Читать книгу The Boys of '93. Derry’s All-Ireland Kings онлайн

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My first move into county management had been three years earlier with the Derry minors and we’d gone on to win the All-Ireland of 1983. I’d then taken the U21 team of 1985 that nobody had wanted and we reached the All-Ireland Final only to be beaten by Cork. But I didn’t get the U21 team whose backbone was the minors of ’83. That was given to the senior management. I suppose they thought they would win an All-Ireland. They didn’t.

That team in ’86 would have been favourites to win the All-Ireland. Three years on from their minor championship, there was no reason they shouldn’t have been kingpins of Ireland at U21 level. It was a waste of a team.

But in 1986 I wasn’t prepared to take the seniors. They didn’t have the players, I wasn’t ready to do it and besides I needed to get away.

The years in England were the first I had spent away from home, away from Ireland. For the first time in my life I couldn’t drive back to the shores of Lough Neagh. It bothered me going, bothered me leaving the lough, but I went and once I got there, I settled in well. But I was never away for more than three weeks at a time. Couldn’t stick the Sundays in London, no football and nothing to do. I’d also made the conscious decision to come home regularly to see my daughter Margaret and my sons Gary and Vivian. We’d been through a lot and I didn’t intend on losing the relationship we had built between us.