“I look back on it as the best days of my life. How could you not? The boys were my best friends at that time. It was just brilliant, the whole buzz around Armagh…
Everybody was delighted. Armagh Credit Union hadn’t a shillin’ left in it. People were spending their money following us. Everybody in the county got cleaned taking out loans to get to Croke Park.”
Kieran Hughes
THINK of him and you see Clones, packed on a sun-drenched summer Sunday, and determination in his eyes as he gallops down the right wing on the attack for Armagh.
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Kieran Hughes came from nowhere to become a swashbuckling half-back in the all-conquering Orchard sides that took the game by storm from the late 1990s onwards.
As a child, he dreamt of pulling on the orange jersey his brother Brian (20 years his senior) had worn with distinction back in 1982 when he scored goals for fun and was nominated for an Allstar.
Kieran had determination, but lacked his brother’s talent.
He didn’t make school teams or play for Armagh at underage level and remained a fringe player until his mid-teens when he sprouted up and out into a formidable physical unit. His club Pearse Og won the Armagh senior championship in 1992 and star player Gerard Houlahan saw something in young Hughes who trained with the squad. Managers Paul Grimley and Adrian Clarke spotted it too.
“Houlie took me under his wing,” Hughes explained.
“He told me: ‘If you want to play for Armagh you need to be ruthless, you need to learn to be disciplined’. I knew I was never going to be a Houlie, but I knew that to get to Armagh level it was all about commitment and hard work.”
He put in the graft and after a couple of seasons word filtered through to Armagh management duo Brian Canavan and Brian McAlinden that there was a lad worth taking a look at in the Cathedral City.
“We got a tip about this fella who was playing for Pearse Og,” said Canavan.
“We took a look at him and got him into the panel and in a couple of years he was ready for action.
“A great lad.”
Hughes quickly realised what was expected from him if he wanted to run with the big dogs. Kieran McGeeney walked him off the pitch one evening and challenged him to put his heart and soul into the cause.
“I remember coming off the field after a mammoth training session and I’d only been to a few at that time,” he said.
“McGeeney says to me: ‘Are you here to mess about or do you really think you can make this team?’ I was thinking: ‘What is this man on?’ He was so serious.
“I said to him: ‘I’ll not be letting you down McGeeney’ and from there on fear of letting him down drove me on. Today’s players would have the same mentality. Totally.”
Session after session yielded little game-time and Hughes admits he thought “am I ever going to get a turn” but he got his first start against Antrim in the 1998 NFL game and “grabbed it with both hands”.
“I was actually crapping myself,” he says with a laugh.
“I wanted to get on the ball and not give it away. I played a bit safe; I went across the field or used the back door. I didn’t think I was Oisin McConville or Paddy McKeever or Diarmuid Marsden – I was Kieran Hughes and I knew my role in the team.”
The nucleus of the side that went on to win the Sam Maguire in 2002 was already there. McGeeney, Paul McGrane, the McNulty brothers Justin and Enda, the McEntees Tony and John, Barry O’Hagan, Mardsen, McConville… At training the four-on-fours and grids became Braveheart battle scenes.
“There was always someone coming off the field opened-up or busted,” Hughes recalls.
“There was always blood coming out of someone but as soon as we knocked the s***e out of each other we were best friends again.
“The training was ruthless and I got busted many a time. If it wasn’t one of the McEntees, it could have been John Donaldson, it could have been Ronan Clarke (my friend, my own clubmate), it could have been anybody and you took it and went on ahead.
“You knew there was no malice in it, it was about getting better and it fairly stood to us in the end up.”
With every thump the squad grew stronger and more united and in the background the senior players got into their heads, demanding more, more, more... There was a sense that something special was within reach.
“The togetherness in that team was unreal,” Hughes explained.
“Nobody was letting anybody down.
“McGeeney and McGrane used to drum it into us ‘this is club Armagh, this is your club’. When you started to see the results, they got it into our heads that we could win the All-Ireland, nevermind Ulster and it took off from there.”
The breakthrough came in 1999 when Armagh took Down apart to end a 17-year search for an Ulster title. When the game was over Hughes climbed the steps of the Gerry Arthur Stand and he and Houlahan each grabbed a handle of the cup and raised it aloft together. One of the biggest roars of the day followed as Orchard hordes celebrated on the St Tiernach’s Park pitch.
