OWEN Gallagher hadn’t long settled in the Galway squad when he felt comfortable enough to bring up the events of July 14, 2012.
Paul Conroy had been one of the squad’s most welcoming figures when Gallagher answered the clarion call from Padraic Joyce. But when Gallagher brought up that west Belfast afternoon of ten years ago this week, there were a few jagged laughs.
The 18-year-old had forced his way into Liam Bradley’s team and was thrown into midfield, where he’d fight for the skies with Conroy.
Ten minutes from time, Padraic Joyce was called for. With his first touch he almost fashioned a goal but the wear was showing on the tyres. A point had to do. Then he kicked another from a 13-metre free and Galway seemed same.
Instead, Tomás McCann, who’d knocked back his honeymoon to play, levelled matters before Deaglan O’Hagan kicked a winner that sent Antrim through and Galway crashing out of the championship.
That would be the last time Padraic Joyce would wear a Galway jersey, an ignominious end to a career that had sparkled almost all its days.
Little did Owen Gallagher think that he’d be here now, a decade later, as a friend to Joyce and Conroy, not a foe.
That the analysis he had to present to the Antrim players before that game would be on Gareth Bradshaw, now a clubmate in Moycullen.
The Saffron swapped for the maroon of his adopted Galway, the Galway manager couldn’t ignore his brilliant form for adopted club, particularly when they won a long-awaited county title in 2020.
That 2012 campaign seemed like the start of something with his native county, but he’d spend his next few years dipping in and out.
Still U21 two years later, he scored a memorable goal to help Antrim draw with Armagh.
Three minutes into stoppage time, Gallagher picked the ball up 55 yards from goal. The first tackle falls off him and as the orange jerseys retreat in fear, he drills a 20-yard shot that takes a nick on its way, helping it loop into the top corner.
He’d play all three championship games in 2015, his first since 2012 and his last summer with Antrim.
It’s been a funny path that has led him here, to the gates of heaven, decked in maroon that has started to look like his colour. And in turn, he has begun to sound the part too.
“He’s gone full west of Ireland, dropping in Connemaraisms, ye this and ye that,” slags his brother Paddy.
The clan went full west of Ireland two weeks ago for the semi-final. Paddy posted a photo after the game of 15 of them - siblings, parents, clubmates – decked in Galway colours in the Hogan Stand.
Owen is one of nine siblings, three of whom have played inter-county football. Had Paddy been in Enda McGinley’s plans this year, the trio would probably all have played for separate teams on one weekend.
Instead some of the family travelled down to watch James score 1-3 for London against Sligo in the Tailteann Cup after taking in their native Antrim’s defeat by Leitrim.
The following day, their parents were in Pearse Stadium to see Owen come on and score a late goal for Galway in their Connacht Championship win over Leitrim.
Of the nine children, there are seven boys and two girls, aged between 21 and 33. Sport has come in all shapes and sizes in the house.
Their father Owen, a doctor himself, ran sub-three hour marathons back in the day and has three black belts in martial arts.
The youngest, Zelie, will miss the All-Ireland final because she’ll just be finishing a walk from Canterbury to Rome.
All seven boys have played football for Glenavy, but never all at once. Three times they’ve got a different five out, but injuries and now the moves away by Owen and James mean it will probably never happen.
Owen, Paddy and James have all played county football, and while Owen has an Ulster boxing title, Dominic and Charles both won national titles and fought across eastern Europe for Ireland in their teens.
And then there’s rugby. Their claim to fame, almost.
Having been out on holiday the previous summer, their father – who’d previously worked in Nigeria and Uganda – decided in 2014 to move the whole family out to South Normandy in France. A family they’d met out there helped them get set up with work and a home. They stayed a year.
Paddy played soccer but the other six boys all turned their hand to rugby. That followed on when they returned home.
Three of the brothers would leave Rathmore Grammar at the end of fifth year to head for Methody or Campbell College, two of the north’s most prestigious rugby schools. Dominic would go on to play for Ireland at U18, U19 and then the Junior World Cup in 2011, where he was part of a squad containing the likes of Tadhg Furlong, Iain Henderson, Jordi Murphy and Andrew Conway, to name but a few.
James was handy, playing at number 8 for Championship outfit Richmond when he moved to London, and Owen Gallagher has his own rugby story too. He kept it up for a few years as well, training the odd time with Rory Best at Banbridge, and ending up on an Ulster U18 academy team to face Connacht.
