“A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.”
– John Barrymore
HUGH Malone would desperately love the idea that Ballybay might need a score on Sunday, and that his brother Colin will turn to the stand and call him down.
Turned 40 in April, he knows the chances are slim. He hasn’t yet had any game time in the championship. But the nets in Clones still hang in the spot they did when he played in his first final, an intermediate one, in 1996. He knows where they are.
“Awww… yeah. You probably dream about it. Even last year, coming back and you’d be going through different nights and you’re thinking ‘imagine getting to a championship final, imagine getting the winning score, or a score, or being on the field!’ If you won it, it would be a good finish to the whole thing.”
He talks about the finish as if it’s coming, but if he’d wanted a get-out clause, it was there looking at him last October.
A league semi-final against Truagh, a ball in and an opponent accidentally clambers on the back of his leg. Hugh hobbles off on the Saturday evening thinking it was a knock. He only went for an x-ray on the Monday morning and by that evening, he was being operated on in Drogheda for a broken fibula and snapped ankle ligaments, for which he had to get pins in.
“I surely did [think it was over]!
“At that stage I was saying it was an awful way to end. We won the league semi-final by a point or two, and I was sitting in the stand f***ing freezing for the league final with a big blue jacket on me, on the crutches.
“We won the league, it was good to go on and win it, but I was saying ‘Jesus, this is definitely me’. But c’mere, as time went on over Christmas, eight or ten weeks on crutches and then I was back in the gym doing a bit.
“With the year was in it, early on I was doing a bit of jogging and then before I knew it, I was back out with the lads. A brother of mine is over the team as well, he probably got me back on the scene, he’d have been saying ‘be part of it’.”
Injuries are nothing new. A Monaghan minor for three years, he suffered a bad hamstring tear in 1997 and it would plague him for the rest of his days.
He missed out on an Ulster U21 title because of a recurrence, and his championship run with Monaghan seniors consisted of a solitary substitute appearance against Fermanagh on the day that Rory Gallagher plundered 3-9 in 2001.
Malone played a bit of league across the couple of years around it, and was briefly back in under Banty’s first term of office, but each time the hamstring would go and he’d be back to square one.
But like a rubber ball, he’d bounce up again.
Getting up and getting on is in the Malones. Hugh and Colin’s eldest brother Alan took hydrocephalus as a child after contracting meningitis, but despite learning difficulties he has found a good way of living in a local Camphill community, which gives independence to those with special needs.
“He has the mindset of a 12-year-old. But he’s good, he’s very good. He’s fit to do most things himself.
“He’s in Camphill and they have their own houses, they do their own farming, their own plants, their own cooking. It’s great, he’s busy all the time. It’s a great wee spot.
“He’s home every weekend or second weekend. The parents aren’t getting any younger. They be delighted to see him home but he’s going back to somewhere that he enjoys, he doesn’t mind going back.”
Alan would have been heard loud and proud at Ballybay matches all down the years.
Their father, Hugh, is a club stalwart but he took Guillain-Barré syndrome around 20 years ago and hasn’t been able to get out to games.
He always got Hughie around the club but it never really passed down, with the son joking the only man who calls it to him now is Dessie Ward, who shouts “Hughie 2-2” at him since he scored 2-2 in the league final four years ago.
Hugh Malone has three senior league medals, a senior championship, three intermediates and a junior league and championship double.
For it all, Ballybay people still recall his championship breakthrough game as well as any he’s ever played.
A second replay against parish rivals Drumhowan, he came off the bench as a 16-year-old to smash home a late goal that took Ballybay into an intermediate final against Donaghmoyne.
They lost it by a point and instead of going to senior, they went to Éire Óg the following week for a relegation playoff and lost by a point there too, dropping to junior instead.
Their current success, not least the 2012 senior championship, was built on the minor teams of ’98 and ’99. Malone won a league with the first but lost the championship final to Scotstown.
“When we were in the intermediates in the 2000s, we were up and down [to junior], and you’re looking ahead you never think that 2012 would ever have come.
“But then looking back from now to 2012, you’re saying ‘Jesus, we missed out on another couple of championships there to be got’.
“Eight years, you’re saying how did we not win one from then? It’s flew.”
Defeats to Scotstown have been a recurring theme of late. In both 2017 and 2019, Ballybay lost semi-final replays to them. The first one came after they’d surrendered an eight-point lead in eight unforgettable minutes of stoppage time.
Hugh Malone kicked eight points the last time Ballybay beat them in championship, back in 2002.
They dream again. He dreams that the call will come and that deciding not to call it quits with a broken leg at 39 pays off.
The man only ages when the dreaming stops.
