THE length of the field beneath the stand was flooded with red and black seconds after the whistle sounded.
Generations of families who contributed to the cause were already trying to make sense of what was happening before their eyes, such was the manner of Madden’s one-sided win over Cullyhanna on October 26.
There is little as sweet as a first senior championship triumph, especially after years of knocking at the door. But this one cut deeper still.
Because just over a week later, on November 4, this tight-knit community would join together once more to mark the two-year anniversary of its darkest day.
The loss of club secretary Paddy Grimley, his wife Ceira and Ciara McElvanna - who died in a four-vehicle crash as they returned home from Paddy’s 40th birthday party – remains a tragedy almost beyond comprehension, and always will.
Ciara McElvanna’s husband Kevin, an All-Ireland winner with Armagh in 2002, was part of the Madden management team. Niall Grimley, the youngest of Paddy’s brothers, took a moment amid the madness as he raised his eyes to the darkening sky.
Another brother, Liam, soaked in the Rapparees’ success while, 50-odd miles out the road in Healy Park, Ryan helped Loughmacrory to a maiden Tyrone SFC title on a remarkable rollercoaster of an afternoon for their family.
Darragh McMullen, the team’s jet-heeled playmaker, found himself at the centre of the glove hunt once all was said and done. High fives, hugs, photos, sign this, sign that - not a bother, all the time in the world.
Although just 22, there is a maturity, a big picture awareness, beyond his years. Even as adrenaline rampaged through his system, he was delighted for his team-mates. Delighted for everybody whose heart and soul had gone into reaching this point.
Delighted, most of all, for those families who had suffered so much, such a short time ago.
But there was someone else too. Someone who wasn’t at the Athletic Grounds last October, or at Croke Park on July 28, 2024 when Armagh lifted Sam Maguire for a second time. Yet someone whose presence has been felt on every step of his journey so far.
McMullen was all smiles until then but the levee broke when mum Genny made it through the masses, wrapping her boy in an embrace - just as she had done on the Orchard’s grandest day – before whispering the words he always loves to hear.
“Your dad would be so proud…”
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CROSSMAGLEN wouldn’t be given to cheering any other club lifting the Gerry Fagan Cup.
Even though their period of almost unfettered county and provincial dominance is over for now, Armagh football’s most prized possession has resided in the clubrooms at Oliver Plunkett Park for 23 of the last 29 years.
When Madden ascended to the throne, though, there was some solace in the boy with black and amber blood coursing through his veins.
James Hughes played his part in that era of Cross control, and was involved as the south Armagh men became kings of Ireland in 2000, 2007 and 2011. Nine months after that last, unforgettable St Patrick’s Day in Croke Park, however, he was taken from them.
The 35-year-old died in the early hours of December 11, 2011 when a number of gunshots were fired into a taxi - in which he was a passenger – outside a house in Dundalk, leaving a community in shock, and sons Lee, Tiernan and Darragh without their father.
When Stephen Kernan stood on the steps at Breffni Park three months later, All-Ireland champions once more after replay victory over Garrycastle, it was before a sea of sombre faces that he paid tribute to a fallen friend and team-mate.
“I want everybody in Ireland to know that this,” he said, voice cracking as the Andy Merrigan Cup was hoisted high, “is for James Hughes.”
Standing directly behind him, clad in Cross jersey and scarf, was eight-year-old Darragh McMullen.
Over 14 years on, talking is the best way to keep his father’s memory alive.
That’s why he is sitting in the Armagh City Hotel a few days after the Orchard’s dramatic draw with Kerry just down the road at the Athletic Grounds. McMullen was magnificent that afternoon, just as he was throughout Madden’s maiden senior championship success.
Yet that part of the story could have been so different.
For years he had designs only on following in his father’s footsteps, until life – and football – plotted a different course. Because Keady has always been home and, ever since following his big brother down to Rapparee Park, so has Madden.
“That’d probably be a touchy subject now,” he grins, “I did always want to go to Cross at that age, just because I was always up round there.
“But then Tiernan went down to Madden, I had an older cousin too, they were about the same age, all in the same friend group, so I said I’d stay wherever they were.
“Brian Grimley was chairman at that time, and I’ve never met a man so welcoming to the club. Even now, the people are so nice; it’s just like a family now.
“Ones would slag me ‘you’re not even a real Madden man’, but I am a Madden man. I’m there most of my years.
“It’s funny, because I would always have said to the Cross ones ‘sure there’s no fun in winning the championship every year - I’d rather win it with a team that’s never won it’.
