In Jordanstown, the competition doesn't get much keener. On and off the field of play, Carrick's James Conlon knows that he has to be always at his best to make the grade. James Conlon accepts that unless he works to his optimum level, he's liable to get left behind in the slipstream of some of the brightest young men currently beavering away at the renowned county Antrim third-level college that is Jordanstown. Whether it's keeping up to speed with his sports science studies or keeping pace with the demands of playing Sigerson Cup football, the Emmets star knows only too well that only the fittest, the most able performers will make the grade. It's nearing winter time and James is just after arriving back to his lodgings just before midnight after a long day which has involved the usual mix of studies and football. A trip south to Dundalk to take on the local Institute of Technology's finest young talent in the Ryan Cup (the league equivalent of the Sigerson Cup format) began at 5pm and takes it out of a body, even when you're still only 19. Still, it has proven to be a very fruitful journey with an eight point win for Conlon and co. Tired but content, James says that he has bought the ticket and is prepared for all that goes with the ride. "Even playing for the college, never mind the county, is a massive commitment but I'm happy to give that commitment. "If I wasn't prepared to give the football the time up here, I wouldn't be at it and I wouldn't have made the trip to Dundalk. "I'm happy doing what I'm doing," confirms James who is two years into his four year course. Jordanstown's resident full-back is joined on the college's premier team by Monaghan Harps' star Shay McAleer and by other underage football luminaries such as Armagh's Philip Loughran and Tyrone pair Peter Donnelly and Dermot Carlin. The Carrick teenager acknowledges that he's operating among exalted company. "College football is a much higher standard than I'd be used to at club level in Monaghan and you have to be on top of your game all the time. "It's very intense up here and you have to be on the ball all the time because so many of the players in Jordanstown and the colleges we come up against have either All-Ireland minor or under 21 medals to their credit. "The players in college are very ambitious. It's very much a win, win mentality at Sigerson Cup level but you find yourself improving as a player and becoming stronger, mentally and physically." James makes it clear that you have to be good to be part of the college elite in Jordanstown. "You have to show that you're comfortable on the ball and that you are prepared to look to maintain the highest personal standards possible. "If you don't, you won't get a game." The fact that James managed to score a point from his full-back berth against Dundalk IT suggests that he has got the message! It also goes without saying that James is determined to 'make the grade' on both the academic and sporting fronts in Jordanstown and, now in his second year in college, knows exactly what he has to do in adoping a twin track approach. He was full-back on the college team in 2003 as well but a groin strain severely interrupted his stint on the team so an innate interest in the medical, physcological and physiological mix involved in sport has been well honed. Sports science is obviously right up his street. James is very athletic, looks after himself and understands the value of combining traditional training methods with all the best that modern technology can offer. On the playing side of things, James accepts that he needs to show the degree of discipline, will-to-win and commitment necessary to survive in such a high-class milieu. He is aware too that he has constantly to run at speed in order just to stay still among his peers in Jordanstown. Most of his team-mates in Jordanstown are graduates of the St. Colman's, St. Pat's Maghera and Omagh CBS etc etc school of football excellence. "Those colleges seem to breed a train to win mentality into their students and you can see that in the fellas that you play with up here the way they go about things in such a professional way. "That sort of mentality was a bit of a culture shock to me during my first year in Jordanstown but I have learned from them and I'm well used to it at this stage," the 2003 Colleges All-Star award winner confirms. Not that James' tuition at secondary school lacked in any department. Indeed he was academically gifted enough at Patrician College, Carrick to gain entry to Jordanstown while, of course, his playing days there saw him win a Rannafast Cup medal where his team-mates included club mate Stephen Gallogly and Magheracloone's John McMahon. Patrician's historic victory must have been well received? "We got a lot of praise and support at that time. It was a great boost for for the school and the county and the fact my own club had four or five fellas on it made the win even more special." Not that everything went to plan for James on the football front while at secondary school. Although