THERE were no questions left, no nagging doubts, as the rain that doused St Tiernach’s Park finally started to relent. Monaghan were going through the motions now, rolling the bench while the scoreboard ticked over, thoughts long turned to an Ulster semi-final date with Derry.
For Down, it was another sorry chapter in a year that couldn’t end quickly enough.
The late appointment of James McCartan and assistant Aidan O’Rourke on November 24 – 140 days after Paddy Tally stepped down – set them off on a hiding to nothing, everything suddenly snowballing at speed.
Players injured, players opting out, All-Ireland glory delaying the arrival of the Kilcoo contingent until much of the League damage was done, defeat after defeat ate away at already brittle confidence, relegation to Division Three – and the not exactly lip-smacking prospect of competing in the inaugural Tailteann Cup - a foregone conclusion.
The WhatsApps flying around about a training weekend in Malahide that got out of hand, a situation which almost saw McCartan walk away weeks before the Monaghan game, put the tin hat on the whole thing.
With a first child due, and the legacy of injuries and operations taking a toll, Darren O’Hagan had made peace with his county career while the laborious search for Tally’s successor wore on.
Until one night, knowing younger brother Barry was heading over to training in the Abbey, his conscience, and a sense of loyalty to the men thrust into such a difficult position, won the day. O’Hagan picked up the phone, called Barry.
“Lift me on your way sure…”
“That was the middle of December,” he says, “and when you went to that first training session there was 14 or 15 there, maybe 23, 24 boys not training, all in the physio room.”
Fast forward to the end of April, the moments after Monaghan cruised to a 10 point win, and a familiar thought swirled around again. Wife Paula and son Charlie, almost five months old, joined him on the sodden field in Clones. Pictures were taken, a moment in time captured.
It was here he had run out in 2012 and 2017 Ulster finals, the old place packed, the roar from the red and black sending shivers down his spine still. They felt like distant memories on this most dreary of days.
No matter what happened in the Tailteann Cup a month down the line - Down would fall at the first hurdle against Cavan - everything told him it was the end.
On Sunday, Darren O’Hagan will watch from the stand when Down welcome Donegal to Newry. It was against the Tir Chonaill he made his Championship debut 13 years ago, coming on late in the second half, the Ballybofey bear pit eventually silenced when Benny Coulter stung the net in extra-time, the Mournemen embarking on an unlikely odyssey that rolled on until All-Ireland final day.
Life on the other side of the fence, especially with Championship on the horizon, will take a bit of getting used to.
“I went to all the games this year, and when you’re coming out there’s part of you’d be like ‘I wish I was out there’. But then there’s plenty of dark evenings and cold nights during the winter where it was ‘thank God I didn’t go back!’
“Now you really miss it, with the build-up of Championship. You’re talking to people and that’s all they’re talking about, Down-Donegal, so not to be involved in the conversation – what’s happening this week? How’s it going? Who’s fit? – it’s strange.”
And it’s strange for more reasons than the usual post-retirement itch, because he could still be there. After taking on the job, Conor Laverty texted O’Hagan and asked him not to make any rash decisions just yet. It was left at that.
The pair came face to face sooner than anticipated as Kilcoo blew Clonduff apart in the first round of the Down championship a few weeks later. It was a different story when they met again at the quarter-final stage a month down the line, the Hilltown men leaving only with regrets after having the Magpies on the ropes before bowing out on penalties.
Midway through the first half in Newry that night, with the play going on elsewhere, Laverty and O’Hagan pulled up alongside each other around the middle of the field, rubbing shoulders as they trotted along, a conversation of a kind taking place, though not one that looked to be about their winter plans.
“Oh aye,” laughs O’Hagan, “plenty of battles with Conor through the years.
“I’m probably picking him up since I started senior football in ’07, ’08, I’ve gone up against Conor plenty of times - plenty of roastings as well.
