Football

“You miss Conal every second of every day. He was everything you could have wanted in a son."

Last Sunday in Ederney, Fermanagh hurlers recorded arguably the best result in their history, beating Mayo. Their manager Joe Baldwin hasn't been afraid to look outside the box. Life and sport have been full of twists and turns. He hasn't always been sure where he's been going since losing his eldest son Conal suddenly on Christmas Eve a decade ago. He sat down with Cahair O'Kane...

Fermanagh manager Joe Baldwin. Picture by David Fitzgerald / Sportsfile
Fermanagh manager Joe Baldwin. Picture by David Fitzgerald / Sportsfile Fermanagh manager Joe Baldwin. Picture by David Fitzgerald / Sportsfile

FROM before he was born, the path of Joe Baldwin’s life has been greatly altered by chance meetings.

His very existence owes indirectly to one.

Pat Baldwin was skippering the fishing boat he ran for his brother John’s fish merchants in Waterford.

Kilkeel was a lucrative destination for them. Pat was killing time after Mass one Sunday when from behind the Convent school, he heard the unmistakable sound of ash clashing.

He went around to see and there he met Jerry Sheehan, the Corkman who was principal and whose son Ronan now manages Down.

They struck up a conversation. Baldwin pulled on boots, played a game at full-back and decided that he wouldn’t go back down home.

So he set up camp in Kilkeel and there he would meet Helen.

Many years later, in the summer of 2019, their son Joe was living in Armagh and working for a roofing company in Portadown.

Coach of Crosserlough camogs, a couple of the girls had given him hurls to piece. They were resting against the wall outside when he took his break. Every day he’ll try and get a couple of minutes’ pucking in somewhere.

Up pulls the van. Out steps Ollie McShea, possibly Ireland’s most decorated GAA player in terms of county medals, having won almost annually throughout his career with both Enniskillen Gaels in football and Lisbellaw in hurling.

McShea also hurled Railway Cup for Ulster, a rare achievement in Fermanagh.

He was delivering glass and saw the hurls. Went over and lifted one, and he and Joe Baldwin just stand pucking the ball off the wall to each other.

“In the middle of Portadown, of all places.”

The random conversation they struck up would lead to Joe Baldwin taking over as Fermanagh’s hurling manager.

In his first year, 2020, they finished bottom of the entire National League structure but reached the Lory Meagher Cup final, where they were well-beaten by Louth.

The following year, they won the Lory Meagher. In 2022, they won Division 3B.

In last Sunday’s Division 3A clash in Ederney, Fermanagh beat Mayo.

The visitors might have been without their Tooreen contingent but the Ernemen, who pull almost exclusively from their only senior club Lisbellaw, were also missing a host of their best players.

When the final whistle went, dozens of young children came on to the field and began asking for autographs.

The Fermanagh hurlers, signing autographs? Unheard of.

You could make a convincing argument that it was the best result in their history.

The week before, they’d hit 14 wides against Monaghan. On the Friday night, Liam Watson took a session.

He straightened them up, literally. Looked at the players’ shooting angles, where their shoulders were, and realigned them. Fermanagh hit 2-16 from play against Mayo.

Steven Poacher took a back seat that night. From only ever having known football, another chance conversation with his cousin Declan Campbell, a friend of Poacher’s, led Baldwin to change course in his search for a coach to take things to another level.

It took a while to talk him round. Poacher spoke to other coaches, including Paul Kinnerk in Limerick. Dipped his toe in with a couple of sessions. Took in a Conor McGurk Cup game against Jordanstown.

“We were 2-11 to 0-8 up. Jordanstown scored ten points from their three-quarter line that day – the three men were all Fermanagh men.

“He came down, did a couple of sessions and just got the bug for it. Now he’s on the phone every other day with ideas.”

Joe Baldwin tells his players at least once a week to play for as long as they can hold a hurl.

It was a privilege taken away from him by a tumour that meant he had to have part of his bowel removed in 2004.

It was taken away from his son, Conal.

Christmas Eve past marked the tenth anniversary of his death.

A son, a hurler. A boy forever just 12.

* * * * *

CONAL played football and hurling for An Riocht. They lived beside his friend Shane McDowell, who played for Longstone.

His mother, Dolores, is a sister of Shorty Treanor’s. Conal’s own mother, Joanne, played inter-county camogie.

The Kingdom and Longstone players knew by the time they were U12 that they didn’t like each other.

