From 'Blayney to the Big Apple
December 30, 2010
George Duffy is 15 years in the States, but he still thinks of home, of Castleblayney and the Faughs. He spoke to Monaghan's Match.
George Duffy is sitting in his office in Manhattan, sifting through the memories. There is no struggle for recollection here. This is total recall, so much that his interviewer is prompted to ask: "Are you looking through photographs?"
"Not at all," he replies. "This is all in my head. Some people say I remember too much."
We're talking about 1991, and the Castleblayney Faughs side which lifted the Monaghan senior football championship. "It was a tough year for us as a family as our father Michael, most people knew him as 'Prandy', died in June just before the championship started. My mother Chrissy had passed away before him in '83. I suppose after that the football was a welcome distraction."
If it was a welcome distraction, it's one that has been ingrained on the memory as he rattles through the team with barely a pause for breath "Myself in goals. Syd Connolly, Tom Russell, Declan Loughman. Who was right half back? Emmet Brennan. Aidan Tavey and Eamonn McMahon. Philip Brady and Eddie Murphy in the middle of the field. Eamonn McEneaney was centre half forward. Peter Duffy and Derek Sullivan. Dock Duffy, Nudie and Mark Connor was the full forward line. That was the '91 team. Never forget it.
"There were a lot of 'Blayney and Monaghan legends on that team, and I was very privileged to play with them. The likes of Loughman, McEneaney, Nudie, Gunner Brady. There were great lads my own age too. Derek Sullivan, Pip Duffy. All brilliant footballers. It was always a pleasure to go out and play football with them."
Those memories are vivid, rendered all the more so, perhaps, by the fact that George Duffy's time in the Faughs' senior side was all too brief. For just four years in the early '90s, he was the custodian, the last line of defence behind a side which had legitimate claims to being the best Monaghan ever produced. He sat in the dug-out for the Championship win in 1990 but a few months later he had claimed the No. 1 jersey for himself as 'Blayney defended their title in style by obliterating Monaghan Harps in the final, before eventually going on to lift the Ulster club football crown at the end of the year.
By '94, with unemployment a perpetual problem in the county, George was gone, first to London for a year before joining his brother James in New York. He played with the Monaghan club in the Big Apple for a couple of years after he landed, but it was a pale reflection of the great team he'd left behind.
"For the first four or five years I really missed it," he says. "I'd still miss it to be honest. I often thought I'd left too young but I'd no choice in the matter. It was either stay around home and stay on the dole, or leave Ireland and go and work somewhere else.
"It was very hard during the late '90s when they were winning the Championships. I was very proud of them, but I found it very hard, feeling that I should still have been a part of it. I was celebrating for the lads but there would have been a tear in my eye. But I've always known I'd made the right decision. Football isn't the be-all and end-all. You have to have a living too."
As a fine club footballer in the county who had been compelled to leave the country, George was far from alone. Some of his erstwhile teammates in the New York Monaghan club were in the same boat.
"Bernie McEntee from Monaghan is a good friend of mine. Bonnie Duffy from Ballybay. Gerry Coleman from Doohamlet. They were all good footballers from that time, and all had to leave at one stage or another. It wasn't very pretty in Monaghan at the time. Something similar to now, I hear, but maybe not just as bad. You could always turn a few pound back then, but now I don't think there's anything for anybody."
George believes that the spectre of emigration now rearing its head once again back home could have serious implications for the future of the Monaghan county team. (Kieran Tavey, a former county footballer who was regarded as one of the best in the country at U21 level a decade or so back, is among the new wave of emigrants.) Against the backdrop of emigration, he feels his old teammate and coach in 'Blayney, Eamonn McEneaney, faces a difficult task at the helm of the county side.
"I think he has a lot of hard work to do," says George. "I don't think he has the talent of the players that he played with. I might be wrong, but I just think they're missing a couple of players. I think he'll get the best out of them so he's the best man for the job, especially with Stephen McGinnity and Declan Smyth with him. But he has a hard job in front of him, and it's only going to get tougher with people losing their jobs and starting to emigrate."
Unlike many of his fellow Monaghan men, George Duffy is not too sorry to have seen the end of Seamus McEnaney's tenure, the achievements of which have been hyped up too much, he says. "I always thought Banty had no credentials to get the job in the first place, but the best of luck to him in the future with Meath."
Before the conversation switches away from football, George is eager to reflect on his experience as part of a Castleblayney underage set-up which broke all sorts of records in the county. "It was well-documented in the Northern Standard at the time but I don't think we ever got the accolades we deserved," he says. "There were two great teams one after the other. Myself and Pip Duffy were on a team that won the U15, the Double at U16, the U21, when I was the captain of the team. The age-group that was a year ahead of us was never beaten from U12 to U21 in the county. Never lost a game in the county. That's a feat I don't think any club would do again. We were beaten once in all that time, in the All-Ireland Féile final at U14s. And that was in Pairc Ui Chaoimh against a team that was spiked to the hilt with overage players.
"But it was some team. Aidan Tavey, Liam Connor, Derek Sullivan, Stephen Hannerty, Pauric Sherry, Eddie Murphy, Gareth McMahon, Peter Duffy. Myself and Peter were no relation but we were the same age so we were on the same teams all the way up. Gary Ogle, Mark Connor, Mark Hamill, Pauric Duxie McDonnell, Dermot Duffy - Coochie. Conor Greenan.
"When we were brought up, by Dickie Sullivan, Lord have mercy on him, and by Eamonn McEneaney, we were always told to give it our all, and win at all costs. Our own parents were giving us the same thing at home. We were 11, 12 years of age, but that stood to us."
Those great 'Blayney underage sides were a family of sorts, but right now, George, who's still just 38 years of age, is looking forward to the next phase of his own family - his first child, with partner Lourdes, is due in April 2011. "I met Lourdes two and a half years ago, but I was always one for the exotic," he says, breaking into a hearty laugh. "The baby will be a change but we're getting plenty of practice. My brother James and his wife Roisín had his second recently, he has two boys now, Shay and Charlie. So we're serving our time."
While George and James are making their way in New York, the remainder of the family is also very important to him. "There's a good gang of us," he says. "Uncles and aunts, my brother James and his family out here, my sister Ann, husband Joe and their family Christann and Kieran, my other sister Michelle, her son Henry and daughters Charlotte and Catherine, and also Michelle's grandchildren Cassie, Sonny and Ebony. A lot of my family and dear friends have given me great support over the years, and I'd like to thank all of them."
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George Duffy is the owner of the Manhattan-based Castle Construction Group, which specialises in all areas of construction work in the Tri-State area. The company was founded in 1999 by James Duffy, who remains on in an advisory role. For more information on Castle Construction, check out www.castleconstructiongroup.com.
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