“I’ll tell you the truth, me and Conor would never have talked too much on the field. I’ve a lot of time for Conor, I get on well with him. The two of us would never really get into a bickering match.
“You’d be hot and heavy sometimes, physical with him… you think by the size of him he’s not physical but he’s well fit to take it. He can give as good as he gets. But you’d never really get into verbals with him.
“Plenty of other boys in that team you’d get into verbals with, but not Conor.”
O’Hagan and Laverty didn’t speak again until after championship. The ball was in the Clonduff man’s court, and remained so.
“He gave me plenty of time to think about it, to get myself right. I went and done a lot of work, got the body right… to tell you the truth, the door was always open and I never really jumped at it.
“I chatted to him a couple of times during the League… I don’t know, it just never came into my head to say ‘right, here, I’m gonna go’. I don’t really know why.
“It was appealing to me there so many times… maybe it was the easy way out, just to walk away. Maybe it was. Paula opened a new gym, it was fairly mental then up until the end of January trying to get it sorted; I wouldn’t have had any time before that.
“Between that and teaching Paula’s really busy, then trying to play a bit of camogie, I’m busy with the farm and work, playing a bit of a club football, then the wee man in between that all, as well as getting involved with the minors with Benny…”
Yet it is clear the pull hasn’t left, not completely. How could it?
When he was asked in during McCartan’s first stint at the helm, Down were on the up. The buzz was there. The Mournemen are coming from a lower base all these years on but, under Laverty, there is a sense of something exciting building.
Injuries have been a factor, of course - in the space of six weeks at the end of 2021 he had a torn cartilage in his knee repaired, a hip scope and surgery on a broken wrist, years of pushing his body to the limit bringing him to the brink.
But for it to finish up the way it did, at the fag end of Down’s annus horribilis, no hope, no nothing – a man who had given so much deserved better.
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THERE were a few years when Irish News reporters would be asked to select an Ulster 15 from the weekend’s National League action.
Weighing up one division against another, trying to source second hand information from games – it wasn’t a task anyone particularly relished. Soon, though, a recurring theme resulted in a running joke every Monday morning.
“Okay,” the shout would inevitably come, “will we save some time here and just start off with Darren O’Hagan?”
For the guts of the last decade, he has been one of the stickiest man-markers in Ulster. Even on days when Down struggled, and there were plenty, he seldom dipped below a solid seven.
But being on the inside of the county’s peaks and troughs was wearying at times. Especially as, after victory over Donegal proved the launchpad for that 2010 run, the 19-year-old greenhorn believed it would always be the way – though harsh lessons had to be learned even then.
“I got dropped for the Kerry game, the All-Ireland quarter-final.
“I had played through the qualifiers but, I tell you what, I had a poor day against Offaly, a real poor day. James came to me a couple of nights before and said we’re going to go with Daniel [McCartan] – your first year in, you were never really going to question him.
“I knew I probably hadn’t played well in a couple of games before that to hold my place down, and he’s probably thinking going into Kerry, defending All-Ireland champions, at Croke Park, this young lad has no experience, he could get exposed here, big time. So it’s fair enough.
“Daniel came in and done very well. In hindsight it probably was a good decision, he maybe did save me from a toasting - I might never have played county football again after that year!
“But you had James, Paddy Tally had come in, they’d turned the screw - it was a good team. You felt Down were going places.”
Those heights may not have been reached again, but every year he was there when plenty of others weren’t.
The correlation between success and the counties able to sustain a strong panel is no surprise, with Donegal, Monaghan and Tyrone dominating the Anglo-Celt while a revolving door policy saw Down’s stock gradually slide.
The more time wore on, the more of a frustration that became.
“There’s not too many young fellas don’t want to go travelling, and you can’t really turn around and say ‘don’t go’.
“Then you look at the like of Tyrone, they’re brought up with success, winning minor Ulsters, All-Irelands, U20s, whereas Down has done very little on that front.