“Everyone going at it, parents squaring up, all within earshot of the chapel,” Joe recalls, the coffee machines whirring through Costa in Coleraine.

Conal didn’t take the defeat well that day. A bit of a tiff with the McDowells. But as soon as he came through the door, he threw the kitbag from him and headed straight over to Shane’s.

“I said ‘you can’t go over there’ and he just says ‘they need to get over it Daddy, I’m over it’. That was the nature of him. It was done and dusted, Shane was his friend and that was it.”

“Would it be selfish to say you had 12 wonderful years and you wanted 12 more? Absolutely not. But we’re so grateful for the time we had with him." - Joe Baldwin on his late son Conal, who passed away in 2012.
“Would it be selfish to say you had 12 wonderful years and you wanted 12 more? Absolutely not. But we’re so grateful for the time we had with him." - Joe Baldwin on his late son Conal, who passed away in 2012. “Would it be selfish to say you had 12 wonderful years and you wanted 12 more? Absolutely not. But we’re so grateful for the time we had with him." - Joe Baldwin on his late son Conal, who passed away in 2012.

Joe pulls out his phone and, from behind a wall of unread texts and missed calls, he scrolls quickly to a couple of photos. One with John Mullane, one with the two boys, another in Croke Park with Conal.

He was only ever interested in hurling and football, though Darragh went his own sporting direction. His passion and talent is for showjumping.

When Joe’s best friend, Lawrence Gaffney, died in a car accident fifteen years ago at the age of 36, Conal became his best friend.

They went everywhere. To training with Antrim, Down and Queen’s. They’d be regulars in Waterford.

The first training session they took Antrim camogs in Falls Park, they’re there setting up cones and Conal comes over all joy and energy.

“‘Can you believe we’re the Antrim managers Daddy?’ he said.

We.

When they were travelling home from a game one day, having been beaten by Derry, Conal could tell his father was considering quitting.

“If Daddy quits, Daddy will never win,” Joe said to him.

“Daddy, you keep playing like that, you’re never gonna win anyway”, the youngster shot back, the big blue eyes looking out from beneath the shock of bright red hair.

Joe never got to play at Headquarters so it was a great thrill to coach Antrim to the All-Ireland intermediate final in 2011. But the rules barred Conal from participating on the day, so he had to watch from the stand with his mother.

The following year, with Conal and his brother Darragh excited about Christmas, the elder sibling took ill. His parents took him to Daisy Hill Hospital thinking it was nothing too serious.

But Conal was suffering from myocarditis, a rare underlying heart condition.

He went into a seizure. Medical staff worked frantically to save him and appeared to have resuscitated him.

“I can remember the doctor saying ‘we’ve got him’ and we were allowed to approach the bed. He just looked as if to say ‘I’m sorry’.”

Moments later, Conal passed away. It was Christmas Eve, 2012.

His parents had to go home that evening and break the news to Darragh.

It’s taken a long time to find any solace in it. Watching the news from Turkey and Syria this week and hearing of the thousands of families that don’t know if their loved ones are alive or dead and whose bodies may never be recovered, perspective is focused.

“You miss Conal every second of every day. He was everything you could have wanted in a son.

Joe and Conal Baldwin pictured together in Croke Park.
Joe and Conal Baldwin pictured together in Croke Park. Joe and Conal Baldwin pictured together in Croke Park.

"He knew what he wanted to do in life. He wanted to be a teacher.

“Would it be selfish to say you had 12 wonderful years and you wanted 12 more? Absolutely not. But we’re so grateful for the time we had with him.

“Conal passed away in a hospital, surrounded by his friends and family, a priest there, and us by his side. There’s people who get killed in car accidents and drowned…

“I hope people understand that, that’s a little, tiny bit of comfort we’re trying to take from that.”

For a while after his death, Joe didn’t know what to do with himself. He felt as if he’d never lift a hurl again. Took to playing more golf, walking mountains and beaches. Anything to make the seconds tick faster.

He’d committed to Queen’s, whom he’d guided to a Purcell Cup in 2011 and a final defeat the following year. The waves of emotion would hit hard. They got through the campaign, won the shield final.

“Emotionally, it was probably all we could have got out of that team.

“After that I realised that you did need the GAA again. Conal wouldn’t have wanted you to quit.

“It has probably been the outlet I’ve needed.”

When Fermanagh won the Lory Meagher Cup in 2021, he tried to keep it together but he just couldn’t.

The fact that it was Cavan they beat weighed on his mind.

