It is ten years since the John McLaughlin Cup rested under ‘the long sloping shoulder’ of Carn Tóchair. For some, 2004 was the end of a journey; for others the beginning; and for many more, a milestone in the much bigger story of life that begins and ends with Leacht Néill.
The life of Bernard Kearney (RIP) is one such life. For many, he was, and is, Slaughtneil. Chairman of the GAA club and of the Carntogher Community Association, Kearney’s journey was that of his community. Over 50 years of dedicated service saw to that.
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Down in the glen of the Altkeeran River all was sedgy, the fields dotted with rushes and the streamsides with scrub trees where long-tailed tits went pit-peet-ing among the silver birches. The old coach road along the glen gave firm footing through the turf which squelched and bounced under every incautious step. Streams ran orange from the iron minerals of the mountain, up whose green flank Jane and I turned to climb towards the Snout of the Cairn. The views widened the higher we went – the hard humpy outline of Slemish due east in Antrim, the neat grouping of Mourne peaks 60 miles off on County Down’s south-easterly skyline, and nearer at hand the rolling bulk of the Sperrin Hills across in Tyrone.
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The news of 24 June 2014 changed things in the mind of Sean McGuigan. With the sudden passing of Bernard Kearney, he now finds himself ‘with the mantle’ of chairman of the Robert Emmet’s club.
“I certainly didn’t want it this way,” McGuigan says, resolutely.
McGuigan is a slightly reluctant chairman, finding his feet at the helm of a thriving GAA club. He will carry on a tradition, though.
“All these chairman here prior to me now, they were involved with the building of the new pitch, the new stand, the new hall, the asphalting of the car park – all those jobs were done under the previous chairmen including Bernard. I have a big act to follow.”
He is in good company. The Kelly brothers, Patrick and Kevin, have joined him to talk about their friend and club stalwart, Bernard. It is time.
“When Bernard was playing as a school boy, he rode a bicycle from Ballydollaghan to Slaughtneil to get a lift to the matches. He was playing for three teams – schoolboys, minor and senior – all in the one week,” proclaims Patrick Kelly. This gets the ball rolling on a serious of recollections, all served up sincerely, and with great humour at times.
“Bernard played hurling too,” says Sean McGuigan. “He has two or three medals. Like me, maybe he wasn’t the best with the hurl.” Quick as a flash, Kevin Kelly intervenes: “But, he still got his medal.”
The men are in good form.
A former club chairman himself, Kevin Kelly is a mine of information and of dates. Known to record scorers at every Slaughtneil match he attends, he has also served as umpire for McGuigan in his guise as one of the best known referees in the county. At the helm from 1993-1997, Kelly is able to provide the timeline and the background to the service given by Bernard Kearney. Before him. Bernard; before that, Laurence McEldowney and before that again, Bernard.
“He started off as treasurer for a lot of years; around the time of the big draw. He was there when Willie Hampson came in in the 80’s. He was treasurer for 20 years. He was chairman for three spells. That was his third spell,” he concludes before summarising, “He was an officer of the club at some level from he stopped playing until he died.”
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Pink conquistador helmets of lousewort clashed with virulent red sphagnum in the banks of the tumbled wall we were following. It lifted us to the shoulder of the mountain, and a track where we met our first and only walkers of the day, two men of a local townland who pointed out Slieve Gallion ten miles to the south (‘a Derry mountain, despite what you might hear’) with great precision and pride. ‘I’ve walked this path since I was a boy,’ said one, ‘and by God I will do it till the day that I die!’
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Bernard Kearney made his debut for Slaughtneil senior footballers at 14 years of age. He started in goals where his uncle looked after him.
“Bernard started after Andy Dougan quit. He was very safe because he had his uncle Denis in front of him at full back.”
Denis Cassidy also passed away earlier this year. Just as the uncle had looked out for the 14 year-old net-minder, Bernard returned the favour, seeing to his uncle’s every need in later life. Cassidy himself was a legend of Derry football playing with the greats of the 50’s and full back on the team which contested the 1955 Junior All-Ireland semi-final against Cork.
The connections with Slaughtneil and Derry teams spring from all directions once it starts.
“Bernard, John Joe, Mickey and Denis were the four brothers who played [for the club]. That’s them in their age order. Bernard was the oldest: born in ‘46, John Joe was ‘47, Mickey in ‘53 (or ‘54) and Denis in ‘58,” says Kelly.
The name of John Joe Kearney is synonymous with Derry football. Part of the young Turk generation of the sixties, winning All-Ireland minor and U21 titles as a player, and manager of the victorious minor team of 1989, John Joe carried the load for club and county on the pitch as much as any other.
With the generation of Niblock, McGuckin, Coleman and Kearney scooping the All-Ireland U21 title in 1968, Bernard Kearney only narrowly missed out.
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“He played for Derry U21s at around 1966 or 1967,” explains Kevin Kelly.
In a playing career that lasted some 22 years, from the 14-year net-minder to the club veteran in his mid-30’s, many mental markers remain.
Kearney didn’t always play between the sticks. As Patrick recalls, ‘he played most positions, full forward to full back.’ McGuigan remembers another time, one where Kearney was still positioned as the last line of defence.
1982 was the year and the events of the previous twelve months in the prison cells of Long Kesh prompted the club to famously stand-down, or withdraw their senior status, as a mark of respect to the Hunger Strikers of 1981. As Sean McGuigan recalls, “the year we went into Division two.”
Kevin Kelly’s mind is on a different date, however. With Bernard Kearney who was aged 23 at the time, Kelly was part of the Slaughtneil team which lost the 1969 county football final to the great Bellaghy unit captained by Tom Quinn. It may have taken them 35 years to even the score but they have long memories in this part of the county.
