This post originally appeared on Chris McCann's website
I’ll not be at Celtic Park on Sunday. The vagaries of working in London, budgets and having to take time off already this month to attend a family wedding mean it’s just not been feasible.
The closer the game gets the worse I feel about this. I’ve not missed a Derry Provincial Championship game since the 1998 Ulster final. That day I was working on the sportsdesk of the Irish News, sub-editing the paper’s coverage for the next day and possibly even ghost writing the column for our current manager – so at least there was a sense of involvement.
On Sunday it’ll be the high stool at the Twelve Pins or the Faltering Full-back or another Irish watering hole in North London. Alongside my excitement there’ll be a longing for home, a yearning to be standing on the steps of the terrace at Celtic Park with family and nipping into the press box to nab a cup of tea and share a few words with my erstwhile colleagues: Cahair O’Kane, Mickey Wilson and Steven Doherty.
I’ve missed a few events since moving to London a couple of years ago; family birthdays, confirmations and the like – but none of them will hit me as much as Bronagh and I not being stood beside my brother, my in-laws, and nieces and nephews this Sunday. If anything, being away has only deepened my sense of identity as a Derryman – the further you are from home the more idealised it becomes in your imagination. Not being there on Sunday gnaws at me.
Outside of major life events – there’s nothing in my experience that quickens the blood for me in the way that a Derry v Tyrone game does. Derry is bordered by three different counties but the relationships with Donegal and Antrim don’t hold anything like the same jagged edge.
Like anyone of my age I’ve seen enough of the highs and lows of real life, the successes and disappointments, the curve balls and downright buckets of piss that it can throw at you. But, despite being able to place it in the perspective of over of 40 years of life experience, the fortunes of my county football team really matter to me. And it never matters more to me than when we are playing our neighbours directly to our south.
At the risk of giving it the old “some of my best friends are” schtick I know loads of great people from Tyrone – former colleagues like Alan Rodgers and Ronan McSherry are amongst the most passionate and genuine GAA men that I’ve encountered – but by Christ I cannot abide their county Gaelic football team.
I’ll admit that I’ve watched enviously over the last 15 years as Tyrone have eclipsed us on the field but the sense of antagonism that exists between us certainly predates that. Derry and Tyrone were knocking seven shades out of each other back when Frank McGuigan and Dermot McNicholl were winning Allstars in the 1980s (my football memory doesn’t stretch any further back) and it’s fair to say that familiarity has continued to breed contempt rather than affection between the two counties.
Derry and Tyrone’s rivalry stretches back through the decades
I don’t know when I first became aware of the fact that Tyrone were the enemy – it almost feels like it was born into me. I am what my esteemed former colleague Paddy Heaney refers to as ‘pedigree Derry’ i.e. both parents hailing from the Oak Leaf county. Paddy bemoans the fact that he isn’t a pure breed but I’m pretty sure the fact that he’s the nephew of one of the greatest Derrymen of all time more than makes up for this. There’s also the fact that he played county minor while I couldn’t kick snow off a rope.
Whatever the reasons for the enmity, the fact remains that there isn’t another item on the sporting calendar that makes me lose the run of myself the way Derry v Tyrone does. There have been some great days along the way – the National League final in 1992, an evisceration in 1997, the revenge hit in the 2001 All-Ireland quarter-final and the 2006 humbling of the All-Ireland Champions on their home patch. There have also been many humbling experiences – losing to 13 men in ’95 and an awful hammering in 2004 are the ones that stick out in my memory.
Derry versus Tyrone speaks to the very essence of team sport i.e. showing those bollixes from down the road who’s boss. It’s a clash of clans between – house Uí Néill and Ó Catháin where instead of lining up across a field and charging at each other, our representatives line out on the football field. George Orwell summed it up thus: “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules . . . it is war minus the shooting.”
As I say, I don’t know when I first became aware of Tyrone as the enemy but I have certainly transmitted my enmity to another generation of McCanns and Melarkeys.
