With all roads leading to playing for Cavan, Chris Curran's career took him to the lofty surroundings of Manchester United before returning home after a two-year stint. Since then, he helped Ballinamallard United reach the Holy Grail of senior football and has become part of Cliftonville's DNA since signing for the Reds in 2013. The Swanlinbar man talks to Brendan Crossan about a road less travelled...
SWANLINBAR was and always will be GAA country. As soon as Chris Curran was able to kick an O’Neill’s ball around the place he would represent his hometown club.
And, who knows, maybe one day he’d play for Cavan. After the hazy summer of ’97, when Cavan swaggered their way to a first Ulster title in 28 years, every kid wanted to be Larry Reilly.
Heading down Clones hill, Curran was no different.
“In primary school he was always the best player on the team and on all the underage teams the whole way through,” Cavan footballer Gearoid McKiernan says of his close friend Chris Curran.
“He played wing-back, wing-forward, if there was a fire to put out, Chris would put it out. If you needed him in the backs, he’d go in there. If you needed a score he’d be the man for that too.
“He was a very good Gaelic footballer. The trajectory he was on, he was definitely good enough for inter-county, and knowing his attitude he would have applied himself to it.”
Curran’s sporting career took an unexpected turn. By the time he’d celebrated his 16th birthday he was playing for Manchester United.
As it happened, he idolised United growing up, but nobody from a small town like Swanlinbar dared to dream of playing for the Old Trafford giants.
“I think for a lot of lads growing up, playing football from eight or nine-years-old, it is something that they might have in their minds. But for us living in Swanlinbar it was just never on our radar,” Curran says, who is preparing for Cliftonville’s Irish Cup semi-final against Glentoran at Windsor Park this evening.
“It just didn’t seem possible. You didn’t think it really existed outside of the television and the radio. So it wasn’t an ambition of mine.”
From a young age, Gearoid McKiernan and Chris Curran were joined at the hip.
Gearoid didn’t go anywhere without Chrissy and Chrissy didn’t go anywhere without Gearoid.
McKiernan was first cousins with Tomas and Ruairi Corrigan.
Their father and former Fermanagh manager Dominic Corrigan was friendly with Brian Khan who was doing great work with the underage teams at Ballinamallard United.
The Swanlinbar contingent were soon making the half-hour journey to Ballinamallard to try their hand at soccer.
“Gearoid got me involved with Ballinamallard at the age of 13, going on 14,” Curran says, “But very shortly after I’d started Gearoid went back to the Gaelic, but it stuck with me and I enjoyed it.
“For a time, there was me, Tomas, Ryan Jones and Gearoid playing U13 or U14. Brian [Khan] had a few sons who were friendly with Ruairi and Tomas. We were all young lads and just enjoyed playing together.
“Up to that point, everything I had was gained in the schoolyard or out in the street to be honest.”
Whitey Anderson, who guided Ballinamallard United into the Irish Premiership in 2012, was struck by just how good the quiet kid from Swanlinbar was for the club’s youth teams.
Back in the early ‘Noughties’, Anderson was doing a bit of scouting for Newcastle United.
“I remember speaking to Newcastle’s Academy Recruitment Officer, Peter Kirkley,” Anderson explains.
“I asked him: ‘So what do you want me to look for in a player?’
“And Peter says: ‘Whitey, if you go to a match and there’s a player that makes the hair stand on the back of your neck, let me know.’
“That’s how he put it. I remember going to watch Chris and thinking: ‘This kid is good.’ They talked about Ryan Giggs gliding over the ground - Chris was like that at that age. He was so quick, so direct, he took the ball up the pitch, a great dribbler of the ball, he just took control, but also his work-rate was phenomenal. He just stood out for me.”
Kirkley thought it was worthwhile to come over to see this flying winger from Swanlinbar for himself.
“I think we won the youth final 7-0 and Chris scored four,” Whitey says. A trial to Newcastle United beckoned.
At 15, Curran was also selected for Northern Ireland schoolboys that went on to claim the prestigious U16 Victory Shield, beating illustrious neighbours England along the way.
“Everything happened very, very quickly,” Curran says. “I didn’t even see a pathway [to professional football] before I joined the schoolboys and started talking to different people.
