBride and these boys, it was always going to be a tough game but we got on top in midfield and it showed me that you should never think that it’s not going to be your day in any game.

Rory Gallagher had his best game for St Gall’s but we all started to chip in with scores and that’s what stood to us, we performed really well that day and really Loup couldn’t stop us in the end.

I actually had to Google it and I couldn’t believe we beat them by 11 points! I didn’t think it was that much to be honest. But when you go out and put in a performance like that in an Ulster final and head on to the All-Ireland semi-final on that note it definitely gives you the confidence to think: ‘We’re definitely in the right place and we definitely have no need to fear anyone for the rest of this campaign’.

The nail-biter…

THE Corofin game (All-Ireland semi-final). There was nothing between us and them and my big memory of the game was the red cards. Anto Healy got sent off for us just before the end of normal-time but we managed to get a draw. I remember I got blown-up for steps and they scored the free to go one-up and, thank God, I got the ball after that and knocked it in to CJ and he equalised. I was just relieved that we took it to extra-time!

So we went back up to 15 men for extra-time but within a minute of extra-time starting they had a man sent off. The ball was thrown-in, we got it, it was played up to me and my man took me down. He was on a yellow card and he got sent off so there was a two-man swing which is massive in extra-time with all the tired bodies.

That was the key difference in that semi-final.

The final…

A LOT of people would have been saying: ‘Clare and Antrim in an All-Ireland final? That’s a bit strange?’ But we both deserved to be there, Kilmurry-Ibrickane were a quality side, they played against and beat quality opposition in Munster and then Portloaise in their semi-final. But, a bit like us in 2006, I don’t think they showed up and played as well as they could have in the final even though they got an early goal.

We responded well, we dominated midfield – ‘Aodso’ (Aodhan Gallagher) and ‘Burkey’ (Sean Burke) – got on top and myself and Rory (Gallagher) swapped between 11 and 14. There was loads of space, we were out in front and we were moving well and we ended up winning by five.

The feeling…

RELIEF that we’d done it. It was a long process, a lot of the boys went back to 2001/2002 and we had plenty of Ulster experience but for club players winning the All-Ireland was the ultimate goal. When I started in 2003 I didn’t think I would get to an All-Ireland final and then you do (in 2006) and you lose it by a point and part of you deep down thinks: ‘Ah well; there is was, that was our chance’ because you know the journey back and you know that you have to have that luck and the relief is from the fact that we did get back and we made up for 2006. So it was relief for me and pure joy.

The star man…

A LOT of times the forwards get the plaudits but you can’t look past Colin Brady and Andy McLean in the full-back line and Paul Veronica too. I remember we played Glenullin in Ulster in 2007 and they had the two Bradleys (Paddy and Eoin) and I just thought: ‘Andy and Brady will look after them, no problem’. That didn’t happen much with the two Bradleys! But when those boys were going well it gave the rest of us so much confidence because you knew neither of them were going to get the run-around, nobody was going to be kicking five points from play off either boy. It just didn’t happen.

And then Sean Kelly was ever-present in the half-back line. You always knew he was going to pick you out – whether it was county or club - when he came out with the ball.

But I don’t think there was one outstanding player. Personally, I think I had my best games in the Ulster final and in the All-Ireland final but if we go back to the Pearse Og game, I only came off the bench that day because I’d picked up an ankle knock in the county final.

In the Clontibret game I got a couple of points but there was no way I was going to be a major player because I didn’t have the fitness. Rory Gallagher stepped up that day. Then you could argue that Rory was quiet in the Ulster final but he was unbelievable in the All-Ireland final.

In Croke Park that day one of my memories how I was getting on a lot of ball and at some points Rory just got out of the way to create that space for the likes of me and Ciaran. He was on a different level from some of us boys back then, we would have been thinking: ‘Ah it’s an All-Ireland final, l want to get on the ball and go, go, go…’

So I think we had a lovely balance in the team and some players stepped up at different times. In the Corofin game it was the likes of CJ (McGourty) who kept us in it. It was a collective from the defence right through and with the amount of games we’d played together we were working off each other, we knew where we were going and where every players would be. We were really in sync towards St Patrick’s Day that year.

A year later…

CROSSMAGLEN knocked us out the following year in the first round of Ulster. Confidence was high and we went into the match thinking we were going to be as good as we were and chomping at the bit but who knows? Cross were very hungry, they’d been beaten by Pearse Ogs the year before and had to sit and watch us win it. They probably thought themselves that they could have been in our shoes.

They were definitely up for the game down in Cross, it’s not an easy place to go at any stage whether you’re All-Ireland champions or not. It just didn’t go for us that day and those things happen. Yes, there were a couple of calls that day that didn’t go for us that had gone for us the year before.

I think we still had the ability to go back and do it again but you do need those levels of consistency and motivation and there was probably just something missing with us at that time.

Looking back…

Off the back of the defeat we’d had in 2006 a lot of the team was hitting their peak and we knew that if we didn’t do it then we were never going to do it. They are really good memories – you always get good memories when things go well.

We never, at any stage, thought we were out of our depth in Ulster. Once we got out of the county it was ‘let’s focus on Europe’ as we used to say. Getting out of Antrim, see what the lay of the land is and then you only have to win five games to be All-Ireland champions. I like to think that us winning it gave inspiration to a lot of other clubs.

The road to glory

All-Ireland final: St Gall's 0-13 Kilmurry-Ibrickane 1-5

All-Ireland semi-final: St Gall's 1-15 Corofin 1-11 (AET)

Ulster final: St Gall's 0-16 Loup 0-5

Ulster semi-final: St Gall's 2-15 Clontibret 0-11

Ulster quarter-final: Pearse Óg 0-8 St Gall's 0-10

Ulster SFC first round: St Gall's 1-12 Cavan Gaels 1-10 (AET)

Antrim SFC final: St Gall’s 2-20 Portglenone 0-6