Paddy Minagh - his light will shine bright and long

Paul Fitzpatrick pays tribute to the great Paddy Minagh in his Cavanman's Diary column.

 

The news came, and it shook us all. Paddy Minagh is gone, and the world is much the worse for it.

The evening I heard, I found myself staring at our old U12 team photo from 1996, which hangs on the wall of my brother’s bedroom, for what felt like an hour.

I remember the day it was taken. It was a Saturday morning at the end of the summer. We assembled at the pitch and Colm Connaughton, the photographer, lined us up. ‘Rocky’ was our captain, and he was in the centre of the front row, on one knee with three gleaming cups and a shield in front of him.

In the back row, at the left, is Paddy, arms crossed, wearing a tracksuit and a massive grin. A dreadful grief washed over me when I looked at the photograph.

We had lost two fine boys from the picture, Shane Mooney and Bernard Gilsenan, already. Now, at just 56 years of age, illness had taken our manager. It is hard to believe.

That particular year, when the photo was taken, was a brilliant one. Because we had lived in England, that was my first year playing football, even though I was 12 that March. Outside of a few miles around home, I didn’t know any of the towns or villages in Cavan, let alone clubs. It was all new; it was all magical.

When I thought of Paddy Minagh over the years, even when I wasn’t around home as much, when I went to college and got lazy and quit trying to play football, I always thought of those days. The sun shining and the midges biting in the old pitch at Stag Hall; chants of ‘shop, shop, shop’ until we got stopping on the way home from far-flung venues like Blacklion and Arva.

The innocence of it all is what I remember most. Redhills hadn’t won any U12 games in a few years but we won our first two matches that year, against Cuchulainns away and Shercock at home, and Paddy promised us if we won the league we’d get our picture in the paper.

“A fella rang me from the Evening Herald and told me,” he announced with a straight face.

I had never heard of the Herald, but it sounded exotic, and I believed it.

Paddy was manager, trainer, selector and driver, a one-man army transporting a regiment of players around the county. Training was on Tuesday evenings and Saturday mornings. Paddy would shout at us (“Sweeten it, McKiernan!”) but never in a mean-spirited way – he’d cajole us along, the good footballers and the rest of us, all the same. As the years went on, there would be a lot more good footballers than bad, many of whom would wear the blue of Cavan, and all products of Paddy’s little revolution in Redhills.

He had a tiny Peugeot 205 van, which he’d cram with kids, footballs, water bottles and jerseys, and hit the road.

The Minaghs – Paddy, his wife Dympna and children Oisin and Eadaoin – lived about a mile over the road from us at Clara, so my brother, cousins and I used to often get a lift with him to training and games.

The journeys were as much fun as the matches. If he told us to call at the house at 10am, we’d be there at 9.30. One time, he showed me his newspaper clippings on the wall in the garage, and told me about the day he marked Ronan Carolan (I think, or maybe it was Fintan Cahill) in a county final in Breffni Park when he was playing for Killeshandra. And Paddy never gave him a kick of it!

Another day, I remember going to a blitz in Drumalee, and we lost by a point to Killygarry. We were devastated.

“You did very well today,” Paddy told me in the van on the way home, and my heart swelled with pride. We played them again in the league a few weeks later and they beat us by about 15 points. I didn’t get a kick of the ball that day, but it wasn’t mentioned.

Then another time, when we were about 13 or 14, a few of us went up to Killybandrick lake one hot evening instead of going to training. We landed back in the village carrying our gear in plastic bags just after the session we were supposed to have attended was over, and there was Paddy driving up the narrow path from McGrath Park.

He pulled up and we hopped in, and he dropped us home as usual without once chastising us. My mother was outside when we got home.

“I hope these boys are no trouble,” she said. “Not at all,” said Paddy, and he winked at us. Our secret was safe.

At Paddy’s funeral mass last Thursday in Killoughter, Fr Jason Murphy used the analogy of the lamp lighter, a man who, he said, played an integral role in the life of any town in times gone past. One at a time, he would light the flames and, when he was gone, it was easy to see where he had been.

On the Tuesday night, a crowd had lined the road, each holding candles, from the old Treehoo school to the Minagh home, overlooking Clara Lake, as Paddy returned one last time.

It’s easy to know, Fr Jason would say, where the lamp lighter has been – the light is flickering. It burned that night in the winding lane, and it’s still burning for a whole generation out our way.

I saw some footballers in the chapel on Thursday who carried Paddy’s flame into Croke Park, the greatest stage of them all, two days later. The man himself would have been proud.

He may be gone from us, but his light is still burning strong. Rest easy, Paddy. And thanks.