THE story they like to tell about Johnny McGurn in Derrygonnelly sums him up nicely.
Fermanagh were playing Kerry in a National League game down in Killarney. At full-back for the previous year’s beaten All-Ireland finalists was Allstar Mike McCarthy.
McGurn scored five points, four of them from play, and took McCarthy on a tour of Fitzgerald Stadium. Fermanagh kept pace for a long time but a missed Mark Little penalty allowed the Kingdom enough breathing space to pull clear late on.
TG4 showed the game live and afterwards, McGurn was handed the man-of-the-match award. In his interview, he admitted to having no idea that he’d just marked the Allstar full-back.
“I think it was Mike McCarthy… So I’m told!” he laughs now.
Football’s always been a game, not an obsession.
“Definitely not an obsession, no, no. I enjoyed it but that would have been one of my downfalls. I wouldn’t have been overly obsessed with the game.
“I trained but it wasn’t the be-all and end-all, where it probably has to be at that level.”
Having turned 36 last week, he will wear the number one jersey for Derrygonnelly tonight, five years after he hung the boots up with no intentions of coming back.
That was still the same when Paul Greene coaxed him out to help manage the reserves.
Next thing the senior goalkeeper Jack Kelly is struck down by a knee injury. McGurn was asked to stand in for a training session and was brilliant.
Next thing he knew, they were playing Kinawley in a July league game and his name was the first pencilled in on the teamsheet.
Here he is now, a poacher-turned-gamekeeper with a fifth championship medal he had no intentions of winning stowed away, and Clann Éireann on his mind.
McGurn still isn’t obsessed, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love it.
“I enjoy it. Though against Ederney, we conceded three goals in five minutes. When I was picking the third one out of the net, I looked up at the stand and I remember thinking ‘Jesus, I’d love to be watching this game!’
“It’s gradually got better. Even with Derrygonnelly, it’s a massive commitment, three or four nights a week. The boys are flying fit.
“For an old man coming back, it was a big shock to the system, it was near like a county setup the way we have it.”
As a cub, he’d always played full-back on the club teams, under none other than Mick Glynn, who is still in charge of him the week after he turned 36.
None other than Malachy O’Rourke, up against whom he might find himself in January if all goes to plan for both men this weekend, changed it all around.
McGurn was shipped to full-forward on the St Joseph’s school teams. He excelled.
It led to a place on the county minor squad that brought little in the way of game time until a rare Ulster final in 2003, where they met Tyrone.
“I was on the bench all year and never really got a kick. Simon Bradley and John O’Neill pulled me in a few days before the final and said they were gonna put me in full-forward. That kick-started my time with Fermanagh really.
“I know we lost by seven or eight points but we had four or five chances for goals, if they’d gone in we wouldn’t have been too far away.”
That Kerry game was in 2006, his second year on the panel. He had been just too young for the 2004 run to the precipice of an All-Ireland final under Charlie Mulgrew, but was in from ’05 until ’09 – an inter-county career similar in length to that of his father Pat, who was among the Fermanagh subs for the 1982 Ulster final.
Sitting on his hands on the bench watching a free-taking disaster unfold that ultimately prevented them from finishing off Armagh and winning a first ever Ulster title was a tough afternoon, but that was just the way of it. Never too high, never too low.
Those were his student days but when he started working as a Quantity Surveyor, football had to go and sit in the back. Fermanagh was canned. His club career was fruitful, winning championships in 2004, 2009, 2015 and 2016, though he’s balanced that against twice-weekly trips to England and a wife and family of three children.
There was “zero ambition” to return but now that he has and finds himself in the thick of it – not least saving a Tomás Corrigan penalty in the drawn game with Kinawley – he might as well try and win.
“No matter who you get at this level, it’s a kick of a ball, a misplaced pass that will decide it. Against Dromore, it was a fantastic free by Conall to get us into extra-time. It’s very fine margins.
“Clann Éireann are a big, strong outfit. They’ve been through Maghery and Crossmaglen in their own championship, and if either of those had been coming through they’d have fancied a shot at it the way the draw’s turned out.
“It’ll be a tough game, a kick of ball between us, we hope.”
