McGahern keen to lead Gowna back to the top

SFC final preview

Gowna’s Ryan McGahern has already had a taste of what county final day can bring – only not as a player. When the club last made the big day in 2007, McGahern, only a kid, was water boy as they came up short against Cavan Gaels.

This time around, McGahern captains the team and hopes, obviously, for a different result.

After years of not picking up any injuries, he has spent quite a bit of time on the sideline of late but returned to turn in a commanding performance in the semi-final. What exactly was the nature of his injuries?

“Have you long to spend?” he joked.

“I broke a bone in my hand, the same bone twice, I strained my calf muscle and I sprained my AC joint all in the one year.

“I wouldn’t have done that much damage in my lifetime never mind in the one year. I did all that this year. I am back fit now touch wood, I hope that’s the end of it now.”

While out injured, the thought struck him more than once. Of all the rotten luck, imagine going years injury-free and then missing out when the team are flying at last.

“The thing was going bad there for a couple of years and I hadn’t an injury from one end of the year to the next. In one way I was lucky in the sense that there was always a better man to come in and take my place. James Madden and Fionán [Brady] could drop back as a corner-back and Mark [McKeever] could drop in as full-back so we always had options.

“There were a lot of talented lads this year in comparison to other years when we might not have had the numbers.”

The arrival of the likes of young Brady and his peers into the senior set-up has energised things, on and off the field.

“It’s great and to be honest, they’re a bit of craic too, more than anything. They play with absolutely no fear whatsoever, coming to training and everything like that, they’re a joy to watch and to play with. They have definitely given everybody a lift and they get on just as well with the oldest fellas on the panel as their own age group, they are a great bunch of lads, every one of them.”

There is a school of thought suggesting the breakthrough has come ahead of schedule but Gowna march to their own beat. In the past, they have won championships with teams studded with teenagers. Why can’t it happen again?

“It's hard to know, people say they’re only 17 and 18, this that and the other, but when you look back at the likes of Mark McKeever and Patrick Brady, I think they were 15 when they won their first championship so I suppose, what’s too young? Those boys played Division 1 all the way up and play with absolutely no fear so league finals or championships finals, doesn’t really make much difference to them.

“It’s great in a way, nothing seems to really faze them in a sense, that’s what I’ve noticed about them anyway.”

Ryan, 26 and a foreman with Gowna Construction, is too young to have vivid memories of the glory days of the 1990s but he can clearly recall Gowna’s most recent SFC success in 2002.

“Winning it was obviously a massive thing. I watched it back in the lockdown, Dermot [McCabe] was the captain and Ciaran [Brady] actually went up and received the cup because his daddy was sick and all that.

“That stuck in everybody’s head after that. I was seven or eight, I don’t really remember an awful lot else, the bits in the village and stuff like that. I wouldn’t remember who played well, I’m sure Ciaran played well but other than that I don’t know!” he laughed.

McGahern has amassed the guts of a decade’s experience at senior level at this stage and much of that, by his own admission, was spent paddling furiously to stay afloat in the deep water. Coming so soon after the great run which produced seven titles in 15 seasons from 1988 on, it was a bleak time for the club and its supporters, who had been accustomed to big wins.

“That is one thing that you thought when you were growing up, we were nearly always in a county final, we were nearly always in a semi-final… You kind of thought when you were younger that it was just a matter of showing up.

“And then when we got to 17, 18 you realise, we were kind of struggling to stay senior. You don’t be long getting knocked back down to your own level when you do come of age to play senior football.

“It’s obviously great growing up and watching boys getting to county finals and doing well but you can get shown what it’s really like and how hard it is to get to it.

“The ambition those years was just to stay senior. You’re not setting the bar very high but that’s all we were kind of aiming for for a long time, to stay senior and hopefully these young boys would come along and the thing would lift again.

“I probably didn’t think it was going to come as soon as it did, to get into the county final or even win a league. A lot of the ambition was to try and beat some of the top teams. We hadn’t beaten Castlerahan or the Gaels or none of these teams, we got a couple of very bad beatings in quarter-finals and things by Ramor and Mullahoran and these teams.

“A big ambition was to try and compete with these top teams and get a victory over them. I suppose we have done that now this year, got a league title and we’re in a county final. Anything could happen.”

What would it mean to the people of Gowna if the team could bridge a 19-year gap on Sunday?

“I don’t know. No more than myself, everyone would go mad. It would be unreal. There are an awful lot of people doing an awful lot of work in Gowna, and I know they’re doing it everywhere but they have been rewarded with nothing.

“Some of the clubs maybe dropped down and won intermediates and got some sort of silverware back to the club, Gowna have got nothing. I couldn’t really even imagine what it would be like, I’m sure there’d be a lot of drinking, a lot of celebrating in Gowna anyway for the week.

“It would be great for a lot of the club people who make the tea and line the pitch and all that craic, just to get something back and get rewarded one way or another because they haven’t in a long time.”

Winning the league gave Gowna a taste of the big time but championship, it stands alone. A victory on Sunday would never be forgotten.

“After that night [the league final] people kind of forget about it but championship… you’d be talking about it for a long time after.”

That conversation starts at 3pm on Sunday. What way it turns, no-one knows yet.