“We had a really good group – Cory Evans, Ryan McGivern and Chris Ramsey would have been in there. We beat England that year and it turned a lot of heads.
“And the fact that I was a year young meant there were a few clubs interested in me. I went over to Newcastle a few times and did really well over there and was very close to signing, and then I played in the Victory Shield again and United came along, and the rest is history after that, I suppose.”
From dreaming of wearing the Breffni blue of Cavan to donning the famous Red Devils shirt in a couple of blindingly quick seasons was fairy-tale stuff.
Curran signed youth forms for Manchester United in January 2007 but didn’t move to Old Trafford until he finished his GCSEs (at St Aidan’s High School, Derrylin) that summer.
“It was a massive opportunity for Chris,” McKiernan says. “I just remember the buzz around the town when he signed for United because everyone knew how a good a lad he was. Everyone just wished him the best.”
As with all academy players, Alex Ferguson made it his business to meet the new recruits and their families. In those early months, Curran had to pinch himself every time he saw some of United's first team stars around the training ground.
Ronaldo, Giggs, Neville, Rooney, Tevez, Berbatov, Nani and Vidic – all of whom would go on to win the Champions League in Moscow a year later.
Curran was thrown in at the deep end as soon as he arrived. Trying to make your way as a youngster in the pro game is tough enough as it is – but even tougher when you choose to join one of the biggest clubs in the world.
Curran felt every bit of the unforgiving gradient in front of him.
“It was always going to be a big ask to make a career at United, and very quickly I realised I just wasn’t at that standard.
“I did an unbelievable amount of work to try and get myself up to the standard of other players. And I remember in my second year I did really well and coming very close and getting really good feedback. But it was a tough period.
“The football side is one thing and probably knowing I wasn’t good enough and the other side of it was being away from my family and not having that support network that most lads at that age probably need.”
In the two seasons he spent at United he played close to 50 games and worked under former U18 coach Paul McGuinness.
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IF he has any regrets, it’s perhaps not preparing himself better for the physical demands of the professional football.
“I maybe could have done more strength and conditioning. Guys over there were light years ahead of me. I should have made more of an effort to speak to guys who were over there.
“Whitey Anderson tried to put me in touch with Ciaran McKenna who was over at Spurs at the time, but I didn’t. I should have done that and I could have got myself a better deal as well. I probably should have gone to a club that was prepared to make more of an investment in me [Curran was on a youth scholarship], but it’s not easy to do when you’re so young and you’ve supported United your whole life.”
Curran adds: “I’d offers, professional offers, from other clubs. Newcastle were keen and offered a deal. West Ham offered a deal and probably could have got professional contracts at those clubs. It would have been wiser to have said ‘no’ to United and to give myself a bit more security. For United, there was very little risk from their side of it. So if it wasn’t working out after two years they could let me go.”
Two years later Curran was back where he'd started but with a lot less enthusiasm for the game.
Even though his narrative was no different to the vast majority of young players who head for the bright lights of professional football only to return home a while later feeling demoralised by the experience, Curran was “a bit lost” and “embarrassed” and couldn’t help but think that he was “the boy who used to play for Manchester United”.
To go from Ballinamallard to Manchester United and back to Ballinamallard wasn’t the way he'd planned it.
There was a six-month detour, via Portadown, but it seemed a more natural thing to return to Ferney Park under Whitey Anderson – a manager who would help him rediscover his passion for the game.
“I remember speaking to Chrissy and saying to him that there were so many kids who would love to have got the chance to play for Manchester United at 16 years of age,” Anderson says now.
“I said to him: ‘Why don’t you come back to Ballinamallard? It’s local for you, you know the people...’”
Anderson himself had lofty ambitions. He wanted to get the club into senior football for the first time in their history and to give some of the Premiership blue-bloods a black eye.
He achieved both objectives.
“We'd won the Championship with a month to go,” Anderson says.
“We had Jay McCartney on one wing and Chrissy on the other side and those boys were flying. We got into the Premier League and everybody expected us to get relegated and we finished fifth, the highest placed team outside Belfast. We beat Linfield twice at Windsor Park. We actually beat Cliftonville at Solitude and they went on to win the league that year.
“Chrissy was one of those players if you were under a bit of pressure and you got the ball to him, you knew you were going to be in the opposition's 18-yard box in a few seconds. It wasn't just his ability, it was his attitude and work-rate.
