Both sides of the lens: Sean Paul McKillop on hurling, camogie and photography

Sean McKillop hurled with Loughgiel and Antrim. He coaches Cushendall camogs and can also be found behind the lens, telling a game’s story in pictures. He sat down with Michael McMullan…

A LOVE of sport began with a small ball at primary school in Corkey. It continued onto the playing fields of Antrim and beyond. It remains Sean Paul McKillop’s passion.

Whether it’s coaching or photography, his car will be one of the last to pull of a car park. A game will always need picked apart. The social side of sport is important. A way of life.

Work is looking after maintenance, complaints and public liability claims for the Roads Service in Ballymoney. A couple of days in the office. Time on the road.

It’s dealing with people. A man happy with his lot. There is flexibility, as long as the work is done. Home, phone put away. There’s time for camogie, for hurling and for the camera.

Seated in the back corner of the aptly named Memory Lane tea room in Kilrea, McKillop hits rewind on his hurling story.

An 1989 Antrim senior medal, the year he was part of the county’s All-Ireland final squad, remains his sole club championship. It was a career that fell between the stools of Loughgiel’s 1983 and 2012 All-Ireland titles. A lull.

A cruciate injury saw him miss the 2004 Antrim final, the hurl hung up after a low-scoring semi-final win over Cushendall, where he now lives. That day in Ballycastle was his last game.

His son Padraig is part of the ‘Dall senior squad who are seated at the top table. Daughter Clódagh won a championship with JP Ryan’s in Vancouver this season with younger daughter Siobhán winning a league medal with Cushendall, with father Sean Paul as coach.

Loughgiel are still the queens of camogie, back in another final, but Cushendall are among the chasing pack.

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The McKillops lived on a farm. Plenty of grass, scope for play. It was a GAA house. The week revolved around Sunday and away to a game somewhere.

His father Francis hurled for the Glenbush McCracken’s team before Loughgiel Shamrocks’ seeds were even sown. His wife Maura played camogie with Armoy.

Sean Paul is the fifth oldest of their family of seven. Five brothers and a sister. The hurls were always taken to school.

“We had an old ball, it was probably grey or black,” he recalls of the early days of hurling at school. “If you got a ball at all, you were lucky.”

Corkey played the nearby Loughgiel in the first game he can recollect. Despite picking from a smaller pool, Corkey won.

At the age of nine, McKillop wanted to join the Shamrocks underage teams but his mother put him off until the following year.

“She said I was too young. Back then, there was u-12s and that was your first team. If you look at it now, if you start hurling now at nine, you’re probably five years behind.”

Growing up in Loughgiel, there were no shortage of heroes. When the Shamrocks won their first All-Ireland, in 1983, McKillop watched on from the Croke Park press box as they drew with St Rynagh’s.

Lavey man Joe McGurk lived in Ballymena at time and transferred. He was part of the winning squad but was there commentating on the game, with Alec Connolly as the man on the camera.

“I was helping them with the video gear, I helped carry it up,” McKillop recalls. “I sat on there for the match, sitting beside Mick Dunne who was there commentating live on the game.”

Loughgiel won the replay back in Casement Park to win club hurling’s biggest prize.

“The place was just mad, all the supporters and their celebrations,” McKillop recalls.

“I was about 15 or 16 at the time. There was a place in Waterfoot, McNaughton’s. That was the bar everybody went to. If you’re 18, you’re basically too old for it.”

In the midst of All-Ireland fever, it was wall to wall Loughgiel, clad in red and white with the DJ belting out Queens’ ‘We are the Champions’.

“There were also people there from outside Loughgiel,” McKillop added. “Everybody was so happy that they’d won it. They were great times back then.”

Within a year, McKillop was on the senior squad. The Shamrocks were favourites but lost the 1985 final to Cushendall in Glenravel.

“Even though I only came on in the sub that day, it was a big, big disappointment,” he said. “It was my first county final and there was all the build-up to it.

“You just thought this is the start of your successful senior career but I ended up winning one county medal, in ‘89.”

His last county final was the 2003 defeat to Dunloy, the first of six successive final disappointments before the stock began to rise again towards their second All-Ireland win.

“The following year, I did my cruciate down in Ballycastle and I missed the final,” he said.

“I was going to probably retire after that final. I went to a consultant, Richard Nicholas in the Belfast Knee Clinic.”

The hurling days were over but they repaired the knee enough for day-to-day life. Work. Coaching. Playing with the kids in the garden.

Coaching wasn’t on the radar at that point, but McKillop had been exposed to the county scene, having been brought into the Antrim squad in 1986 by Sean McGuinness and later hurling under Jim Nelson.

“McGuinness had done great work,” he said. “Jim came in and continued on, progressing from what McGuinness had done.

“The thing about those men, they were great people and always had time for you.”

While they had different mannerisms along the sideline – Nelson’s calmness versus an animated McGuinness – they both got the best out of everyone. Excellent managers and even better men.

McKillop moved to Cushendall in 1993 with Clódagh born four years later. By the time she was ready to lift a hurl, he was approached by Bill Cosgrove at the customary registration evening.

“I was there filling in the forms. Bill was looking after the teams. When he came over to ask if I’d give him a hand, I had no excuses. You couldn’t say no,” he said of his first coaching step.

That was the start of the underage coaching path that delivered a first minor championship and a stint helping Sean McNaughton with the seniors. They yielded Antrim and Ulster Intermediate titles.

