Pete Still Burns
It may have come as a surprise to some, that Pete McGrath wasn't quite finished when Fermanagh decided not to retain him as senior manager for 2018. Not to those that know him. Louth did not hesitate in snapping up the Rostrevor man to take charge of their senior squad, as they look to move forward in their first season in Division Two since 2014. ‘Wee Pete’ moves onto the ‘Wee County’, and a man who feels he still has something to offer moves onto his next project, still in love with the game that has provided the narrative to his adult life. I travelled with him to a Fermanagh training session in February 2017.
“You must be gettin’ some money to come here to freeze your arse off on a Tuesday night”
I look out from behind the lens of my borrowed camera and fire back:
“Would you believe I’m not getting anything at all !”
“Ha! Same as us then! We’re both stone mad!”
Looking around the Lissan complex, off the Tempo road in the heart of rural Fermanagh, it’s hard to argue with Sean Quigley’s reasoning. With the exception of the four floodlight columns, the entire venue is cloaked in darkness, at the bottom of a steep winding track that seems to have better grass growing down its centre than on some of the fields. Driving in is a bit like falling slowly into a quarry. Lonesome and bleak, there is something protected about it however, as if cosseted away here in the shadow of a huge wind turbine, was the perfect venue for miracle working; away from the prying eyes of the GAA world, sheltering a quiet industry and fervour.
Fermanagh’s training complex is a world away from for example, the Garvaghy complex in Tyrone, a cathedral to a GAA congregation in Mid Ulster who have passed around the collection basket and not been found wanting. Not only hosting an array of facilities the envy of the country, the Garvaghy centre is a thing of architectural beauty. The stone clad foyer features a glass wall displaying the names of the parishioners who have pledged their contribution towards the betterment of the juggernaut now called Club Tyrone. Lissan is a world away, but it is still a fascinating one.
4.28pm
A modern black crossover style vehicle pulls into the square, two minutes ahead of schedule.
“Alright Conor, hop in, you know Peter Junior don’t you ?”
I nod and extend my hand backwards to the nephew of the man responsible for so much of the sporting joy of my life. And I’m chuffed already, younger brother syndrome dictates a long sentence of being called your older sibling. But Pete McGrath, he knows my name.
We are heading out on a two hour journey to the latest parish with whom Pete is trying to rise up. It’s easily to be cynical about the modern day GAA manager, insulating themselves in a background team so comprehensive, all you have to do is show up in a padded coat and give an inspirational speech here and there. Knowing the road to Enniskillen well, I think to myself on a pretty miserable February night, there isn’t much glamour in this.
“Frustrating one against Galway, after such a good start the week before?”
And we’re off. Pete goes into a tirade about the black card given to skipper and talisman Eoin Donnelly in the first ten minutes of Fermanagh’s league clash with Galway. The incident is described in forensic High Definition. Soon after, I feel like trying to get this referee and give him a piece of my mind. It’s utterly typical of a man I once walked the corridors of St Colman’s College with. I entered Violet Hill in 1995, just one year after the second title of Pete’s tenure with Down, when his fame and stature was at its height. Over two decades later he’s still crazy for football, after all these years.
The conversation rambles through the geography of the county, and the timeline of his coaching career. We talk about growing up in Rostrevor, the glory days of the 60’s and the sporting incubator it provided for one of Ireland’s most accomplished managers. It also ranges into the politics of the time, and his early days as a student teacher. Lifts to Belfast on Monday were courtesy of George Tinnelly, on his way to pick up film reels for his picture house back in Rostrevor. When half of the city was thinking about leaving Belfast, Pete was headed into the eye of the storm, a raging tempest fuelled by the fires of internment, the fury of Bloody Sunday and an environment where “you couldn’t help but become politicised.”
Football provided a refuge, and Pete admits to not knowing much more of Belfast than the Malone road, heading down it, to University for class, and up it, to the Dub for training and games. A couple of years later he was back in Newry, teaching at the school he attended and the place where his reputation would be built.
