Former Celtic footballer and manager Neil Lennon was once a promising young Gaelic footballer from Armagh.
Like a lot of talented sportsmen in Ireland, Lennon tried his arm at pretty much any sport that was available to him, but growing up, it was always a juggling act between Gaelic football and soccer.
Obviously soccer was the path he eventually chose, and he will certainly have no regrets given all he has achieved as a player and a manager since.
Writing in his autobiography Neil Lennon Man and Bhoy the ex Northern Ireland international recalled his most successful time on the Gaelic football field.
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My Gaelic football career was going very well, too. I seemed to have the natural ball-playing skills needed for both versions of football, and my ability to hit a long shot came in handy in Gaelic in particular.
Playing for St Michael’s and Clan Na Gael, in total before I left school, I won Armagh county league championship medals at Under-13, Under-14 and Under—15 levels; two more Under-16 league medals and two minor league medals; plus an All-Ireland Community Games medal and a winner’s medal in the prestigious Herald Cup tournament.
The pinnacle of my school Gaelic football career came in an All-Ireland final. St Michael’s won through to the Under-161/2 Colleges B Championship which was played at mighty Croke Park in Dublin, the home of Gaelic football.
It was a huge day for everyone at the school, but we were not fancied to beat the big strong team from Clane Community School in Kildare.
We were much more skilful, however, and I thoroughly enjoyed the game if not the match report in the local Lurgan paper—it mentioned something about me being ‘exciting to watch’ but spoiled things by adding ‘the red-haired youngster…spoils his performances occasionally with his fiery temper’.
The anti-ginger brigade in the media had it in for me from the start, it seems… We won a close match by a goal and three points (1-3) to four points (0-4), and instantly became heroes to the rest of the school.
In that year I also played for Clan Na Gael’s Under-16 team which won the North Armagh championship, as our club performed the remarkable feat of winning the league at every age level. Despite my Gaelic football success, soccer was more and more the main focus of my life.
There's no way of knowing for sure, but Lennon could have made a good attempt at playing for Armagh had he chose the GAA route.
His career would have lined up with the All-Ireland title win back in 2002, but considering that he got to play in the Premier League, and won so many trophies with Celtic, he won't be kicking himself.