There was also a stint at the helm with Antrim underage camogie teams, alongside Carl McCormick and Séamas McAleenan, culminating in an All-Ireland Minor title.

“I had never any issues with the girls, whether it was Cushendall or the county team,” McKillop said. “Even now, whenever you meet them, they’ll always stop for a chat.

“On the bus, it was a pantomime from start to finish. If they wanted to sleep on the bus, they slept. If they wanted to play music or sing, it was the same.

“They really enjoyed the craic and because you give them a bit of freedom, they always respected you for it.”

There was also the mental health side of sport, something never mentioned back then.

McKillop sees the benefit of the interaction around training. In a world of technology, it could be the only actual conversation on a given day.

As a coach, there is the sense when something may be a wrong. A quiet word or a signpost towards a listening ear can be all it takes.

“It takes very little to compliment a person,” he said, referring to always having a positive angle.

If there is a poor aspect of a performance, make sure to pair it off with a positive example. Building players up brings better results in the long run.

You don’t need to be talking with McKillop long to pick up the positive radiance. A man happy with his lot.

Photography began to squeeze out the time for camogie. Snapping sporting photos floats his boat.

As an ex-player, knowing how to read a game indicates where the lens needs to aim. There is also the privilege of being along the sideline. Sensing the game. Tasting it.

Three or four years away from camogie went past when Martin Burke’s number flashed up on McKillop’s phone.

He knew exactly what it was about. Burke was four years into his coaching remit with the Cushendall camogs and was looking for an extra set of hands.

Burke showed up at McKillop’s door; to be again told he was wasting his time.

“I wasn’t interested, but I met him anyway,” McKillop said with a smile. “The way he went on, he was very difficult to say no to. He is very persuasive.”

Eventually it was a yes, with the duo working under manager Paul Stewart. Burke is the methodical one. Sessions planned and timed and organised. McKillop takes it as it falls. The perfect blend.

Progress came in the form of this year’s league title. The underage teams have been delivering silverware for the best part of a decade. The core have morphed into their 20s. Peak time is approaching.

“There is definitely a stronger, stronger team now,” McKillop said. “Whether they’ve closed the gap enough or not, I don’t think they’re too far away. The next few weeks will tell.”

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Photography began with a basic camera with a small lens. It was handy to chart the children growing up and playing.

He snapped a few frames from senior games. Nothing serious. By his own admission, the quality was just okay.

He bought a “decent” camera for his 40th birthday, the day before coaching Padraig’s u-14 team to the North Antrim Féile title.

As he patrolled sideline, the camera was back in the car, not broken in until John ‘Curly’ McIlwaine, a member of Ulster’s photographic royalty, stepped up.

As caring as he is sharp with the camera, ‘Curly’, in the middle of the celebrations, insisted the camera was fetched from the car.

“He set it all up for me and he took the first photo, of a young boy and his granda with a cup,” McKillop said.

“It just developed on from that and I have covered mostly Cushendall senior matches.

“It was just a hobby, something I never really intended doing but it just happened and it grew.”

Covid helped it grow with supporters restricted from attending and the media there to chart the stories behind every game.

Players will always want to see their photo. If they play well, they’ll want to read the report.

McKillop is one of the photographers with the Saffron Gael, an online publication set up by John and Paddy McIlwaine, when the newspaper they worked for folded in 2017.

“There was no other outlet for Antrim GAA, especially north Antrim GAA at the time,” McKillop said.

“They set it up to see how it would go and it has been brilliant. If a match is played, there is a report up that night, or the next morning.”

Ask anyone in the media industry and they’ll tell you the same thing. It’s a challenging one. In a world of social media, newspapers are on the decline.

“I’ll stick the photographs up on my own Facebook profile,” McKillop explains.

“Sometimes people look for copies of them. Five or six years ago, people were always looking for copies.

“Very little people look for them now, they just pull it off a Facebook profile and keep it on their phones.”

All photographers carry watermarks to stop with the reproduction of photographs for sale. To some it doesn’t matter.

A framed collage of watermarked photos is better than having to pay for the real thing.

“People don’t understand,” McKillop points out.

“Your camera’s not free, your time’s not free and cameras cost a lot of money.

“If you’re a joiner and I ask you to come and hang a door for me, you’ll have thousands of pounds worth of tools, but because we’re a photographer, everything’s free.”

After trying his hand at sunset photos, it didn’t float his boat.

It’s the same with indoor presentations with pressure for every photo to be perfect.

Along the sideline is different. It doesn’t replace playing, but it’s a ringside seat. And if there is a photo of a broken stick even better.

“After the match is over, ‘Curly’ always told me to look out for the players running towards each other with their arms out in celebration,” he said, grateful of the pointers along the way.

“If you take a bad photograph, nobody sees it,” McKillop said. “We only ever keep the good ones.

“The one you’re looking for is if you get sticks breaking, which is a bit of a rarity now, or even a bend in the stick, if you are lucky.

“You’d have 1,500 or 2,000 photographs from a match. You might have 10 per cent of that are worth something.

“That’s about it. The rest of them are just scrapped, they go to the cutting room floor.”

Cushendall camogs have a championship to lock their eyes on. For Sean Paul McKillop, the camera will also be out. There will be memories to capture.

Like the days in Corkey Primary School and on the family farm, the small ball will never be far from the focus.

A different generation, but the same passion.