Third time's the charm for larger-than-life Eddie

Paul Fitzpatrick caught up with the retiring Mullahoran ace Eddie O'Reilly for this piece, orginally published in the 2013 Road To Breffni yearbook.

You probably think you know Eddie O’Reilly. Maybe you’ve seen him playing over the years, scoring and running 20 yards towards the stand, leaping and punching the air with his fist. Going nose to nose with a full-back and winking, tousling his hair, fighting with a ref but always, always, taking on his man and scoring.

You hear “Eddie” and you see the beard and the hair and, yeah, you have him sussed. But you’re wrong.

It’s five weeks after Mullahoran’s county final success and, sitting in his home in Smithfield, Eddie reveals that he’ll “probably not” be returning to the fold next year. He’s given it 15 years and a bad back, antagonised by driving 160-mile round trips to training a couple of times a week and a yearning to try something else means he’s had enough.

“I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat wondering what the hell am I going to do when I do quit,” he smiles, only half-joking.

Having won county senior titles as a boy  of 18 and a man of 33, with one exactly in between when he was 26, there’s a neat symmetry to the fact that O’Reilly will call time on his career now. 2012 was a year when Mullahoran cracked the code and raised the spirits of a parish – perhaps he feels that his work on this beat is done.

“It was nice this year because I suppose at the start of the year we weren’t really going that well. We lost a lot of games early on and there were a lot of ones saying that we were going to get relegated to intermediate next year,” he explains.

“Things kind of fell into place for us after that, a few lads made a conscious decision to give it one last effort, to sacrifice whatever needed to be sacrificed. If it was coming from Dublin or Sligo or if you were married with kids, you needed to give first preference to Mullahoran.

“We did sense that we could win, we knew we had a good balance with the younger lads and then we had the bit of experience. I suppose we got the luck as well. Enda went away and we did a lot of work to get him back, we knew we needed somebody of his calibre, clinical in front of goals and a free-taker. We knew he’d be crucial if we kept it tight at the back and one thing and another.

“I have to say it was the sweetest but they’re all sweet, it’s great to win a championship but this was one particularly nice, when you’re getting on in years and putting in the effort.

“We had tragedies and I think it went hard on the parish and a few of the players as well and that was another reason we pushed on and put in that little bit more effort to try to win it.”

O’Reilly has been “giving first preference” to the Dreadnoughts for a long time now. Having lost three county finals in succession to Cavan Gaels from 2003 to 2005, they showed their resilience by coming back to finally win it the fourth time round in ’06. The experience picked up by the likes of Eamon Brady, Christy Sheils, Dermot Sheridan, Philip Brady, Seanie Smith and Eddie was vital this time around. When all around may have been losing their heads, O’Reilly kept his.

“In fairness, when the goal went in in the drawn game, you’re thinking ‘can we come back?’ but, funny enough, I believed we could come back,” he insists.

“Maybe Mullahoran teams in the past would have caved in. I don’t know what it was, just we got the bit of luck as well. You need luck to win any championship, whether it’s junior, intermediate or senior, it doesn’t matter.

“We just believed that we could get ourselves back into it. But if the Kingscourt goalie kicks the ball out, you and me are probably not having this conversation. They’re the champions. But he didn’t, we got a free in and we drew the match.

“And even the second day, Enda missed a couple of frees but we still believed we could win it. In the past, especially when we played against the Gaels, if we didn’t take our chances and make the most of the possession we got, there was always a chance that they were going to hit a purple patch and they’d do damage. And that’s what probably happened us in the three county finals we lost against the Gaels, we had enough chances to win it but didn’t take them.

“When the goal [Ryan McCormack’s 59th minute goal for the Stars in the drawn game] went in, your stomach is saying ‘f**k' but you’ve got to get back in the present and keep battling and battling. Once we got within a point of them we knew we might get another chance. We got it and we drew it anyway and the next day I suppose, we started off well, we got three points up. Enda missed I think it was three frees and I suppose the supporters and a few of the players were thinking it would come back to haunt us.

“But I just felt myself, from the experience I had and being there, we just had that little bit more than Kingscourt to win it.”

If ever a team were “more than the sum of their parts”, it was this year’s Dreadnoughts crew, who came through the campaign winning close matches, getting over that line.