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Up at the Snout of the Cairn, Shane’s Leaps lay just off the path – three innocuous-looking rocks. Did that dashing and irrepressible 18th-century raparee Shane ‘Crossagh’ O’Mullan, the scar-faced outlaw whom all the ladies sighed for, really spring lightly from one to the next in the act of outwitting the lumbering English soldiery? So tales tell us, and how we like to picture such derring-do. Much more shadowed and sombre are the images the skull cinema brings up at the Emigrants’ Cairn, where the heart-stopping view to the hills of Donegal was the last that those walking over the mountains to the ships in Lough Foyle took away with them to ‘far Amerikay’.
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With Bernard Kearney serving as chairman, the early months of 2004 saw a delegation which included the chairman and the present incumbent, Sean McGuigan, travel in a quest to ‘get’ John Brennan. It takes a particular understanding of the GAA and its workings to understand the elegantly simple use of the word ‘get’ in this context.
Defeat of Ardboe on New Year’s Day 1999 in the Ulster minor club tournament at St Paul’s signalled that a generation of players was emerging who were potentially capable of challenging for major honours. It was a decade in which Derry clubs dominated the competition. Breaking the stranglehold of previous minor winners like Loup, Bellaghy and Ballinderry on the John McLaughlin Cup became a priority for Slaughtneil. In 2004, the shattered dreams of ’69 were made good.
Kevin Kelly explains: “The club was 51 years of age when we won the championship. The best way to explain that, judging by a lot of the personnel, was that we were beat in the final in 1969 and the boys that finally won the championship were, mostly, sons of the men who were beat in ’69. It was backboned by the sons of ’69. And maybe John Brennan was the difference, I dunno. He had done it all. He knew how to do it.”
“Well nobody else did it! That’s one thing. We can say nothing about John. His record stands in our club,” offers Patrick Kelly.
The pride and determination is evident with both brothers. So too, their respect for their victorious manager and their chairman, even if he did live dangerously in one instance.
“After winning the championship at Glen, Bernard came into the changing room and knocked the hat off John Brennan. The pair looked at each other and then Bernard gave a big ‘cah-ha’ outta him.”
“Winning the championship was his [Bernard’s] pinnacle. Well, it was everyone’s pinnacle. That’s what the club is there for. It of course keeps everyone going, but it’s great to win championships in hurling, football or camogie. And as many times as possible,” says Kevin Kelly.
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Back across the slopes of Carntogher we went, following the boggiest of upland tracks, half peat and half puddle, past black heaps of iron-mining spoil to the top of the ridge and another most tremendous westward view, across the silver fishtail of Lough Foyle, on beyond the pale humps of Barnesmore and the Blue Stacks to the jagged spine of Errigal out at the edge of sight in western Donegal. Between Errigal and Mourne there cannot be fewer than a hundred miles. All Ulster lay spread out for us, and we lingered long over this extraordinary feast.
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In August of 2004, a reporter from the Irish Independent travelled to Emmet Park. With Derry due to face Kerry in the All-Ireland semi-final, and with three Slaughtneil players – Francis McEldowney, Pádraig Kelly (son of Kevin) and Patsy Bradley – set to line out in Croke Park and Francis’ twin brother Fergal and Jim Kelly on the panel, the visit was more than merited.
Ronnie Bellew opened with: “[Emmet Park] stands there in dignified isolation complete with stand, terracing, community centre and a pristine new training field reclaimed from what used to be a patch of scrub behind the main pitch.”
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The work done by the GAA club is central to the Slaughtneil area. However, the effort expressed through the Carntogher Community Association completes an holistic outworking of a social, economic, cultural and sporting vision. Like the history of the area itself, the efforts of its people are truly remarkable and unique.
Re-asserting the area as a modern 21st century Gaeltacht is its primary objective.
“Tomas Cassidy, Liam Ó Flannagáin and Niall O’Kane would have kicked that off,” says Kevin Kelly. “But Bernard was the current chairman and was involved with everything.”
In this case, “everything” includes not just GAA and language initiatives, but the running of ‘An Carn’ – a community centre including Post Office, Shop, IT suite, Conference and Meeting Room facilities as well as projects ranging from the restoration of the 200-acre Drumnaph Nature Reserve – a must visit experience for anyone seeking to understand the ancient landscape of the area.
Founded in 1992, the CCA recently celebrated its twentieth anniversary with an event entitled ‘The Emerald Ball’. Following short speeches by Bernard Kearney and Liam Ó Flannagáin, the legendary commenatator and Gael, Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh provided the keynote address.
Visits to An Carn and Slaughtneil GAA prompted the Kerry man to a brilliantly pitched address, the theme of which linked all aspects of culture in the area working together for the common good, concluding: “Ní neart go cur le chéile” (there is strength in unity).
Ultimately, unity among friends and brothers like Kevin Kelly, Patrick Kelly, Sean McGuigan and Bernard Kearney lasts a lifetime and beyond.
A summer evening under Carntogher’s shoulder sees all pitches, and any and all spare areas of grass, heaving with youngsters playing football, hurling and camogie. Life is everywhere.
“He was a wild man for inspecting the pitch. He never left it,” says Kevin.
“Slaughtneil club was on his mind most days,” says Sean.
“It was the centre of his universe,” says Patrick.
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Mary K Burke
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On the way down we passed a Bronze Age cist grave, carefully labelled ‘Tuama ón Ré Chré Umha’. Now that might just mean ‘the old tomb from the Bronze Age’, but there was something about the little dark hole in the bank, slab-lined and secretive, that simply invited a taller and wilder tale. But no-one was there to tell it to us today.
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