“You’re nobodies from west Belfast. Nobodies! The next time you come through that door either you’re still a nobody, or you’re somebody who’s in an All-Ireland final…”
Kieran McGourty recalls John Rafferty’s inspirational team talk to St Gall’s at half-time in the All-Ireland club semi-final. Unfancied St Gall’s went on to beat mighty Nemo Rangers by a point.
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A MIND usually free to juggle thoughts on footballers and formations no longer had that luxury and as he drove home from training Donaghmore in June last year, John Rafferty admitted to himself that something wasn’t quite right.
He hadn’t been feeling himself for a few days and, like many of us do, he tried to wish what his body was telling him away. But deep down he knew he’d have to get himself checked out and, when he did, tests flagged up a potentially serious issue with “the fuel pump” (his heart). It was a reality check: John Rafferty, the man who’d been making Duracel bunnies look lazy all his life, with a health issue? It seems we are all human!
It was typical of Rafferty that he saw out the season with Donaghmore and, when football returns, he has every intention of continuing a fascinating career in management that has included two county teams, clubs in Armagh, Tyrone, Derry, Monaghan and Down and three schools so far.
He’d always been a vocal leader on the field – an organiser and a motivator - and it was no surprise that those qualities transferred seamlessly to the sideline.
His father’s advice was to follow in the footsteps of Armagh legend Jimmy Smyth and become “a PE man” and his first job after he’d left St Mary’s qualified as a PE teacher was at west Belfast’s La Salle and the first piece of silverware he delivered was (get this GAA fans) the first year boys’ soccer league.
But with St Gall’s stalwart Sean McGourty also teaching in the school, La Salle began to make strides in GAA too and they moved from the Vocational Schools up to the Colleges ‘A’ competition. Wins were few and far between but valuable lessons were learned on Edenmore Drive.
“We took a lot of trimmings but the boys still came to training the next day,” says Rafferty (53).
“I thought to myself: ‘These fellas really want to play’ and it engrained in me that it didn’t matter if a fella was, on paper, good enough, or tall enough, or fast enough. The most important thing is: ‘Does he really want to play?’
“As I’ve gone on through the Abbey and St Paul’s that concept of ‘The Test’ is still the same. If a fella wants to play, he’ll turn up and train on a Friday evening, or a Saturday morning, or during his holidays. That’s when you really see who you have and you begin to work from there.”
The La Salle lads wanted to play and so did their teacher. He was very much a county footballer with Armagh in those days and, looking back, he predicts VIP entry at the Pearly Gates for wife Catherine who kept the home fires burning while he chased his football dreams.
Many an evening he arrived home after taking training at La Salle, only to jump back into the car and go training himself with the Orchard county.
As a player he left every ounce on the field and he’s every bit as committed and passionate when it comes to managing his teams. After victories he resets on the next challenge but defeats can be crushing and linger longer in his mind.
One stands out from 1999 when Rafferty, now teaching closer to his Poyntzpass home at Abbey CBS in Newry, returned from a MacRory Cup semi-final.
“I drove the bus to the match and then drove it home with my heart in my socks because we had kicked ourselves out of it against Enniskillen who went on to win the competition,” he recalls.
“Catherine had left me in to the Abbey that Saturday morning and Gene Duffy (Armagh County Board official) was waiting to collect me when I got back in the bus to drive me to Dublin to get a plane down to Cork to play them on the Sunday in the National League.
“I owe Gene an apology because I hardly broke breath of him going down the road in the car, I didn’t speak to him on the plane. Somebody met us and brought us to the hotel, the two Brians (Canavan and McAlinden) were in the foyer.
“Somebody asked: ‘Well, how did you (the Abbey) get on today?’ I just barged past them and I asked for my dinner to be sent up to my room. I was sharing with Cathal O’Rourke who was an ex-Abbey man and we were very friendly.
“He understood how much effort had gone into getting to the MacRory semi-final. I said: ‘Cathal, I’m not going to talk to you about it other than this: we beat ourselves and that’s the bit that annoys me the most’. I finished my dinner and turned my back and went to sleep.