“There were no real stars, out from Paul [Brady], everyone was singing off the same hymn sheet. The young fellas and the older fellas got on really well and there was a good respect there, that the younger lads were doing well with Cavan and they gave us great energy.

“And we knew that they wanted it just as much as wanted it, and that’s a key ingredient. If you don’t have the hunger and you don’t have the ‘want’, you’re not going to get across that line because when you hit adversity, when your backs are against the wall, everyone has got to put their shoulder to the wall and dig deep, and you have to go to that dark place. There definitely was a tight bond, lads sacrificed their own game for the better of the team, it wasn’t about who scored or anything.

“If you had to defend, you had to defend, if you had to make that 30, 40-yard run, that lung-busting run, you made it. Everyone worked for each other.”

That has generally always been the Mullahoran way – old players stay on, fresh-faced youngsters are promoted to the senior side and the show keeps on rolling. Football is a huge part of the personality of the parish, and it shapes their characters too. Eddie has changed, he says, since he was a giddy kid winning his fist senior medal. Maybe they all have…

“I was fortunate enough to come along when I did and I played with a lot of good players in that '98 team. Michael Fegan, Damien [O'Reilly], Seamus Gannon, Dermot Gannon, Gerard the Gunner, and they were good to play with, they brought you on and gave you great encouragement.

“They gave you that belief. And then I suppose I was a little bit arrogant in myself too, I didn’t really care. I wore my heart on my sleeve, I loved playing with Mullahoran and still do, it’s a great honour, but I was young and probably wouldn’t even have been that good of friends with any of them. I got on with them, had a few beers with them, but we weren’t best friends.

“I used a lot of that in the last few years with those young lads, I tried to encourage them and give them belief because it’s great to play with them. To see Killian and Enda, Raymond, Mickey, Peter Paul Galligan, the way they look after themselves, they’re in the gym, they’re eating the right food, they don’t abuse their bodies and they’re hungry to win. It was just, I suppose, to give them that little more guts and passion, what you needed to do when you face adversity. I tried to help them along like that.”

On the field, O’Reilly is an extrovert but off it, he talks calmly. He’s articulate and funny, too, with a droll line in self-deprecating humour.

“I suppose it’s two different times in my life, I was 18, I was young, full of life, out and about and partying and it was great, but when you come to the other side, I have to say I do appreciate this one a lot, lot more. I do appreciate the others as well, it was fantastic to win them too. It’s hard to compare but it’s great to see how happy the young lads are. They know what it takes to win a Senior Championship.

“We believe, and truly believe, every year that we have a chance of winning a Senior Championship. It doesn’t happen every year but we have that belief, we have that history, and I think winning this championship will fuel us for the next seven or eight years, provided those young lads stay around and we get three or four other young lads coming in over the next two to three years.

“It’ll be a transition when the more experienced players move on but if they show the same hunger and passion and wear that jersey with the same pride, I think Mullahoran are going to be there or thereabouts. I think the future is bright for Mullahoran.”

The man himself is not sure what the future holds for him now. He might go back to play some rugby, having played a couple of season on the wing for Bective Rangers (“I often say I picked the wrong sport but out in Mullahoran you were either handed a graipe or a football, not a rugby ball!”), or he might take over a team at some point.

Either way, he reckons he has played his last for Mullahoran.

“I think that will be it for me now, I’ve had a great innings. I’ve had some good days and some bad days. To win three senior championships, I think that’s enough for me. Possibly if I was still living around home I would play on for a few years but I’m at a different stage of my life now, possibly don’t have the hunger that I used to have for the game. I was labouring on the field a bit the last two years, it was in my head and if you don’t have the hunger for it, it’s very hard to come back again and again.

“There’ll be a big void to fill, there’s no doubt about it. I thought of playing with some club in Dublin but it’s not the same going out playing with some Gaelic football club in Dublin, it’s not Mullahoran. At the end of the day, where you come from is special.”

And so it is. Eddie O’Reilly’s football career may be over but he’ll certainly never be forgotten. A final cameo, then, to sum it up:

“Maybe there’s something else out there for me. I might go into acting, there might be a role for a rough rugged type of guy… “ he laughs heartily.

“Although I don’t think I’d make a James Bond!

“Maybe a Goldfinger, Eddie?

“Well I’d have to be the baddie wouldn’t I!”

More laughter, and then he’s gone. Thanks, Eddie, for the memories.