In a P.E. lesson I remember chatting with Ray Morgan, the other half of the GAA double act that would dominate Ulster Colleges football for 30 years.
“A fit man.”
I presumed he was talking about Colm Farrell, a classmate of mine, who was a star on our Rannafast team and currently embarrassing his classmates on the basketball court. Ray shook his head and tapped the glass of the gym windows. I looked out and there was Pete, doing shuttle sprints on the senior field.
A few years later I was a passenger on a McRory Cup panel that was put out in the quarter finals. During early training sessions in the year, Pete in a conditioning drill was shouting the exercises. Burpees, fine. Star jumps, no problem. One armed press-ups? We looked around at each other. Clearly disappointed, he relented and said ‘Right fine, press-ups with claps in between’. More stares with a good dollop of “Is this guy serious?” Down jumped Pete to shame us all and fired out a quick ten clapper press ups. It was about twenty years ago when Burren GAA first opened up their weights room. From the very beginning there were a number of workouts in a comb binder at the front of the room. The author? Pete.
It is easy in the light of two All-Ireland titles to see that in Paddy O’Rourke, DJ Kane, Mickey Linden, Ross Carr was a seasoned and experienced core of quality players that could guide McCartan, Deegan and Withnell through a journey back to the summit of Gaelic Football. It wasn’t in 1989, when Pete took the job knowing that the job had been passed around the county like a dirty pint. In the light of all his subsequent success it’s almost impossible to imagine Pete as a 38 year old rookie coach, still playing Down league football with Rostrevor, with no experience of coaching adult teams. What is clear is what produced that success is a set of core principles, a self-belief and a simplicity of approach that would probably be termed today as “Trusting the Process”.
“Mickey Linden was speaking recently about the first time I met the players, that there was some doubt about whether I could do the job. I was inexperienced, and there were a number of big characters in that squad who carried a lot of sway. Paddy O’Rourke, Wee James, Ross Carr, Gary Mason. We met in Burren Social Cub and I can guarantee you, there was nobody leaving that night in any doubt.”
It’s a set of principles that served him well through a difficult situation regarding the bane of any manger’s existence, the talented , mercurial, carefree full forward. Seamus Quigley was already on his way to becoming the darling of the Fermanagh team before he pushed Stephen Cluxton over the line in 2015. His star descended as quickly as it arose, and when faced with an accumulation of incidents Pete stuck to those principles and dropped Seamus from the panel. All three Quigley brothers left the team in protest. A player of Quigley’s clear talent, with a natural ability for kicking the ball is a loss that Fermangh could ill afford. Not in Pete’s eyes. S Quigley now lines out at 14 for Fermanagh but it’s Sean, not Seamus, and the team I meet are clearly forged together by that respect that McGrath receives and showed for the lads who were listening.
6.12pm
Walking about the changing rooms in Lissan, the players are arriving and quite a few are already there as we arrive an hour before training. There is the familiar smell of deep heat, along with the more modern accessories like baselayers, foam rollers and weighted footballs, bright green.
“The theory is they make me kick the ball out a bit better. I don’t think these ones are working though”.
There is a friendliness and a playful banter to everyone I meet. The setup is as modern as you would expect. But the night still starts with a bunch of lads huddled in a small room with a cup of tea and a digestive biscuit. It’s a lovely, retro, familiar routine that I feared had been bled out of the association altogether in the name of protein rich shakes, fuelling windows and arginine.
The session kicks in and on my way up to the top field I am stopped in my tracks by the biggest and only Irish Hare I have ever seen. A clack of an Olympic bar being set back on the rack spooks my new friend and he hops off slowly into the darkness. Four lads unable to do pitch are in a small building that has become the weights room. The exercises I see on the field are all familiar. Three man weaves, kick and chase, shooting drills. A refreshing amount of kicking.
