Aidan the Clones cause
December 30, 2005
Aidan Gillard has been one of the most consistent footballers in Clones for the last few years. No surprise then that he was selected as the club's Player of the Year for 2004. Kevin Carney reports.
Aidan Gillard has clocked up mileage of Michael O'Learyesque proportions in recent years in the cause of Clones GAA but, unlike the Ryan Air boss he ain't complaining.
He's still a young man and he's not fairly confident that he's far from too much mileage on his own clock to consider winding down his Gaelic football career.
The 25-year old is the kind of stalwart player that every team-manager seeks to have on board at the start of every season. Good fortune and he'll be about all season.
Clones GAA is fortunate to have Aidan Gillard among their ranks because he's certainly one player down St. Tighernach's Park-way who has shown total commitment.
But while the ace defender has shown his loyalty and gra for his home club over the years, the Clones GAA bosses moved to show their appreciation of Aidan's efforts.
At the tail end of 2004, the Clones club officers announced that Aidan was the club's 2004 Club Player of the Year award winner. It was an award well received by Aidan.
"It was great to get it; I was delighted and a bit surprised although I thought myself that 2004 was probably my best year so far with the club," Aidan explains.
Aidan impressed everyone at Clones during 2004 and his displays for both the club's Junior B and premier sides were both consistently good and often from the top drawer.
2004 was, he confirms, an enjoyable, a rewarding and, ultimately quite memorable year for him personally even if it was a "demanding and long" season.
A Quantity Surveyor based in Glasnevin, Aidan has been busying himself travelling down the road from Dublin to the border town at least twice a week for the last while.
With a Junior B match possibly mid-week and a senior match the following weekend, his expeditions in 2004 drew the admiration and respect of his club colleagues.
So what sort of schedule are we talking about here Aidan, vis-a-vis, your departure and arrival times during the season from the Big Smoke?
"When I travelled home, I'd go straight to Clones from wherever I was working in Dublin and hope to be in Clones around the half-seven mark.
"After the match, I'd go home to visit the family, have a cup of tea and then head back to the city and arrive maybe at around midnight," he explains.
Hold on a minute. Aidan's a defender. The story goes that it's only goalkeepers are supposed to be one sandwich short of a picnic.
"I know that but you get used to it a bit and you just do it, especially when you've given a commitment to the manager and selectors," responds the Monaghan Road native
Whether he sometimes felt like being half-hearted in his commitment to Clones, as he ploughed a lonely furrow home to Dublin after training/matches, he ain't letting on.
"No, I'd have to be honest and say I enjoyed all those games playing with the Junior Bs and the intermediate side but it helps when things go reasonably well for the team.
"We made the latter stages of the Junior B and at intermediate we didn't do that well in the league, got to the championship semis but unfortunately lost out to Ballybay."
Aidan says the fact that the Pearse Brothers eventually ran out winners of the championship offered the Clones club little by way of consolation for the defeat in Carrick.
"Not really. It was all the more disappointing because we were in with a great shout of taking the title but then Paul Finlay took out in the last ten minutes.
"We were going well that year and I know it's hypothetical but had we beaten Ballybay, I think we were good enough to go on and win the final.
"I'd say the squad we had in 2004 was probably one of the best teams I've played with in Clones," explains the former Limerick RTC college student.
Aidan's brother William (a current county senior triallist) and the more established Declan McKernan were at the top of their game. 2004 was certainly one that got away.
For his part, Aidan enjoyed the 2004 season for quite a number of reasons and no more so than the fact that he felt he was also playing at the top of his game.
He maintains that playing Junior B helped make him a more confident player, infused him with a greater degree of self-belief.
A tigerish, extremely mobile corner-back, Aidan says the intermediate team's consistency in 2004 was not quite matched over the course of the past year.
Not attaining promotion was a real downer for him, he confides, even if getting to the semis of the league showed that they were every bit as good as ther best of the rest.
"We played Inniskeen in the semi-final of the league. They had already won the championship and maybe we felt they wouldn't have been as hungry as they were.
"As well as that, we played them in the league just three weeks before the semi-final and just narrowly lost out to them so we weren't afraid of them.
"The fact that they were competing in the Ulster intermediate club championship probably had us thinking that they would be distracted a bit."
And yet things still didn't work out for Aidan and co with a bad first half not quite being cancelled out by a much improved display on the restart.
League disappointment compounded the chagrin of the Clones crew experienced by dint of their championship shortcomings.
"What can you say. We should have reached the final but didn't put Doohamlet away the first day," Aidan laments.
"I don't think the omens were good after drawing with them first time around but the sending off of Mickey Slowey was a hell of a blow and we struggled to get over that.
"Conceding 1-2 straight after that, inside five minutes, left us with a kind of mission impossible but we fought hard and got back to within a point of them."
Considering that Doohamlet later lost out to Inniskeen, perhaps Clones might not have been fit, in any case, to deny the Grattans had they made the county decider.