he helped the Emmets win the Under 16 league and championship double, he was later to sample the extreme disappointment of being beaten in two minor football championship deciders, 2001 and '02, to Clontibret. There was the consolation though of getting to celebrate a minor league triumph in 2002. Of course there was the extra consolation of featuring on the county minor squads of 2001 and '02. Any abiding memories from his days with the county teams? "Losing out to Tyrone in the Ulster championship final in 2001 was really disappointing, especially since they went on to win the All-Ireland. "Unfortunately Sean Cavanagh did a lot of damage that day." And his most memorable college match? "Winning the All-Ireland Freshers final last year when we beat UCC in Swords stands out," the 2002 Monaghan Young Player of the Year explained. A member of the Monaghan Under 21 squad in 2003 and 2004, the flying defender, James is someone of the half-full variety. As such he is wont to see blue skies on the horizon on every front, at club, college and county levels. He will, presumably, feature on Monaghan's under 21 county team in the coming year. "I hope to be part of the squad and if we can avoid Tyrone, our bogey team, I think we will have a very good chance of going far in the competition." Meanwhile as far as his beloved Emmets are concerned, James (no relation to fellow Carrick gael and former countyman John Conlon) says that winning the Monaghan SFC title as well as a Sigerson Cup medal with Jordanstown and the Ulster SFC title with Monaghan are his three principal, short-term aims. Things will have to improve on the domestic front especially, he admits. "2004 was a bad year for the club at adult level. "We had high expectations after getting to the semi-final in 2003 when we only lost to 'Blayney by a point so losing out to Latton in the first round last summer was a major disappointment. "And losing then in the back door to Truagh only made matters worse. We hadn't any excuses only for the fact we didn't play to our potential and we were without experienced fellas last year like Declan Smyth, Denis Connolly, Ronan Finn and a few others as well." James insists that the team is both young enough and talented enough to make the big time in senior circles in the next three or four years. "It's no longer the case that the same couple of clubs have it wrapped up every year and Magheracloone's success this year is all the inspiration and motivation we need to achieve the same success." 'Blayney, Clontibret et all - you've been warned! Winner alright, winner alright! Carrick's 2003 Hall of Fame winner Sean Marron still talks about football with the same kind of enthusiasm and passion with which he once played the Gaelic game. Marron is a common name within the claustrophobic gaeldom that is Farney country. However when Sean Marron was at the peak of his football career while playing for Carrick Emmets, his surging runs and silky skills were bordering on the unique. In soccer parlance, there was really only one Sean Marron back in the late 'forties, early 'fifties. The Carrick Emmets club would, of course, loved to have had a half-dozen of Sean's ilk but monopolies have never been part of the fabric of the GAA in provincial Ireland. Over the course of a lengthy career, Sean did the business for many teams. It was with the amalgam side, Farney Gaels, that he arguably caught the eye most conspicuously of all though. Farney Gaels was an ad hoc amalgamation side which had a short lifespan. But during its albeit brief existence, the Gaels fairly made its mark. Reaching the 1949 Monaghan senior football championship decider marked a real window of opportunity for the combined forces of Corduff and Carrickmacross Emmets clubs. "We had a good team but we came up against a better team in the final in Clontibret. "They were a tough outfit with men like Hughie McKearney and John Rice around." The final proved an unhappy one for Marron and co. And Sean himself felt that the game went over his head a bit. "I lined out at centre-forward for the first half but then I was moved to midfield and ended up marking John Murray who was about 6'4". I was only 5'9" and a bit of a greyhound and it wasn't much of a match under the high ball," Sean recalls. As things panned out, the underdogs - the surprise packets of the blue riband competition in '49 - didn't top off their debut championship season by lifting the big prize. After impressing greatly in their win over Ballybay, the county decider was a bit of an anti-climax for Sean and his team-mates, among whom was county goalkeeper Walter Durcan. "Clontibret had the edge throughout the game and in most sectors of the field. "They were excellently trained by Father McCormack. We did our best but it wasn't good enough." Interestingly, Sean maintains that a bit more work on the tactical side of things vis-a-vis blackboard work could have swung the odds in favour of a Gaels win. Sean believes that football in his time suffered for the want of some tactical