“The next day I was booked, berated and taken off before I got sent off! I blamed everybody who was wearing a red jersey for the Abbey getting beat! Joe Brolly once described me, in a term of endearment, as a ‘Tasmanian Devil’ well, I whizzed round Pairc Ui Rinn that day like one and it was because I had been so disappointed for the Abbey fellas.”
Some of those Abbey fellas later played for him at the first club he coached - Dromintee in south Armagh. He took the reins in 2000 and in 2001 guided the club to their first ever county final. Crossmaglen (on a nine in-a-row winning streak) won the decider by three points but Rafferty took Castleblayney Faughs a step further two years later when he won the Monaghan championship.
The following year St Gall’s came calling and, having played for the club for a decade in between starting and finishing his career with his native O’Hanlon’s, he couldn’t say no.
“The talent was there – they just needed somebody to either drive it out of them or pull it out of them,” he says of the Falls Road club.
In his first year, St Gall’s won the Antrim title but were beaten by Tyrone’s Carrickmore in an Ulster championship replay. As he left the ground, Rafferty swore that there would be no repeat the following season. He was as good as his word and one of the players who enjoyed the thrilling ride to an Ulster title and the All-Ireland final was Kieran McGourty.
“It’s no disrespect to our other managers but, when I look back, Raff was the reason we won the All-Ireland,” says McGourty.
“Lenny Harbinson (the man who succeeded Rafferty and delivered the title in 2010) had things to tweak but Raff made us believe in ourselves. I remember we went to the Kilmacud All-Ireland Sevens in 2005 and we won it. We were getting changed after and having a beer and Rafferty said: ‘This is seven-a-side, imagine if you did it with 15-a-side? There’s no reason why not.’ And he walked out the door.
“That was his attitude. At the time we didn’t think it was the time or the place to say that but, in hindsight, it was the perfect time, the perfect place. I’ve seen managers in my life and bluffers and boys that talk-the-talk and you can see through them but Rafferty united everyone and made everyone better players.
“He was the most important manager St Gall’s ever had.”
McGourty’s good friend Ciaran McCrossan scored the goal that sank Bellaghy in the Ulster club final but even the celebrations that greeted St Gall’s second-ever Ulster title were eclipsed by the jubilation two months’ later when the unheralded west Belfast side beat Cork powerhouses Nemo Rangers to reach the All-Ireland final.
“I was so lucky to be on the sideline that day,” says Rafferty.
“To turn round and see peoples’ faces just lit up with happiness! Nothing pleased me more than seeing the reaction of Vincent Ward and Liam Stewart, the chairman and secretary, and the players the day we beat Nemo Rangers in Portlaoise.
“The out-pouring of joy by the St Gall’s fans coming out of the stand onto the field! I’m very proud to be a Poyntzpass man, but I am a St Gall’s man as well. I was very lucky to meet Sean McGourty and to be part of a club that would have done your heart good, it really would.
“To see those people, who had lived through all sorts of personal and community tragedy on the Falls Road, coming running out on to O’Moore Park to hug their sons and their nephews and their cousins and their daddy’s… That was some day!
“We left the All-Ireland behind us (Salthill-Knocknacarra rode their luck to win the final by a point) but the fellas came back and they won it in 2010. They lost one and won one but they definitely left the first one behind them.”
His successes with St Gall’s didn’t go unnoticed in his native county and in 2006 Joe Kernan invited Rafferty to become his number two with Armagh. Almost 30 years on from the day he stood with his father and uncle to cheer the Orchardmen on in the 1977 All-Ireland final at Croke Park, the opportunity seemed like a dream come true but it didn’t work out that way.
Rafferty’s playing career with the Orchardmen hadn’t ended the way it should have and, once again, he felt let down by his county.
“I never turned my back on the county – ever so when I was asked to help Joe I did it with a heart and-a-half,” he says.
“I took it on the understanding that there would be an automatic transfer and that I would be taking over from Joe at the end of the 2007 season. Maybe that wasn’t the way it was in the county board’s eyes, but that was the way it was sold to me when I was asked to come in and help.”
He says Armagh would have got the best of him if the transfer of power had gone the way he expected it to but when Kernan stepped down it was Peter McDonnell (who had taken Mullaghbawn to the Ulster title in 1995) who was appointed to replace him.
