AS Chrissy McKaigue stood obligingly for a round of interviews on the pitch after Sunday’s Derry final, his eyes were immediately drawn straight down the line.
With no provincial title to look about in either code, winning back the John McLaughlin Cup was a happy end-of-the-line for all in Slaughtneil barring him.
Fast-forward 18 hours and it seems that his year is now over too, with the GAA’s decision to call a halt to club fixtures meaning he won’t now have the final assignment he’d been preparing for this weekend.
He was due to be back in Bellaghy as joint-manager of Desertmartin, who were to take on Craigbane in the Derry junior final.
His mother, Mary Teresa, hails from Desertmartin. His grandfather Andrew was a former chairman of the club.
And he has connections on the McKaigue side too, where he his aunt Kate is married to Colm Breen, a great player for the Martins in his own right.
Their sons Martin and Dermot Breen hold the centre of the current defence together and are first cousins of McKaigue’s.
So his first foray into management is about more than just the game itself. It’s family.
That’s why he took it on despite having his own playing commitments with the club’s hurlers and footballers, as well as his inter-county commitments that are due to resume in person this week.
“It’s tight going and people said it couldn’t be done, but it’s going alright so far,” he said.
“I love football. Anybody that knows me knows I’m obsessed by sport, obsessed by competing. That’s the way my personality is.
“I’ve taken great pride this year in coaching and playing, and I think it’s made me a better player and a better person too. If people did a bit of homework they’d know why I’m with Desertmartin and how much I care about those boys too.”
Clutching the man-of-the-match award from Sunday’s final, he wasn’t too bothered about personal vindication.
His performances are among the most scrutinised in Derry, and it was his two early points that went a long way towards allowing Slaughtneil to play the game on their terms.
Three years since they’d last won Derry’s primary football silverware, McKaigue admitted that there’d been partly a hangover from the departure of Mickey Moran ahead of the 2018 campaign, but also that the balance had tipped slightly away from football.
“The last two years, the players would take full responsibility, we just weren’t at it. There were numerous reasons for that. Maybe too the fact the footballers weren’t at it as much because our hurling came on to another level too.
“It’s so difficult to get the balance. I know you said it from the Coleraine game early on, we had a wee different bite about us this year. We were kind of ready to come out and show we could play again.
“Magherafelt and Glen pushed us to the pin of our collars.
“The Ballinderry game was an anomaly, you don’t beat them too often by that in championship and we maybe played well and they just weren’t at the races, but I think we’ve proven that for this year anyway, we deserve our crown.”
Prophetically the Derry captain said that he was glad the senior final had taken place when it did, and while he didn’t say whether he thought there’d be an inter-county championship or not, McKaigue felt the direction things were going wasn’t promising.
“I think I’d be in a better place to give you that answer in the next seven days. With the number of cases recently, even in school there’s been a couple of cases, and in the local community.
“The first lockdown I couldn’t have told you a person that I knew that had Covid, but now there’s quite a few you know that actually has it. It’s on our doorstep and we have to be careful about it.
“Whether inter-county can happen safely at this stage, it’s maybe going towards not happening as much as I would have in the last number of weeks. If it happens it happens, and we just play it for what it is.
“At this stage most teams will just use it as a preparation phase for next year because it’s going to be messy for everyone.”