As a centre, he came face-to-face with one Robbie Henshaw.
But Gaelic football was predominantly his thing. Whereas Methody and Campbell called the others, he was more interested in trying to guide Rathmore to a first MacLarnon Cup.
They almost did it too, leading Bessbrook by eight points heading into the dying stages of the semi-final, with a north Belfast derby against St Mary’s CBGS waiting for them. And then disaster struck. The lead was swept away, leaving the door open for Caolan Trainor to hit the net in stoppage time and send Bessbrook through.
“That’s a heartbreaking one that he’d still talk about,” says Paddy.
Ryan Murray was a year above Owen at school, in the same year as Charles. He and Owen would play for Antrim U21s and, briefly, the senior side together.
“My memory of playing alongside him, it’s his strength and athleticism. Nearly like that rugby player coming in off the wing, receiving the ball and breaking a couple of tackles – he always seemed to be that linebreaker.
“If we were playing now and you’re stuck recycling the ball trying to break down a packed defence, Owen would be that man coming off the shoulder with pace and power, busting through that line and getting you in for a score himself or another forward.
“He had a very powerful sidestep on him when he was moving at pace, and he had the strength to bust through a trailing arm.”
And yet when he signed up for first Trinity College and then NUIG, where he’d lost a Sigerson Cup final to UCD, it seemed inevitable that Owen Gallagher would be lost to inter-county football.
The running to Glenavy was madness in itself, yet he kept it going right up until the summer of 2019.
“I didn’t have a car, so over the years I’m getting the bus from Galway to Dublin, Dublin to Belfast and getting a lift or another bus to Glenavy. Seven, eight hour trips on the bus. It’s not a fun spin,” he told The42.ie after Moycullen’s county final success in 2020.
Glenavy had won an Antrim intermediate title and reached the Ulster semi-final in his first year of college. The toll was exacting, but at that stage he was studying, not working.
Eventually the call had to be made. Moycullen had enquired a few times before he gave in and transferred down.
Owen Gallagher became a huge feature of their 2020 Galway SFC winning team, the first for the club in almost half a century. He’d come very quickly to prominence and found himself on Padraic Joyce’s radar, which wouldn’t even have detected the link back to their previous meeting in 2012.
It was close to not happening either. A lot of junior doctors travel at the end of their second year of work, where he’s at now. Australia and New Zealand were right there in front of him but he chose to stay home instead.
There was always an innate competitiveness hardwired into him. It was in the genes. Everything the siblings did was a competition. They’d go to the Mournes and race up Slieve Donard, or Mount Errigal when they holidayed in Donegal.
But sometimes Owen needed a bit more to bring it out of himself too. Schoolwork came easily and he cruised through exams, but you don’t get out the other side of medical school without having to dig in at some point.
The same applies to his football. Antrim and Glenavy might have kept him but perhaps they’d never have gotten the best out of him. The lift in the quality of environment he’s been exposed to with Moycullen and Galway has brought the best out of him.
For Ryan Murray it feels the same as watching James Loughery playing for Cork. He was good enough to go on and captain the Rebels but he can only wonder if either man would have found those heights in Antrim, and that leads to wonders of what could have been for anyone there given the opportunity.
“But it’s not as if Owen rocked up in Galway and said ‘I’m gonna play for Galway here’. There’s serious work that you or I won’t know of to get there.
“He had a breakthrough when the club won the Galway championship and he’s got on the panel, but the effort and dedication Owen is showing now to Gaelic football is maybe a level beyond what he ever envisioned playing for Antrim all those years ago. “You don’t just take a player from somewhere else and drop them in and they’ll suddenly be able to play at that level.”
Stephen Mulvenna transferred from Antrim to Derry and would win an All-Ireland in 1993. If there’s another Antrim man out there with a Celtic Cross at inter-county level, we’re certainly not sure of them.
Owen Gallagher is 70 minutes away from repeating that feat three decades on. It feels like a game set up for him to come into. He wasn’t used when they were protecting a lead against Derry but at some point you feel they’ll have to chase on Sunday, and that’s what suits him.
Maroon suits him. Inter-county football suits him. Moycullen suits him. Scratch the surface and you’ll always find Antrim and Glenavy, but they’ll have nothing only pride for him this Sunday.