“And that’s what happened.”
Even in the fiercely parochial goldfish bowl of Armagh football, though, he wears his Cross credentials with pride. Oisin McConville was his father’s best friend, while James was like another brother to the Kernan clan. The club - the community - continues to look out for him, just as they always have.
Every year Crossmaglen hosts the James Hughes memorial tournament, with Darragh and other family members there to hand out prizes. It is a connection that will never recede because so many treasured memories revolve around the village.
“I was always a mummy’s boy, so I would spend time with mummy and then Tiernan was always with dad up at Hanratty’s farm. He was just glued on to daddy; still is.
“But I remember going to games with daddy – probably spent more time messing about than watching football. The odd time he would have thrown me over to Oisin McConville and he’d have kicked about with me while they were away farming.
“After dad passed, the Kernans brought me everywhere; into the changing rooms, to Armagh matches, everything. Every time I went up to Cross, it was ‘well fein’ or ‘well boy’.
“Same as my dad, people would always say how friendly he was; that he would talk to anyone. Like, I would be the exact same. I would go and the boys would slag me, because I literally would talk to anyone.
“That’s just the way I was brought up.”
The physical resemblance is striking too. The dark eyes and swarthy complexion. The wide smile. The wiry frame.
Naturally, some similarities also extend to the football field. The pace, the lightness across the ground. Darragh McMullen has had comparisons thrown at him all his life.
“The Cross ones would always say to me that I got the football from him, but I remind them he was only left-footed, where I’d be kicking off the two feet.
“I remember watching one of mummy’s training sessions with Phelim Brady’s and she was kicking off two feet as well, so that’s where it comes from - I didn’t get it off my da.
“There’s one for the Cross ones!”
Those are the kind of conversations he would love to have had with his father; the opportunity to slag back and forth, or to seek advice when rising through the ranks with club and county.
That’s where the loss is most keenly felt. Because for all the anecdotes shared, there is still so much more he wishes he could find out on his own terms, rather than through second hand stories.
Instead, he is still learning to live with the reality of being robbed of that privilege.
“Because I was so young, it just didn’t seem real at all.
“One thing that stuck with me was seeing him in the coffin. I remember saying to my auntie and uncle ‘if he’s not recognisable, I don’t want to see him’ - that was the case, and it was just like… fear.
“Around the wake and the funeral, me and Aaron Kernan were sitting up in the kitchen, eating mints all night because I wouldn’t sleep, just for fear of seeing it… still to this day, you don’t get that image out of your head.
“But it has also helped me in a way - it builds you, gives you a wee bit of strength. People always say, it’s real tough for the first year but it’s the years after when you realise that he actually is gone.”
Yet, through the grief, there is gratitude too; for the short time they had together, for the love and support that has come the family’s way in the time between.
And, most of all, for everything Genny has done to bring him to this point.
“You probably only really hear the stories now that you’re grown up and you can deal with it, but for mummy, the way she dealt with it,” he says, shaking his head, “how she suffered through it, and she was so young herself.
“Mummy was working three jobs to keep me in soccer, Gaelic, hurling, boxing - whatever we could get into. You don’t realise until now, if you were in her position… I don’t know what I would do. It’s fight or flight.
“After every trophy we won, she was there - with Madden at U16, the U19, the All-Ireland, the senior championship. She would’ve been watching Cross winning, and then to see your son win one…
“Even my stepdad, John Armitage, a Fermanagh man - after Madden won, he was probably the second or third person to step in and give me a hug, and he said the same thing – ‘your dad would be so proud of you, and I’m proud of you too’. He’s that father figure to us, and we’d be like best friends nearly now.
“But mummy probably never gets the thanks she deserves for keeping strong, keeping us the way we are. We kept our heads pretty screwed on, and she’ll probably only see when she reads this.
“She’s a tough goer and it stands by me and Tiernan. He’s a tough cookie too, and I’d say I’m the same. If anyone says anything to me, or whatever life or football throws at you, well, I’ve dealt with worse before.”
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SERENDIPITY somehow sought them out.
The story started when, without even knowing his name, Conleith Gilligan held something approaching hero status.
His exploits on the football field were one thing, but it was mostly the impression made when Joe Kernan invited Darragh McMullen into Ulster’s inner circle ahead of 2012’s Match for Michaela interpro.
“I remember asking mummy what he was called,” he smiles, “but I just thought he was class.”
A picture was duly taken, both beaming from ear to ear.
