FORMER GAA team-mates of Ryan McCaul formed a guard of honour as the rural community of Gortnaghey turned out to pay their final respects to the crash victim killed earlier this week.
Mr McCaul (31) died when his car was involved in a collision close to his home near Dungiven on Monday morning.
A former GAA club player with St Colm’s GAC, Drum, Mr McCaul was on his way to work as an engineer at E and I Engineering in Co Donegal when the accident happened.
Former teammates, wearing their club jerseys, flanked his coffin as it was taken from his home on Friday morning to the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Gortnaghey where Requiem Mass was led by Dungiven parish priest Fr Seamus Kelly.
Fr Kelly told a packed church Mr McCaul had a difficult life as a child, suffering cancer and undergoing treatment until he was about six years old.
He also suffered ill health as a result of a number of road accidents, the worst in 2004 when he ended up in a coma. The accident also ended what had been a promising Gaelic football career.
Fr Kelly said as a result meningitis suffered in later life Mr McCaul also suffered hearing loss. However, he went on to obtain his university degree in engineering.
“Ryan was a very determined lad and was brilliant at lip reading, so much that once he noticed two people and he could see that they were badmouthing a friend of his so he went over and left them with red faces,” the Dungiven priest said.
Fr Kelly recalled the scene of devastation which greeted him on Monday morning.
“As I administered the last rites, I have no doubt that indeed Jesus came then to our brother, Ryan. It was heartbreaking to look at a young man leaving this world in the mouth of Christmas.”
He also recalled a second road tragedy in the parish just over a week earlier when former Derry nun, Loreto Douglas (64) was killed in a car accident on the Glenshane Road.
Fr Kelly said: “I was talking to the family these last few days and they told me that Ryan was always the life and soul of the party.”
A family man, Fr Kelly said Mr McCaul travelled to New Zealand for a surprise visit to his family last Christmas because he was missing them so much.
He said Mr McCaul’s parents, Edwina and Ciaran and his brother and sister, Ciara and Rory will face hard days ahead but he said they could draw strength from Christ and his mother, Mary.
Following Requiem Mass, Mr McCaul was laid to rest in the adjoining cemetery.