“It’s something that would’ve annoyed me in the later stages of my career. There was some boys would have took it or left it, sort of chose what year to come in – ‘aw, maybe I’ll take a break from it this year, I couldn’t be bothered with it’, then the year after ‘frig it, I’ll go back in here now’.
“Some of them boys are still there, in and out, and it just sort of annoys you. It wasn’t always that they went away travelling or doing other things, they maybe just took a notion to do it or not.
“You’re chopping and changing too much then, boys are coming in and out, the manager can’t work with a team, get a system in place, get that togetherness, that culture you need.”
Jim McCorry came and went in the blink of an eye, the late Eamonn Burns led Down to the 2017 Ulster final – “you were building a good side, then the next year five or six boys out of that group just dropped off” – before Tally took up the reins.
Again there were early signs of progress, until the Covid-19 pandemic ripped the rug from beneath them.
“It just felt nearly like you were going back to square one all the time…”
Last year was more like ground zero.
Eleven games between Dr McKenna Cup, League and Championship, no wins and one draw. Allied to off-field rumblings, it gave the impression of a county in chaos – the incident in Malahide pouring petrol on the flames.
Twelve months on, the dust long settled - was it really that bad?
“Ah, it’s a bit of both,” he sighs, “a bit of ‘what were we at?’ Then it was blown out of proportion too.
“But here, the players were in the wrong, you can’t blame the management team or anybody else.”
And this is where O’Hagan’s sympathies lie. Having previously worked under McCartan and O’Rourke, he felt they had plenty to offer.
But once the year became like a runaway train, it proved impossible to halt.
“It was nowhere near the fault of Aidan and James - with the late appointment they were chasing their tail the whole time.
“You couldn’t get a block of conditioning or anything done because the matches were on you straight away, then they were coming thick and fast.
“You were trying to get boys fit, trying to get boys onto the pitch, then there was a couple of boys huffing, throwing the dummies out of the pram, and once boys start doing that outside of camp it’s hard to clamp it down and keep it right. Next thing everything’s negative, which doesn’t help.
“I know there was boys done podcasts saying training wasn’t hard enough – I’m not afraid to say it here, them same boys couldn’t do two training sessions in-a-row when Conor Laverty came in for a week last year, so I don’t know why they would turn around and say training wasn’t hard enough when they actually couldn’t complete two training sessions themselves.
“It was sort of like that too. Boys weren’t putting 100 per cent effort in, and it only takes two or three bad eggs in a group to spoil the rest.”
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A LINE was drawn under all of that upon Laverty’s appointment. Before suffering the devastating cruciate ligament injury that ruled him out for the year, O’Hagan received only rave reviews from Barry about the direction Down were headed.
Those credentials will receive their sternest test on Sunday, even though Donegal come into the game against a backdrop of disarray at all levels. Aidan O’Rourke now finds himself in the opposite corner, hopping from Down’s frying pan into a fire in the north-west.
As he makes his way to Newry, some of the good days in red and black might pop into O’Hagan’s head – the summer of 2010, his last gasp winner to seal Down’s comeback from nine behind in the 2012 Ulster semi with Monaghan, felling the same foes at the same stage five years later, against all odds.
“Here, I enjoyed every bit of it, that’s the truth,” he says, “there’s no regrets at all.”
And who knows? At 32, Pairc Esler may not have seen the last of him in county colours just yet; one last kick still on the table.
“It’s too late this year, but I’ll see how this club season goes, see how the body reacts.
“It feels really good at the minute, that break of four or five months there without winter training, it’s made a massive difference.
“One thing I probably was very poor at in the last few years was managing myself – you feel like you have to do every training session, I was probably a wee bit stupid, thinking I could just bull on, and then when you do bull on you find you’re not right, you’re always playing through pain, not giving yourself time to recover right.
“But, in fairness to Conor, things are going the right road. He looks to have that bit of a culture instilled… it looks like it means something to go and play for Down again at the minute.
“That’s what you want to see coming back.”