The fans descended on Croke Park in their droves as Armagh moved on for an All-Ireland semi-final against streetwise Meath. Full-back Ger Reid was sent off for a mystery off-the-ball offence and, even though he scored a goal, Hughes says it’s a day he prefers to forget.
“Sure we were beat,” he says.
“Days like that don’t stick in the memory bank, but I suppose I got a goal at Croke Park so I was delighted with that. I forgot the bad days; I wanted to get them out of my system. You just need to think how you can stop it from happening again.”
As a new millennium dawned, Armagh put the Royal loss behind them and returned the following season determined to avenge it. Blood was spilled at Callanbridge as the panel jostled for positions in the side. But it wasn’t all hard work, there was a bit of fun there too.
“Benny Tierney was 100 mile-an-hour having the craic,” says Hughes.
“Justy and Enda, the two McNultys, were the same.
“You had the more serious side with McGrane and these boys. You need a bit of both, it’s about team spirit and unity but if you were messing, the smile wasn’t long wiped off your face.”
The formula continued to work and Armagh survived a late Derry fightback to retain their Ulster crown. Johnny McBride had levelled the game late on with a cracking goal, but the Orchardmen found an extra gear to win by a point.
“Will to win got us over the line at the end of it,” says Hughes.
“I had a job to do as number five and it was the fear of losing that drove me on. I was afraid to lose. I didn’t want my man to score and I wanted to score. I always thought it was better for him to mark me instead of me running everywhere after him, so I tried to get on the ball as much as possible and it worked for me.”
But there were more near-misses at Croke Park. Against Kerry (after a replay) later that year and then in 2001, when Galway ended Armagh’s run in the Qualifiers.
The ‘two Brians’ took their leave after laying the foundations and Joe Kernan replaced them for the momentous 2002 season with Hughes’ former mentor Paul Grimley as his assistant.
“It was great for me when Joe and Paul came in,” he recalls.
“‘Grimo’ was inspirational to me and I was thinking ‘this is just great’.”
Hughes was named Man of the Match when Armagh beat Tyrone in the 2002 Ulster quarter-final but an Achilles tendon injury was cruel luck that ruined his season.
Aidan O’Rourke took over the number five jersey and although Hughes fought his way to fitness the Dromintee clubman maintained his superb form and he couldn’t get his place back. He watched from the bench as the Orchardmen won the Sam Maguire.
“It’s probably one of the memories that I just want to forget about,” he admits.
“The injury set me back a bagful and Aidan played right half-back that day. Once I lost my place it was very hard to get back on the team because everybody knew we were heading for the All-Ireland final.
“Nobody wanted to miss it and they all watched themselves because they knew how big it was.
“I was just back from injury and I was able to come on. Unfortunately they didn’t need me that day but I got my All-Ireland medal. Ah well…”
He’d also like to erase losing the 2003 All-Ireland final to Tyrone from his memory. Hughes was thrown into a bruising, physical encounter in which neither side played well and the Red Hands held off their bitter enemies in the end.
He trudged off the field disappointed but regained his started role in 2004, winning a fourth Ulster title and it was a shock when he retired after being named Armagh Player of the Year.
With a young family at home he just didn’t have the time to commit to the cause.
“It was hard,” said Hughes.
“I was coming home from work and my wife would have the gear sitting there ready but I hardly had time to get my dinner. You were away from 7 in the morning and you weren’t getting home until 11 at night. It was just taking its toll on me and I’d rather be fully committed than maybe missing a gym session on a Wednesday night when I knew I should have got it done.”
A wedding meant he only saw “bits and pieces” of the game against Kildare last Saturday when Armagh rekindled memories of those glory days at the turn of the century.
“They were very good and I was delighted,” said Hughes.
“I texted McGeeney after it to congratulate him because he shut-up a lot of critics.
“No matter what, he’s always going to be a friend of mine. McGrane is in with him and John Toal and Paddy McKeever and Armagh can only get better from having those boys on board. There’s no other way about it.
“They’ll tell the boys how to commit properly and they’ll be treated like the Dublins and the Kerrys. If they work hard the boys will get repaid and it’s paying off for them now.”
Before he goes, I ask him if he has any pictures of his Orchard county days.
“I’ll ask my sister,” he says.
Later a page from a scrapbook full of memories arrives on WhatsApp with the message: “The family is sending all this. I can’t remember most of it. Lol”
Maybe not, but there are thousands who do.