One incident epitomises this for me, we were having tea one night in my in-laws and most of us were having chilli – but chilli was a bit spicy for my then seven-year-old nice Aoibhin so she had a Bolognese instead. As we sat down to eat I engaged in what I thought was a gentle bit of teasing by expressing to Aoibhin my surprise that she was having ‘Tyrone Bolognese’ while the rest of us were having ‘Derry Chilli’.
Two minutes into the meal Aoibhin hadn’t ate a bite and there were big silent tears rolling down her cheeks. Her Auntie Bronagh turned to her and said: ‘Aoibhin, what’s wrong, don’t you like your dinner?”
Aoibhin responded “I (sob) do not (sob) like Tyrone. Uncle Chris (sob) said I liked (sob) Tyrone. I don’t (sob), like Tyrone (sob) I hate them!” at which point she broke down into full blown tears and snotters. My reaction was one of horror, making seven year olds cry is not how I get my kicks, and I had to calm Aoibh by promising that I would get Paddy Bradley to sign her Derry shirt (which he did after the next National League game). Later that evening with Aoibh now placated, I was expecting my sister-in-law Orla to tell me I was an arsehole me for making her child cry. Instead, she laughed at me and said: ‘You’ve done a good job there.’ The fact that I had instilled the fundamentals of the local rivalry outweighed the temporary upset that I had caused her daughter.
In fairness, I shouldn’t have been surprised at Aoibhin’s reaction, I’ve been a fairly forthright role model in this regard. She’s being going to games with us since she was in a pushchair and my behaviour on the day of a Derry Tyrone championship game is not that of a rational adult. It’s probably best characterised as a day-long episode of bi-polar disorder. From the moment I wake there will be butterflies in the stomach. On the road to Clones, Healy Park (there’s a particular frisson about travelling to Omagh where Derry fans feel like the Fellowship in Mordor assailed by the forces of Sauron on all sides) or Celtic Park there’ll be an exchange of texts and calls with usual extended family groups of siblings, in-laws, nieces and nephews that we’ll watch the game with and the sense of anticipation mounts.
Usually at throw-in I’m to be found standing with my brother Tim on the terraced side of Celtic Park by which point the earlier butterflies of the day will have developed into roiling acid indigestion – we’ll both be one step away from puking with the nerves. For the next 70 minutes every ball will be kicked, every unfavourable decision disputed and every opposition player impugned – agricultural language abounds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOk8O-nU_tw
Celtic Park last summer – a scene that won’t be repeated for me this year
My wife Bronagh will be a calming influence unless we happen to get in front which, counterintuitively, send her into paroxysms of panic – it really is the hope that kills her. I don’t know if enjoyment is the word for it but boy do we all feel alive for those 70 minutes. It’s a completely immersive experience. When the game is in tumult, amid the sound and the fury, nothing else matters; not bills, not the mortgage, not the job, nothing. The result will dictate my mood for days to com; 2004 a week long depressive funk, 2006 smug glee and general sense of well-being.
Apart from registering a few more Derry wins this is all exactly as it should be. If Tyrone weren’t there we’d feel a yawning chasm in our GAA narrative – Derry would be Elias without Barnes, Cu Chulainn without Ferdia, Rocky without Apollo Creed. Kieran McKeever, Fergal Doherty and Paddy Bradley live all the more vividly in my memory for their battles with Peter Canavan, Sean Cavanagh and Ricey McMenamin.
We are Elias to Tyrone’s Barnes
As much as I hate to admit it, as Derry fans our GAA experience is richer because of Tyrone’s existence and if they didn’t exist we’d probably have to invent them.
So as I sit and sup my pint on Sunday – I’ll be delighted if there’s some guy from Kildress or Aughabrack sitting in the same bar with WJ Dolan plastered on his chest. Win or lose, I know there’s a fair chance his experience will be the mirror image of mine. I might have a pathological dislike of the Tyrone team, but I wouldn’t change a thing about them.
