In their sponsorship of the GAA Club Championships, AIB have been particularly inventive when it comes to promoting their product.
ver the years, they have traded on the idea that players are wedded to the land and parish of their birth. One promotional poster they had was of an elderly flap-capped man with his arm around a young boy, gazing at a pair of goalposts in the mid-distance, the strapline reading: ‘You don’t choose your club — you inherit it’.
Others were just as clever, with the text ‘One life, one club’ prominent.
The notion of remaining with one club, however, is slightly quaint. In the early decades of the GAA, players could end up playing for multiple clubs, even hopping across county boundaries to fill in for another team.
It simply never applied to a figure like current Derry manager Rory Gallagher. He started off playing for Erne Gaels in Belleek, Co Fermanagh. He moved to play for St Brigid’s in Dublin, had a brief spell with Cavan club Crosserlough and then returned to Brigid’s.
He finished his playing days as a St Gall’s player in Belfast, with whom he won the All-Ireland Club title alongside his brother Ronan.
A quick run through his honours as a player: two Corn na nÓgs with St Michael’s, Enniskillen, an All-Ireland Vocationals triumph with Fermanagh College, a Sigerson Cup with Sligo IT, Dublin and Leinster titles with St Brigid’s, and Antrim, Ulster and All-Ireland wins with St Gall’s.
And then two Ulster titles and an All-Ireland as Donegal coach alongside Jim McGuinness.
The only man to have led three different counties to the Ulster final, Gallagher has always defied convention. But to those who encountered him in his formative years, his success as a player and now manager comes as no surprise.
When he arrived in St Michael’s, his PE teacher Peter McGinnity — Fermanagh’s first All-Star — had played county football alongside his father Gerry. He spotted his potential instantly.
“He had everything. Everything. All the high-end skills of vision and so on, he had all those things,” recalled McGinnity.
“He very quickly became a ‘manager’, literally, even as a young player. He would be full of suggestions but he was always very knowledgeable. When you have a team, he would have stood out from that point of view.”
He also became something of a shop steward.
“He would have been a spokesman for the rest of the players from a very early age. It wasn’t that he put himself forward, that was just the way he went about things,” said McGinnity.
“He was obsessive in nearly everything he did. As a player, he needed to win, did everything he could to win, within and without the rules. Nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing is too unimportant to be ignored.”
A few years later, former Ballinamallard FC player Ray Sanderson was managing the Fermanagh Milk Cup team of 1995 which reached the Plate final. There, they were beaten by Blackburn Rovers, with Gallagher keeping tabs on a certain Damien Duff.
Sanderson said: “He was a very strong, physical central defender. But more than that, he was a great reader of the game. He was a good organiser, he talked a lot to players around him on the park and organised extremely well.
“All those traits led those who would have coached him to believe he could have (enjoyed a professional soccer career). But I suppose his priority was GAA and he stuck with it and has done extremely well.”
That final prompted Blackburn to come in and offer trials. He has already captained a Northern Ireland Schoolboys side, playing alongside Philip Mulryne and Colin Nixon.
In time, Manchester United were in for him too, until a bad leg break came with awful timing.
By then he was already playing for Fermanagh as a 17-year-old. When he came back from the break, he made a few appearances in the Fermanagh and Western League for Enniskillen Town United which brought amazement from those present.
Within weeks, he was in Ronnie McFall’s dressing room for Portadown FC.
McFall said: “He did well for us, but he was always torn between Gaelic and soccer. He would have made a good soccer career for himself.
“His dad and mum used to come to all the matches as well. I couldn’t speak highly enough of him.
“But he was a quiet lad back then. I watch him now on the television and, well…”
Either way, by 2010 he was winding down his playing career, but not before he landed an All-Ireland with St Gall’s.
When he first came into the club, manager Lenny Harbinson found him quiet. But then he would put a pair of boots on, go onto the grass and everything would change. Full-back Colin Brady was the club captain, but the attacking division had their own captain.
Harbinson explained: “His movement and ability to either score or bring others into play was excellent. It was probably the catalyst as to why we kicked on to win the All-Ireland. I would say it was the X-Factor.
“They were just missing something, and in my opinion Rory was the missing link in terms of giving that focal point and communication.”
By that winter, he was asked into the Donegal management by McGuinness. Six months prior he was playing Championship football with Fermanagh, but had no hesitation retiring himself as a county footballer.
The subject of how much the Donegal project stemmed from McGuinness or Gallagher will always attract speculation, but Maxi Curran was right in there as another selector.
“Neither (Rory or Jim) would have dominated. It would have been a joint effort with the coaching and the lingo and the speaking. It would have been rare if one took a bigger part of the session than the other,” he said.
“(Gallagher) sleeps and breathes football. It’s all he does and all he worries about, 24/7. When you have that level of interest, you will always find a way to be involved.”
Unusual. Forthright. Talkative. You can’t ignore him.
