Football

"If you asked a lot of men around Clonoe, they’d take your hand off for a senior and reserve league game and a couple of pints in the clubhouse after"

Connor McAliskey wasn't able to do all that he wanted to do with his year away from inter-county football, but is coming back refreshed.
Connor McAliskey wasn't able to do all that he wanted to do with his year away from inter-county football, but is coming back refreshed. Connor McAliskey wasn't able to do all that he wanted to do with his year away from inter-county football, but is coming back refreshed.

A FEW holidays. Weekends away. Nights out. Captaining Clonoe. A bit of soccer. Easing up.

Connor McAliskey had plans for his year out. None of them involved being locked in the house for months on end, having nowhere to go, nothing to do, no-one to see.

In the very strict footballing sense, it seemed like the perfect year out. A league split in two, finished off in empty stadiums, and a championship campaign that lasted all of 70 minutes in a saturated Ballybofey.

“It depends how you look at it. You can look at it that I didn’t miss a lot of football, there wasn’t much inter-county football played.

“I really got the enjoyment of the club games and being back there full-time. On the other side, I took a year for myself to enjoy myself, to enjoy life, to refresh mentally.

“Then you’re locked down a lot and didn’t get the opportunity to go for a few holidays or away for a few weekends, or avail of that extra time that I had. It was a catch-22.

“It wasn’t an easy decision to step away, it wasn’t stepping away saying I don’t care about Tyrone football, but it was never like that. I still had a keen interest in how it all went. I still went to the games I could, still watched them on TV, supporting the lads.

“It was a bit easier that come the height of the summer, I wasn’t watching Tyrone pull into Clones on a sunny day for a championship game, and I was out kicking ball like every club player.”

Call it a sense of duty, call it a sense of guilt, whichever it was, Clonoe was front and centre in his thinking when he made his choice.

Steven McDonnell came in and made him captain, and on the first afternoon back after lockdown, the sun blazed down as they stripped Trillick bare with a display of raging attacking football, of which he was at the heart.

It didn’t last. Plunkett Kane drove the stake through their chest in Edendork. The local derby with Coalisland is only the dream draw when you win.

Still, McAliskey had given it what he had. And it’s a summer that will stay with him.

The unmistakable giddiness and laughter that rises through the air when the sun decides to display its good grace and appear. He hadn’t done a pre-season with Clonoe and wasn’t a feature in the majority of league games for too many years.

Being made captain really enthralled him. Just recently, he was talking to a few clubmates and the chat came around to how they’d love to go on a holiday or do something with a bit of excitement.

“I said to them that if you asked a lot of men around Clonoe, they’d take your hand off for a senior and reserve league game and a couple of pints in the clubhouse after.

“It’s the simple things everybody’s missing, the social element. Down to the pitch for a match and into the bar for a bit of chat after – simple, but it goes a long road for a lot of people.”

He’d gone out of the Tyrone setup with intentions of killing Saturday afternoons playing soccer in the Mid Ulster League with Coalisland Athletics, but within weeks he had an invitation from then-Dungannon Swifts boss Kris Lindsay to come in for training.

The January transfer window was just about to open when the call had to be made.

“That was an option that was sitting there but it wasn’t something I was really mad keen to commit myself into at that level. It was enjoyable but it wasn’t something I wanted to follow up on.

“When I was younger I played in at Dungannon United Youth, tipped away in the Mid Ulster League a bit. It’s something I enjoyed doing but the club and Tyrone became top priority. Even at the minute, I don’t think I’ll play soccer this year at all. It’s more of a hobby.”

The hobby that Gaelic football was once was, but has long ceased to be.

In opting out, he simply needed to recharge.

A dislocated knee at the start of 2017 was followed by recovery, a run to the following year’s All-Ireland final playing some fine football, and then the crushing blow of an open dislocation of his ankle in the 2018 club championship.

“Three operations on the ankle in a week to get that sorted,” a detail he skirts by as if it were near normal.

2019 saw Tyrone go a different way, with Cathal McShane’s jump to the head of the full-forward line’s pack squeezing the competition for places. McAliskey was in, he was out, but the load was beginning to tell.

“The thing came to a stage of getting up in the morning, going to work, preparing to go to training after it, it started to feel like a second job instead of something that was a hobby.

“Everyone starts playing Gaelic for the enjoyment, the love of playing the game, and I got to the stage where I thought it was more of an expectation and a routine.

“I was getting up in the morning, constantly sore. The days I had off training, I was trying to settle the ankle to train again the next night, which was just an ongoing cycle of training, then being sore, then training again, then not playing, it just became unenjoyable.

“It wasn’t something I wanted to do but personality-wise, I wasn’t as enthusiastic or energetic about training, and that was rubbing off a bad vibe maybe – a bit of an energy zapper, as we’d say.”

Truth was, though, he couldn’t wait for Feargal Logan or Brian Dooher to call. It was Logan.

There have been a few positive conversations, ones that given McAliskey belief that maximising his own potential might be that bit easier.

The legs have been kept ticking by training for the virtual Belfast half-marathon. His aunt Marissa McKernan pulled together a squad of aunts, uncles, cousins. 13 in total, they set up a WhatsApp group and kept each other going.

They’ll run it on May 2, though they’ve almost given up on the idea that they’ll be able to do it together. A JustGiving page they set up has raised almost £6,000 for the Southern Area Hospice, “a service that’s been very good to our family in very difficult times, when we’ve lost family members”.

It’s Tuesday morning and he’s the kid on Christmas Eve. Training with Clonoe is back that night. He’ll be out helping the U17s and U19s, probably on Friday. Tyrone are getting back into it. Work – purchasing clinical drugs for Almac – are making plans for a return to the office.

“I’ve always been out of the house. There’s always been the demands of county and then the club, and every week for the full year you’re doing something.

“It was a real shock to the system, working from home, not having anywhere to go in the evenings, then the dark evenings come in.

“Mentally, it wasn’t the easiest period but there’s light at the end of the tunnel now.”