At the bottom of Conal’s bed at home still sits the Cavan jersey that was among the presents he never got that Christmas.

That time of year and his birthday, May 15, are always particularly tough.

“It’s difficult, you learn to cope with it. I don’t think time ever heals it. You just become used to it.”

Down at An Riocht, Conal’s wee hurl is cut into the granite at the ball wall named after him. Inscribed in it was the quote his father discovered on the Twitter account he didn’t know his son had until after he died.

“It says ‘GAA is my life’. It’s an inspiration. It inspires me every day.”

* * * * *

THREE times a week, Joe Baldwin drives two-and-a-half hours down from Coleraine and two-and-a-half hours back up.

He’s gotten used to it over the years. From starting out with Down camogs in 2008, with whom he won a National League title, he’d been with Antrim, Derry, Queen’s (for a decade), Loughgiel, Crosserlough, Ballycastle before the move into hurling came.

Now his time’s not his own. Cloughmills two nights a week, Fermanagh three times, it’s hard to fit anything else in around it.

A kitchen fitter by trade, just two weeks ago he left his job as a maintenance manager in the Marine Hotel in Ballycastle to go back on the tools.

Joe and Joanne have separated in recent years but remain very close friends.

Having moved around a bit for a while, he met Frances, a nurse from Omagh working in Causeway Hospital, four years ago. They live together now in Coleraine, up towards the north coast.

Inter-county anything is a selfish pursuit, he won’t deny. Even in hurling’s lower reaches, the time commitment is enormous.

Fermanagh hurlers have never had greater cause.

Each time they pull on the jersey, the last thing they see is the crest of the Shane Mulholland foundation that will sit on the back of their neck, bearing the Irish word uallach, meaning proud.

In place since shortly after his death in a car accident in April 2015, it fits. The name Mulholland translates from Ó hUallachain, itself derived from uallach.

The day the county won its first Lory Meagher Cup two months after Shane lost his life, captain Sean Corrigan said that the players were told ‘if you are going to lie down, think of the shamrock on your back and think again’.

They came from seven points down that day to win.

Joe Baldwin didn’t know Shane personally but he knows the changing room was close to him and that his spirit is there.

“Sometimes I know just by looking in John Duffy’s eyes that he’s thinking of Shane.”

Young fans having their hurls signed by Fermanagh hurlers in Ederney last weekend. Picture: Fermanagh GAA
Young fans having their hurls signed by Fermanagh hurlers in Ederney last weekend. Picture: Fermanagh GAA Young fans having their hurls signed by Fermanagh hurlers in Ederney last weekend. Picture: Fermanagh GAA

At training the week of the Mayo game, Rory Porteous brought his name up. It’s instinctive, undeliberate, and because of that, so genuine and meaningful.

“Shane’s foundation logo was on the jersey long before I came and will be long after I’m gone. He was very much a part of them and remains so to this day.

“Ryan Bogue, Sean Corrigan, JP [McGarry], they speak about him at the right time.”

A Loughgiel native, Shane immersed himself in Lisbellaw and Fermanagh hurling after joining in 2009. He took their U14s to an All-Ireland Féile Division Five final ten years ago. Many of those lads are hurling for club and county now.

The foundation that runs in his name has helped drive and fund the formation of underage hurling in Enniskillen and Belnaleck and Derrylin and Knocks Grattans.

Club virtually is county when it comes to Fermanagh. Twelve of the starting 15 against Mayo come from Lisbellaw.

They have to make use of whatever they can player-wise. Dannan McKeogh plays for St John’s in Belfast. Brian Teehan still hurls for Moneygall back home in Tipperary. Ciaran Breslin hails from Dublin.

Since he started doubling up coaching Cloughmills, Joe Baldwin has leant on Seán McKendry. His paperwork was submitted to Croke Park last week. He, too, was a close friend of Shane Mulholland.

Ciaran Corrigan and Conor McShea, two of their best hurlers, are on the county football panel. Danny Teague came the other way but along with Aidan Flanagan, Ultan O’Reilly, Ciaran Breslin and cruciate victim Tom Keenan, who scored a hat-trick in last year’s Lory Meagher final, they all missed the Mayo game.

When he agreed to stay on for a fourth season, Baldwin said he had unfinished business. For him that means winning a Nicky Rackard Cup this year.

Fermanagh would never have dreamt of saying that out loud before now but they’d never have dreamt of standing signing autographs after beating Mayo either.

He firmly believes that it’s within their powers.

And Conal would be smiling down saying 'we did it Daddy'.