Two years on, Ballinderry beat Crossmaglen to win the James Hughes memorial tournament - the pair brought together again when McMullen he handed over his father’s trophy over to Gilligan, the Shamrocks captain.
But fate was nowhere near done yet. Playing days in the past, Kieran McGeeney brought the former Derry forward into his Armagh set-up approaching the end of 2023 – with a familiar-looking face among the first to make himself known.
And when the Orchard went all the way to All-Ireland glory the following summer, Gilligan brought McMullen out onto the Croke Park pitch to recreate the image from all those years earlier.
“We couldn’t miss that opportunity.
“I put the two pictures up on Instagram after, with the line ‘never meet your heroes’.”
Yet his role in that triumph provides another indication of the steel that goes hand in hand with those silky skills on the field.
The Armagh in-house games throughout that All-Ireland campaign have become the stuff of legend. Aaron McKay recalled how the B team wiped the floor with the A side a week before they were due to meet Kerry in the quarter-final.
Stefan Campbell was in the form of his life, shooting the lights out night on night, but still could not escape the shackles of the super-sub moniker once championship reached its business end.
McMullen was in a similar boat. Although still slightly built, McGeeney knew a thoroughbred when he saw one. A brilliant ball-carrier, he also possessed the pace and game intelligence to carry out specific man-marking roles.
Hence, as the All-Ireland final neared, McMullen’s job was to give Conor Turbitt hell. Oisin O’Neill would serve constant reminders to all that whatever was best for the team was best for them.
“We definitely won more than we lost. That’s the standard that was expected of us.”
That’s why, when the squad for the Galway game was named, and McMullen wasn’t on it, peace was swiftly made.
“I always believed I was good enough to be playing, but I was just missing a wee bit more to my game. Like, I knew I had to improve my shooting.
“I was still only 20, quite small as well, which was a big thing then. But the new rules now, you don’t really need to be as physical, it’s more about speed.
“Like, if I really felt I deserved to play, I’d be asking management. I suppose because I was younger, I probably didn’t have that courage to hear them telling me, straight up, you’re just not at the level at the minute.
“So I don’t dwell on not playing in the final or semi-final, because you still felt a part of it as much as everyone else. Myself and the other boys know what part we played, and that’s what matters most.”
Two years down the line, though, the goalposts have shifted significantly.
Physically more able for the hard edge of the inter-county game, McMullen has emerged as not just a regular starter, but a leader on an evolving Armagh side.
Ten points down to Kerry inside 20 minutes, and without established stars like Barry McCambridge, Aidan Forker, Rian O’Neill and Rory Grugan, Armagh couldn’t get hands on the ball as the All-Ireland champions ran riot.
Cian McConville opened their account, minutes before McMullen found himself with green grass to run into. This is where the biggest change is most evident.
“In previous years I would probably have just got the ball, sprinted into the forward line and laid it off to someone else…”
But he didn’t, firing over a two-pointer instead to bring a huge roar from the Orchard faithful. Game on. From that point, there would be no looking back.
Sat in the stand, Genny smiled to herself at the stubborn refusal to accept defeat. That bit of thranness, cockiness even, to go and make something happen instead of waiting for somebody else.
“I would be thick enough on the field – I’d have been bad tempered when I was young; a real bad loser at times.
“Mummy would say ‘you’re just like your dad’, but she’s stubborn as well. I’ve a wee sister, Aoife, she’s only four but she’s the same.
“I feel confident when I’m on the ball – I feel more confident than I am off it. Sometimes one of the older boys would say ‘DMac, you need to get your hands on the thing here, sort something out’.
“I like that. It gives you lift that they know I can do something.”
The next chapter holds huge potential.
He dreams of getting back to Croke Park, back to an All-Ireland final. Not because of a sense of unfinished business or anything like that; he will never take for granted what he was already so fortunate to be a part of.
But, back at the house in Keady, alongside a couple of his father’s old jerseys and the Crossmaglen half-zip his aunt fashioned into a pillow, there is a pair of black and yellow gloves, boots and a boot bag.
The boot bag was central to James Hughes’s pre-match routine, and so it has become the way with his son.
His father’s boot bag is kept good. The gloves, brand new, remain in the packet while the boots – “those really old Mizunos with the tongue” – have never been worn. Probably never will be.
But that doesn’t mean they have nothing left to give.
“When you were younger, dreaming of Armagh winning the All-Ireland, I always said I would take them out for the final – get the use out of them some road. Even if you’re taking them with you, bringing them into the place.
“It would just be nice to give them some sort of life.”