"It's hard to know; that's another hypothetical point but we'd have been up for the final and I definitely think we would have improved another notch or two in the final.
"Inniskeen would have been a hard nut to crack in the final but we beat them once in the league so there wasn't much between us during the year."
Aidan's 2004 Player of the Year award nestles next to his Junior B gong from yesteryear but he hopes there's the makings of another winning souvenir in the offing.
"Hopefully we can give it a good shot at winning either the intermediate league or championship in 2006," he says more in expectation than hope, it seems.
"We seem to be able to beat any of the opponents we meet during the year but then we don't just manage to gel together on the day that it counts.
"But, definitely, we can look at a cup this year as being a realistic target.
"I've never played at senior level, just junior and intermediate, and it would be nice to make the step up.
"I think if we did get up senior we could stay there because there's not a lot of difference between the top of the intermediate and the middle of the senior league.
"It can go anyway at intermediate level because we weren't that far off relegation in 2004 and yet made our way up near the top in the year just gone by."
So what has the current squad got going for itself that gives Aidan the sense that it can crack it at intermediate in the coming year?
"There's a great spirit in the camp; all the lads get on together and there's a lot of dedication and commitment there.
"It's a pity the squad is so spread out though with four or five lads in Belfast, some in Dublin and others in Newry.
"But the away-based players have shown they are determined to try and help the club win something at intermediate level and with a bit of luck in 2006, we might get there.
Does he feel there's any single team at intermediate level next year who might put a spanner in the Clones works?
"The competition is going to be tough all-round but Donaghmoyne will be one of the favourites to win something although they're not the same team if Rory Woods is out.
"We'd be confident enough in ourselves and we shouldn't fear any team at intermediate level next season.
"We have the ability to finally get back up senior."
Leave it the ambitious Gillard to continue Aidan the cause.
Monahan on his Monaghan football career
Eamonn Monahan received the Clones Hall of Fame Award in 2004. Here he reflects on an enjoyable career with club and county with Kevin Carney
It's a case of nostalgia pressed into overdrive as the entrails of George Best's life are poured over by professional journalists on the t.v.
At home in Cherry Park, Eamonn Monaghan is having none of it as the rose-tinted glasses are offered to him.
It's one thing being asked to recall his past days in the colours of his native Clones but another trying to inveigle him into putting on the overused specs.
Refreshingly, the one-time ace goalkeeper reckons today's Gaelic football is a better product, an all-together more eye-pleasing proposition.
"I enjoyed my football with Clones and Monaghan but the football back then wasn't nearly as attractive for the spectator as it is nowadays.
"It was no fun playing junior football, just out of minor, against a has-been who was trying to give you a belt as soon as he could.
"The catch and kick style of football years ago was a bit of a lottery with the ball being delivered up the field, hit and hope style.
"Nine times out of ten it ended up with you losing possession and ending up in the arms of a member of the opposing team," Eamonn suggests.
Ushered into the club's Hall of Fame in 2004 by the current custodians of the proud organisation that is Clones GAA, Eamonn talks up the current mode of Gaelic football.
"I would go against the grain a bit in terms of what most people would think about the handpass and the way that the likes of Tyrone have used it to such good effect.
"It's all go with their type of game; the way they can change the direction and flow of the play and give it to the man running in on goal instead of the way it used to be.
"Years ago, the ball was more often than not given to a man with his back to goal and you can't score with your back to goal."
Still, his liking for the modern game has to be measured by his insistence that the game of a half-century ago had its merits and was the staple diet of the masses.
He praises the modern game without casting any aspirations on those he played with and against in times past.
In fact, he confesses to thoroughly enjoying his career and has positively no regrets whatsoever in spite of the dearth of medals/trophies he experienced.
Eamonn played Gaelic football for his club and county in the late 'forties and early 'fifties and has only fond memories from those times.
"There was some great craic and I played against and with some wonderful footballers in my days with Clones and Monaghan.
"I travelled around the country with Monaghan and that was some experience; going to places like Tipperary and Croke Park," the 73 year old Clones gael explains.
Eamonn has little of a concrete nature to remind him of his days between the sticks with club and county save a minor county championship and a Lagan Cup medal.
He does have his 2004 Hall of Fame trophy though and it's obvious that he is chuffed at having been afforded the honour by his fellow gaels in the border town.
"I heard about it around a week before the presentation and it came as a genuine surprise to me," he admits.
"My first reaction was that the club should give it to someone else but when they decided not to, I wasn't going to complain," Eamonn says with a hearty laugh.
The facts are that few of his peers managed, like him, to play for Monaghan at minor, junior and senior grades although the man himself would tell you he was far from the best produced by the Clones club in the 'forties or 'fifties.
Eamonn speaks in glowing terms of such then football notables as Mickey McCarney and Tommy McKearney - the latter a team-mate on the county minor team.