ploys and better preparation of teams. Still the former pacy attacker is fulsome in his praise of the work put in by mentors Tom McCluskey (Carrick Emmets) and Seamus Garvey in helping Sean make his one and only senior county final appearance. But one wonders how did the style of football back then compare with that pertaining to present times? "It was tougher going, more physical. You took your knock and went on about your business. You gave it and took it. "There was a lot more of the catch and kick style of football." Slower too? "No, I wouldn't say that. The young fellas who were playing the game then were as fast as the fellas playing nowadays. "I think the players might have been a bit older on average. They seemed to play for more years at club level than they do now." The club scene, it appears, was no less competitive then as it is now in the southern region of the county. Contrary to perceptions about fierce local derby matches back then, Sean claims he never knew of any game between the neighbours being abandoned for violent conduct. "Donaghmoyne, Killanny and Inniskeen were all good teams and matches with Carrick were always tough but they weren't dirty." As for the standard of refereeing, Sean says that most referees could keep things under control even if "they weren't as fit as Pat McEnaney," explains Sean who played at all levels, minor, junior and senior for his native county. Reflecting on his time at inter-county level, Sean picks out his minor days as a time when the 'what might have been' syndrome really kicked in. "We had a great minor team and I thought we had it in us to go the distance in Ulster at least. "But we didn't get our fair share of luck. We beat Cavan and Antrim in the minor championship of 1948 but then lost out to Tyrone in the final. "They had an equally good team and players like Iggy Jones and Eddie Devlin were very fast and skilful too. Those two were like the fellas you'd see playing in Croke Park nowadays." Closer to home, Sean fingers the likes of Paddy Fitzpatrick, Ollie and Paddy O'Rourke (all Inniskeen) as very potent players. Four years later there was to be further disappointment for Sean at senior county level too. Losing out to Cavan in the 1952 Ulster SFC final at Breffni Park was another sore one, even if Sean was an unused sub. that day. That defeat had come just one year after Monaghan, Marron et al, had won the Dr. McKenna Cup. "Paddy Carolan and Victor Sherlock were stars on that Cavan team but they had a whole lot of very good players. "But we could always give them a good game and ran them close the year they won the All-Ireland (1952). "Some people said we might have been the second best team in Ireland that year but it's hard to know." Even though medals didn't exactly smother Sean's sideboard at home, the former Emmets star says he has no regrets. "People would tell you that we had nothing else to do back then but play football and that's true. "But I have to say that I enjoyed the football. It was a break from the farming. "I didn't lose any sleep over not winning medals," Sean explains. The bold Sean sampled the delights of Gaelic football on both sides of the Atlantic. The one-time ace footballer went to the United States when he was 25 and spent all of eleven years stateside. During his time there, he lined out with the Monaghan team in New York where he worked in the bar and restaurant trade in Times Square. Like all the other teams in New York, the Monaghan crew had a United Nations of Ireland feel about it with a variety of different countymen lining up alongside the young Marron. So how did football across the ocean compare to football in Monaghan? "It was a good bit rougher in America. There were no prisoners taken and with the ground being as hard as a rock, you had to be careful not to get really badly hurt," the now 71 year-old adds. Sean explains that by the time he returned home to Carrick in 1960, he was "past it." He had hung up his boots and turned to being a spectator and avid follower of both Corduff (for whom he played at junior level) and the Emmets. So what does he think of the modern-day player and their approach to football? "There are a lot more distractions these days than there was when I was playing. "In some ways I think there's too much training being done. It might be better if the players spent more time on practicising kicking points and catching the ball. A lot of the players these days have got the fitness but don't have the skills to go along with it," Sean opines. And what of the degree of talent in county Monaghan right now? "They showed a couple of years ago when they beat Armagh in the championship that they can do it on the right day but I don't think there's an over-abundance of good footballers in the county at the minute. "There's still the same interest though in football in Monaghan and with the right kind of support, the county can improve and do something in the championship in the next few years." Tweet

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