Bizarrely, despite his forensic knowledge of and track record of success in schools football, the Armagh county board has never approached John Rafferty to look after a minor or U21 side.
After that Armagh experience he doubted he’d ever re-enter the hurly-burly world of inter-county football again but Kieran McGeeney changed his mind when he enticed him to be his assistant at Kildare in 2012.
The collaboration of the former team-mates worked a treat in their first season as the Lilywhites won Division Two and made it to the All-Ireland quarter-finals.
“The disappointment of 2006 and early 2007 was at least diluted by the fact that Kildare had a good year in 2012,” says Rafferty and he and McGeeney met later that year to discuss plans for the following season. Unfortunately they could find no middle ground because Rafferty, who was by that stage teaching at St Paul’s, Bessbrook, felt he had to put the school first.
“I have no regrets about that,” he says.
“It was St Paul’s first year in MacRory Cup football and we won the McCormack Cup, which is the league competition, and we got beaten by a point in the MacRory final in 2013.
“So sacrificing my inter-county experience for them fellas was the right thing to do and I have no doubt about that whatsoever. Was it a professional decision with Kildare? No. It was because I see the PE that I give to the kids as a vocation, not a profession.
“If you’re called into it, you have to make sacrifices for the kids so going back for a second season with Kildare was a complete non-starter – the boys’ in the football team at St Paul’s were my priority and still are. That was it (with Kildare) but you live and learn and on you go.”
On his watch St Paul’s has become a fertile nursery for GAA, reaching MacRory finals in 2013 and 2016 and producing player after inter-county player. It continues to be his main focus although he has added to his vast reservoir of experience with Derry’s Slaughtneil (“I was delighted to see them become a real powerhouse in Ulster”) and Bellaghy (“It was such an honour to be asked to coach that club”) as well as Rostrevor (Down) and last season Tyrone’s Donaghmore.
Some have worked better than others: “Coaching a club is like a marriage,” he says.
“When you meet the players for the first time, it could end up a golden jubilee or you could be divorced after three weeks!”
As for his management style, he has no time for a player “boxing somebody off the ball” but his chief hate is ‘sledging’ and he suggests the only answer to it is: “Draw out and then accept your suspension!”
He is a renowned motivator and a meticulous planner who insists that his players uphold the same honour code that he inherited from the man who guided him to the Sigerson Cup, Jim McKeever.
“I was very lucky to attend St Mary’s with Jim McKeever and Peter Finn – two men who are unparalleled in integrity and character and ambition - coaching us,” he says.
“It wasn’t about winning, it was about winning with your integrity intact. That’s the bit that always stuck out to me – if somebody had to bust somebody off the ball to win the game, Jim McKeever wasn’t interested. You had to win well.
“That would be my mantra and it goes back to Jim McKeever. Jimmy Smyth, Cathal Murray, Malachy O’Rourke, Peter Canavan (all St Mary’s alumni) are all disciples of Jim as well.”
Right now he is counting down the days to when school begins again and the PE fields at St Paul’s echo with the joyful clamour of boys and girls playing football.
For him a school without football is “like a bicycle without a chain - you’re going through the motions but you’re not going anywhere”.
“The whole Covid thing just reinforced to me how lucky kids are to play sport, any sport but especially our sport, in school,” he adds.
It has also given him time to reflect on his own health and the adjustments he needs to make in the future. He loves football and hates to lose but somehow he’ll have to adapt. His late father ‘Bim’ died suddenly of a heart attack in 1989 and John is well aware that last June was a warning and it’s one he intends to heed.
“When I got the scare with my fuel pump it knocked me, it did,” he says.
“It made me aware of the fact that even along the line I couldn’t get nasty any more! But you can either lie down and stay in your bed or adapt and move on and this year I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to shout as loud, or as often so I’ll have to pick my moments but it won’t stop me and as soon as football opens up again, I’ll be at it.”
So does that Bill Shankly line apply? You know the one: ‘Some people think football is a matter of life and death but it’s much more important than that…’
“No harm to Bill but it’s not,” says John.
“Footballers and managers come and go but life rolls on and, after that scare I had in June, you just realise how lucky you are to be fit and healthy and able to get about.”
Don’t ever change John Rafferty, but keep your inner ‘Tasmanian Devil’ under control…