"I remember reading an article about the youth teams at Manchester United and the importance of being courageous on the ball, and I recalled Chris saying that a few times in the changing room before games, 'Let's be courageous on the ball when we get it.' That's the type of player he was.”
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FRESH from their league-winning exploits a few weeks earlier, the Cliftonville players were gathered round the hotel pool on their end of season trip to Santa Ponsa.
Catching a few afternoon rays and enjoying the after-glow of the night before, Chris Curran’s name popped up in conversation.
Ronan Scannell had mentioned a couple of times to manager Tommy Breslin that Curran was one of the best wingers he’d faced all season.
“We were sitting by the pool,” former Red George McMullan recalls, “and somebody said to ‘Bressy’: ‘What’s happening, Bressy, are you signing Chris Curran or what?’
“So ‘Bressy’ was joking: ‘Get him on the phone and we’ll get it done.’ So ‘Boycie’ or Conor Devlin, who both knew him, rang Chrissy and the phone was handed to ‘Bressy’, and a few minutes later he agreed to sign.
“So he was signed from Santa Ponsa!”
After three great years at Ballinamallard United, Curran thanked Anderson for everything.
At that time – the summer of 2013 – he was living in Belfast while studying at Queen’s. The timing was perfect.
After one meeting with Breslin, Curran was a fully-fledged Red, rejecting a late bid from Glentoran in the process.
It’s never easy to enter a league-winning changing room and improve them – but that’s exactly what Curran did.
And he loved Breslin’s managerial style.
Curran says: “Sometimes Tommy would go round the changing room one by one and he’d be speaking to players for more than a few minutes and I used to wonder what he said to them because he’d come to me and it was always the same thing: ‘Just go and play.’
“I loved that about Tommy. I loved that he’d have confidence in his players to make decisions on the pitch rather than trying to coach every single minor detail.
“And I was surrounded by top, top quality too. I hope George McMullan doesn’t mind me saying but I was surprised how good he was when I started training and playing with him.
“I hadn’t seen him up close. The same with Ronan Scannell. They were so good it was scary. It made you want to be better. Marty Donnelly, Marc Smyth, and Ryan Catney and Barry Johnston bossing midfield every week and obviously Liam Boyce up top with Joe was something special.”
“Chrissy was a powerhouse,” says McMullan. “Great work rate, and when he got you one-on-one he had you on toast. He had this wee step as if he was going to his right and he was away to his left.
“He made some difference to us. He was very close to being our Player of the Year in the second season we won the league.”
Some players don’t have to wait until retirement before legendary status is bestowed upon them.
Think George McMullan, Liam Boyce, Joe Gormley, the Scannells, 'Cats', ‘Janty’ and the late Tommy Breslin.
All Hall of Famers.
Now playing in a central midfield role and proudly adorning the captain’s armband, Chrissy Curran reached that lofty status some time ago – and is keen to add more silverware to the Solitude trophy cabinet over the coming seasons.
“Sometimes,” Curran says, “I think I could have done more for Swanlinbar and maybe played more with my brothers, and what I might have been able to do to help them if I hadn’t played soccer.
“Gaelic football in Swanlinbar was always their thing and sometimes I think about what we might have achieved and won and the nights we might’ve had together.
“But you only have one life and I’m happy with the one I’ve chosen.”
Sadler’s Peaky Blinder Irish Cup semi-finals
Cliftonville v Glentoran
A SUCCESSFUL arbitration result yesterday means Cliftonville boss Paddy McLaughlin should have central defenders Gary Breen and Jamie Harney available for selection tonight. Glentoran striker Rory Donnelly will be looking to plot the downfall of his former team-mates at Windsor with both sides very easily matched. It could come down to who worked hardest during lockdown.
Odds: H:7/5 D:9/4 A:13/8
Prediction: Cliftonville
Coleraine v Ballymena United
DAVID Jeffrey is likely to be in the Ballymena dug-out and Steven McCullough on the pitch after the club won their arbitration battle to have both suspensions lifted for this afternoon’s semi-final. Oran Kearney will be hoping to add the Irish Cup to their League Cup win last February and appear to have the firepower to shade this semi-final.
Odds: H:4/6 D:13/5 A:3/1
Prediction: Coleraine