Both the aforementioned duo were, along with Eamonn, key players on the Clones team that won the 1949 Monaghan MFC title at the expense of Carrickmacross Emmets.
Eamonn remembers that decider as being a low-key affair, unlike finals these days, and one in which a lot was expected from the winning squad in the years thereafter.
"We had a pretty good squad of players but there was no great hype about the win around Clones, just an acceptance that there was some good young talent around.
"The one thing that stood out for me about that year was our training which Fr. Malone was in charge of and the way it was that bit unique.
"We were fairly confident going into the final and one of the reasons was because of the belief that Fr. Malone's training had put into us.
"He was from 'blayney originally and the curate in Clones at the time who had the respect of everyone in the club and everyone in the town.
"He was a great motivator and a manager who was well before his time in terms of the way he had everything organised.
"But it was his training methods that got him most recognition because he wouldn't allow us go near a ball for about a week before a game.
"It was a case of run, run, run with him in training. He maintained that the more we kicked a ball the more we'd be drained come the time of a match."
How did it the team goalkeeper take to such an unusual training philosophy?
"I agreed with it. I think it stood to us and he (Fr. Malone) proved a point when we went onto win the (minor) championship.
"Definitely, we felt we could run twice as fast and jump twice as high when the matches came around because of his training whether that was imaginary or not.
"He used to ban anyone in the backs from going on a solo run; the only ones that could do that were the midfielders and the forwards," Eamonn recalls.
One wonders what other 'managers' from around the county thought of Fr. Malone's training methods?
"I don't know and I can't speak for them but Fr. Malone's selectors Dan and John Kerr, Seamus Connolly and Peter Connolly and John McGuirk went along with it anyway."
Interestingly, Eamonn confesses that while he was more than delighted to collect his minor championship medal, he would have preferred to have been playing outfield.
He says his preference as a gasun growing up and learning the rudiments of the Gaelic game was to play anywhere except in goal but circumstances dictated otherwise.
"I used to slip out from the garden - where I'd be sent to do a bit of work - and go to training or a match but I never wanted to be a goalkeeper.
"I wanted to be in the defence, maybe a half-back, but when the priest came to my mother and asked her could I play with the team, she wasn't too keen.
"I was threatened for a time with getting tubercolosis and my mother had a fear that I'd get dangerously hot or would be sweating too much which wouldn't have helped.
"So the compromise that Fr. Malone and my mother reached was that I'd play in goal and that was that as far as my wish to play in defence was concerned."
Eamonn is a mine of memories from his relatively short but nonetheless eventful playing career with Clones and Monaghan.
He finds it difficult to single out any particular highlight(s) from his time playing Gaelic football but he does recollect the time he made it onto the senior county team.
"There used to be county trial games between the 'Probables and 'Possibles' in Clones and I remember they were short a couple of players and I lined out in the forwards.
"I thought I did well enough but when I got the call-up, it was as a sub. goalkeeper, as the understudy to Seamus Mulligan who was a very good goalkeeper from 'blayney.
"It was a great experience travelling to the matches with the panel and we even got to Croke Park and had our match reported on by Micheal O Hehir.
"The Croke Park game was against Mayo, in a challenge game, and was an commemorating some anniversary for Micheal (O Hehir). That was in 1949, I think.
"I remember going into the ground beforehand after getting togged out in the yard behind the pitch and walking in behind big Ollie O'Rourke from Inniskeen.
"When I got to the tunnel to get in on the pitch, the steward asked me 'where are you going young fella'.
"I had an overcoat over my jersey and togs so I had to pull it up and show him my togs to prove that I was part of the panel and that I was entitled to get onto the pitch."
Amazingly, for their endeavours, Mayo, as winners, got the customary medals but Eamonn and co. were handed prayer books for their efforts on the day!
Eamon recalls too and that was when the Farneymen travelled to Tipp to take on the locals in another challenge game "on the wettest day I've ever seen in my life."
And the memory bank jettisons the time too when he got notification by post of a senior county game planned for Ballybay against Down.
"It was around December and the snow was incredible and I decided it was a wiser move to stay at home. I didn't get any more notification after that," he admits.
Of course that was after he had earned a Lagan Cup medal when Monaghan beat the likes of Donegal and Tyrone in their group.
By the time 1955 came around, Eamonn was married and soon after he hung up his boots.
Finishing the game at 25 to concentrate on earning a living as, firstly, a drapery attendant and then hardware store assistant, Eamonn bade adieu to GAA to a large extent.
He has maintained an interest in Clones' results over the years and enjoys watching the odd game now on the telly but he's had his innings, he says.
"I'd love to see Clones back up senior and you'd never know what Monaghan seniors will do in the next couple of years," he muses.
Trust Eamonn to keep an eagle eye on proceedings on the two fronts he got so much craic out of all those years ago!
Most Read Stories