I remark on how everything has become so specialised, does he not miss the simplicity, of having a closer hand on things? ‘A bit’. Ryan Jones goes through a very carefully planned rehab routine under a backroom’s member’s close inspection. The goalkeepers go through a well-structured session covering high balls, shot stopping and kicks. Three players have been given the night off to recuperate from flu. Eight players are doing their own work in Dublin, and are only asked to travel once a week to train. It’s sensible and pragmatic, it’s Pete. And still, there is real bite and industry in the small sided games, and a couple of hits send a few lads into the wet Fermanagh ground. And these boys can really kick the ball. A shooting drill swaps from the left side to the right and the percentages dip only slightly.
Peter earlier recalls the moment when he felt that he had ‘made it’. It was a conversation with Dan McCartan, County Chairman, history colleague in St Colman’s and a bona fide member of the Down GAA Aristocracy. Our class perfected the art of selecting football topics that would wind him up. Half an hour later the bell would go and we unfortunately didn’t get a chance to discuss our essays on the Land League.
Dan catches Pete in the corridor between classes, the day after Down had beaten Kerry in the All-Ireland Semi-Final.
“Did you see them Pete ?”
“I did Dan.”
“Those, Peter”.. remonstrating with his hands risen high like a Bishop at Easter… “are a risen people!”
Over a quarter of a century on, with two Sam Maguires on his resumé, Pete is still here, grinding out a session on a gloomy winter night. The session ends and the boys head back down the hill and into the changing rooms. There is no clichéd huddle with arms around shoulders and Pete in the middle. No bullshit. If you don’t want to be here, don’t come seems to be the message. Back in the main building there is an array of food that would embarrass a wedding, no-one seems to be in any particular rush home. I have to refuse the food; my sister has salmon in the oven.
“You know Father Brian Darcy, Conor, don’t you?”
Not to be completely rude, I manage a bowl of soup which is the perfect tonic to the misty gloom that wraps Lissan in a wet hug. Pete is now talking to a guy about his size in a long bench coat with ‘Club Eirne’ on the back. County Chairman, I think to myself. The two get into the Eoin Donnelly black card debacle again. I think Jesus Pete, let it go. The chairman seems well up for it though. He turns and sticks out his hand, and introduces himself as Brian.
“You know Father Brian Darcy, Conor, don’t you?”
A member of the backroom team overhears my poor directions to my sister who can’t find the pitch, so I’m getting a lift down to the next crossroads. I ask him what morale is like.
“Everyone’s working to the one vision. The players believe it, and we enjoy it along the way”.
It might be 10.30pm before Pete is back on the road. It’s certainly 1am before he sees his bed. You know Pete is not charging the going rate for county managers as you literally could not pay someone to take this job on. It’s a night for the fire and a watch of Alec Baldwin doing Trump on SNL.
He’s a passionate defender of the Railway Cup, and on our way up the road he outlines his ideas about using All-Ireland weekend as a festival of football, with the Inter-Provincials serving as the appetizer for the Sam Maguire main course. It seems barely believable that only now, in 2016/17 did Pete take charge of the Ulster squad for the first time.
“It pays tribute to the esteem the managers hold it in. Brian McEniff first, then Joe Kernan, they didn’t want to let it go. It’s a month’s work and its incredibly rewarding.”
The Dublin quarter final an obvious highlight, the question remains about whether McGrath’s tenure in Fermanagh produced any tangible results, and was it worthwhile in retrospect. “Its been tough, but I haven’t regretted it”, Pete remarks at the time.
There was no visible sign at this early stage in the year that Pete’s tenure would end in acrimony, and a players dispute. He may not have brought titles to Fermanagh, but he does bring is an undeniable integrity, and credibility to whatever set-up he joins. That’s what Louth can look forward to in 2018. Credibility, reliability, and a great football mind. Not a bad starting point.
Pete McGrath is a man that would talk to that Hare if it showed even a passing interest in football.
But he’s not a man to waste his time. He gave a memorable interview in late January, spitting fire into a BBC microphone about how his players didn’t believe they could beat Tyrone. He’s a fanatic, he’s still hungry and definitely, Stone Mad.
