BEFORE Derry minors’ second training session back after lockdown in May, Marty Boyle approached Matthew Downey and Mark Doherty.
The manager felt that the team that gelled back together quickest after the break would be the team that would win Ulster and All-Ireland titles.
What were Tyrone doing up on the height above Kelly’s Inn?
Boyle wanted his captain and vice-captain to introduce a bit of craic into the warm-up, lighten the mood a bit.
Downey instantly moved the goalposts.
“His reply was ‘no, we need to be fully concentrated – we’ll go out half an hour before training and kick about, that’s when we’ll have the craic, but when the whistle goes, we concentrate’,” smiles the Ballinascreen man.
“So he had everybody on the field half an hour early.”
Downey had also taken it upon himself to set up an alternative WhatsApp group in which he monitored what other players were doing during the many lockdowns that seemed almost certain for many months to deny Derry a shot at glory.
When the management went around the players individually before the resumption in May, they gave each of them specific areas of their game to work on.
Their captain was asked to tighten up on his free-taking. It was already excellent, but could have been better.
So the Lavey man was straight on to Dean Rock, signing up for the Dublin forward’s one-to-one clinic.
“It was unbelievable – in the whole championship, I think he missed one, near the end of the final,” says Boyle.
The Ballinascreen man, in his first term as minor boss having long been around the club, school and development squad scene, inherited a different culture than existed around squads a decade ago.
With the seniors dropping through the leagues and the minors going through a long barren spell, successive managers in the late 2000s and early 2010s reported difficulty getting the best players to commit to county minor football.
Disunity and warring factions from rival clubs were not the factors they were externally made out to be. The idea that Derry’s issues are attributable to in-fighting is one that keeps growing legs back no matter how often you try to cut them off.
“I always thought that was a lazy narrative driven by people outside Derry because they wanted a handy excuse as to why Derry were under-performing,” says Boyle, who previously coached in Dromore and his native Ballinascreen alongside current Oak Leaf senior coach Ciaran Meenagh.
Derry’s first All-Ireland minor title in 18 seasons (bearing in mind this was the 2020 crop playing a year late) was the culmination of years of graft in so many different sectors – county, club, schools.
This was the county’s fifth Ulster minor final in six years, winning three, and it was the second time in four years they’d played Kerry in an All-Ireland decider.
A Cliffordless Kingdom didn’t carry the same air of invincibility.
Derry won it, lost it and then won it again in the most dramatic of circumstances. And in those glorious post-match moments, whatever disappointment that lingered from not playing it in Croke Park was quickly burned off in the Tullamore sun.
“Croke Park was a disappointment but what the lads got to experience after the game, they wouldn’t have had that in Croke Park.
“They had the trophy on the field, their parents and friends were there and it was very intimate.”
The Tom Markham Cup wasn’t even allowed into the changing rooms with them, never mind up the road. They stepped off the bus at a jammed Ballinascreen empty-handed but full-hearted, proud to wear the red-and-white.
Building a culture of young men wanting to play for Derry was never going to be done by pitting county against the club. There would only have been one winner in that joust.
Instead, there was a consciousness that the club must be given its place. The decision on when to step away from club action was left to the players, who chose to go up until two weeks before the Tyrone game.
When the team departed for the All-Ireland final on the Friday, all their kitbags were sent with legendary kitman Colm ‘Bandy’ McGuigan.
When the players got to their hotel rooms, their club jersey was hanging along with a note from a club coach that had taken them somewhere along the line.
They wore them that evening for a kickabout in O’Connor Park and had their picture taken.
In among the recognisables of Slaughtneil, Dungiven, Lavey, Magherafelt there were Desertmartin (the new Derry junior champions who had three men on the pitch at the end of the game), Slaughtmanus, Limavady, Steelstown, Newbridge, Drum jerseys.
“It’s not even the footballers they’re producing, it’s the quality of men,” says Boyle.
“Great young fellas. No hassle, no egos, all modest, all head down. That’s testament to the clubs. You can have all the ability in the world but that mentality to achieve, that’s what we’re producing now as a county.
“It’s respect too. We spoke about how our county is getting respect now, and with respect comes confidence. With confidence comes performances. With performances comes results.
“We’re making progress and it’s down to serious hard work at every level, from clubs through to the structures at Owenbeg.”
They found their bit of craic on the training ground too.
In the depths of winter, Calum Downey and Dan Higgins were injured and out watching on a bog of a night.
The pair asked Colm McGuigan if they could pull the kit van around to the back pitch to sit in it and shelter from the rain. When it was over, McGuigan told them to drive it back over to the main building.
They proceeded to get it bogged in the field and left the entire team covered in muck from having to push them out.
Boyle has been trying to climb down off cloud nine to focus on retaining the titles.
The very next night after beating Kerry, he was back on the team bus with the 2021 crop, off to play a challenge game against Fermanagh. They played Down three days later, and have had a Covid outbreak to deal with in between times.
Armagh come to Owenbeg tonight to try and strip their titles just 10 days after winning them.
But with a senior team containing just two men over 27 and a proper run of strong minor teams coming in behind them, Derry football is on its way back.
