Gaelic Life

Glenullin won the Derry Championship in 2007

GLENULLIN John Mitchell’s GAC is a name which will be all too familiar across the province, due to the club’s mammoth fundraising drive in recent months.

The club may have a membership of just under 200, but they turned in a Trojan effort which saw them knock on doors the length and breadth of the province as they brought home a staggering amount of money to help raise their club to the next level.

The vast majority of the money gathered will be used for the construction of a 4G synthetic playing surface at the club grounds, meaning that no matter what the weather has in store, Glenullin’s players will continue their preparations in earnest.

The remainder will be used to complete an extensive refurbishment of their hall and clubrooms, so often a venue for Scor competitions at both county and provincial level.

That will be in addition to the ultra-modern gym, sauna and steam room facilities the John Mitchell’s club already boast, and will put them on a par with the very best club facilities, not just in Ulster, but in Ireland.

One of the driving forces behind so much of Glenullin’s recent good work has been club chairman Martin Mullan. The fact that the administrator has in recent weeks collected President’s Awards at both county and Ulster level for his services to Gaelic games, to add to the award he had previously received centrally from former president Nickey Brennan, shows the efforts to which the chairman goes to for his club.

Glenullin translates as ‘Valley of the eagles,’ and greeting visitors to their impressive club ground is a huge rotating bronze statue of an eagle, imported from the US under the guidance of the club chairman.

As their recent draw proved, Glenullin aren’t a club who are willing to do things in half measures. Such was the effort put in that the club have yet to hold their AGM, or organise their dinner dance, or their manager for next season. When the John Mitchell’s do something, they do it right, as the chairman is quick to acknowledge.

“I’ve been chairman for over 20 years at this stage, and in that time there has been much change within the club. The objective of all of this was to keep ahead of the game, to provide the sort of facilities we can all be proud of, and to keep our club moving in the right direction.

“Thankfully, although we’ve got a small membership, we have a lot of people there who when they see you rolling up your sleeves, they’ll row in behind you and they’ll do whatever it takes. Any time you need help, it always comes. People always want to be involved.”

With a local population of just 800 people to draw on, Glenullin need all the support they can in helping move the club forward. A number of progressive approaches, with the club and the local community working hand in hand, have helped reinforce and boost the number of people within the catchment areas.

Glenullin’s local primary school, St Joseph’s had just 37 pupils, with numbers declining rapidly and closure seeming imminent. So the board of governors went about putting a plan in place to join with the nearby St Patrick’s Tirkeeran on the outskirts of Garvagh which had 60 pupils, forming the North’s first federated primary school, split between the two existing sites.

The authorities agreed, both sites were kept open, and it has flourished in the eight years of its existence, now boasting 170 pupils across the two sites.

The parish also took it upon themselves to get a large field behind the school passed for planning permission for a housing development, with the 26 sites sold off at cost price to those local people who would otherwise have been forced to move away from the area and into urban centres.

It’s just another example of how progressive thinking is helping the John Mitchell’s club not only hold onto its standing, but to build upon it.

Those new youngsters now fall under the guidance of the club’s full-time coaching officer Eoin McNicholl. The former Derry minor ‘keeper spends his time working with the local schoolchildren in what is a huge asset to the club at underage level, with Glenullin already seeing a huge improvement in their fortunes at u-8 and u-10 level as a result of the ambitious move, where they’ve made the step up to the highest level and are competing strongly alongside the county’s biggest hitters.

Each year the club also runs their own summer camp, running for the six weeks prior to their hosting of the Cul Camp, which sees the club’s youngsters spend four days on the pitch, before a trip and other activities on a Friday. It’s all to help further the Glenullin cause.

Gerard O’Kane senior wore the number seven jersey on the 1985 Championship winning team. Twenty-two years on, his son, Gerard Jnr completed the same feat. O’Kane senior has given a lifetime of service to Gaelic games at both club and county level.

His most recent assignment was to co-ordinate the closing stages of Glenullin’s recent development draw, which proved to be one of the most successful ever ran by an Ulster club and reaped well into six figures for the John Mitchell’s.

In the current economic climate that was no mean feat, but O’Kane admits to being bowled over by the generosity they encountered at the doorsteps upon which they found themselves across Ulster.

“People would have thought we were a bit mad, maybe even people within our own club if I’m totally honest. For the last two months, there was a real push put on and every night I’d send a text to around 80 people.

"Now of course all of those people weren’t out every night, but on our biggest nights we had up on 20 cars going out to every corner of the province. On Saturdays and Sundays we went further afield to make the most of it.

“The response we got was incredible. Great GAA people all over the place, taking you in for tea and just wanting to talk football. Any area we went into who had a draw themselves, they were the most successful, with those people always keen to reciprocate the generosity.”

The chief beneficiaries of the draw will of course be the future generations of Glenullin players who will be availing of the very highest quality of facilities to help them develop to their full potential, with the John Mitchell’s club reaping the rewards.

With such systems and facilities in place, chairman Mullan is confident that further success and silverware will not be far away for the ‘Glen at all levels.

“Of course, the aim is to see the John McLaughlin Cup back in the ‘Glen. We’ve done it in the recent past, we’ve been very unfortunate with injuries and other things not going our way, and we know that we can do it again.

"Our job as a committee and as a club is to do all that we can to facilitate that, and with the work we’re doing to create the facilities, as well as the efforts being put in on the training field, fingers crossed we’ll be experiencing that winning feeling all over again.”