Inside the ultras: The championship buzz

A hallmark of Glenullin’s run to Sunday’s Ulster final has been the noise and colour of their fans. Michael McMullan went to the ‘Glen to meet the ultras and sample the buzz

IT’S no ordinary Thursday night in Glenullin. Christmas is coming but so too is the club’s first ever Ulster final. For a club celebrating 100 years, they’ve 10 more sleeps until the magic of Clones.

Coming over the mountain from Sleacht Néill, the dotted red lights on the windmills of Brockaghboy Wind Farm break up the darkness until you snake around the final right-hand bend on the narrow mountain road.

Coming down the brae, Sean O’Maolain Park comes into view, the first ground in Derry to have floodlights. This is peak Ulster Club season and they light up Gleann an Iolair – the Glen of the Eagle.

On the main pitch, the senior team are in full flow. Balls whizzing up and down through the night sky. Across the road and beyond their floodlit 3G pitch, two silhouettes come into view at their floodlit ball wall.

It’s December, but a championship run has shortened the winter. Inside the clubhouse, two things jump out.

A roaring fire awaiting their weekly Thursday card school tells you this is the community hub; one totally built with voluntary labour.

Secondly, an array of photos, all the way to Dermot McNicholl’s framed medal collection that almost needs a wall of its own.

On the other side, his All-Star rests in a glass cabinet, side by side with Paddy Bradley’s. Two famed sons of the ‘Glen.

There is a warmth as radiant as the fire. It’s bright. All that is missing are the card sharks who will giggle away the week over a few jars.

A dark pickup pulls up outside. Through the windows, four bright green balaclavas come into view. For a split second, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d stepped into the scene of a robbery.

Anyone present days earlier in Omagh’s Healy Park knew different. The Glenullin ultras had taken their campaign to a new level. The flags, horns and banners were one thing. A fusion of green and yellow balaclavas sets them apart.

Stepping out of the jeep and into the light, the masks come off. Four smiling faces add even more radiance, their shoulders bobbing about in laughter. Enda Heaney, John Joe Quigg and brothers Richie and David Burns are the adults leading the club’s young fan base.

Seconds earlier, they were outside, peeking at their heroes – the senior football team, who came across to the wire to lead their own round of applause.

It was a small installment of payback and appreciation towards their four clubmates and for the level of support they heard from the trenches, looking into a seven-point Carrickmacross lead.

An evening spent inside the ultras isn’t the average Ulster final preview interview but, in a way, it’s the perfect one. There is magic in a club championship run only those on the inside can fully appreciate.

When GAA President Sean Kelly took the Cremartin and Clontibret tournaments on board, packaging them up as the Ulster Junior and Intermediate Championships, he opened the door further.

Cuchulainn’s, Glenullin’s opponents on Sunday, have their own story, one of how their 2005 winning team’s links to the men who walk into battle this weekend.

A video on their social media shows the current team walking the Tommy Gilroy Cup into the town, flanked by flamed torches, held by the men of ’05. Tradition matters.

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Back in Glenullin, before they even utter a word, the smiles of the four leading faces of the ultras say it all. Like the younger members and the team they collectively support, they are having the time of their lives.

Quigg is the unofficial leader of the ‘Skinner’ Bradley fan club. The quiet man in the corner. His eyes dancing as jokes bounce across the table.

The Burns brothers kicked ball in the garden behind the O’Kanes’ house next door.

Michael O’Kane now manages the senior team that includes brothers Niall, John and Dermot. The 2007 final man of the match Gerard has just recently retired.

The enthusiasm in Heaney’s voice says so much more than words. The level of work put in by the senior group demands a similar level of support.

So, where did it all begin? How did four men get to a situation where they are hardly sleeping before games with nerves, with excitement and with plans swirling around in their heads.

When Daniel O’Kane kicked the winning point to sink Drumsurn with the last kick of the 2022 Derry Intermediate final, they looked across from their seats in the Celtic Park stand.

The score sent their pocket of young fans into overdrive on the terrace on the opposite side. Green flare smoke engulfed the pitch and the manic celebrations you only see with the end of a silverware famine.

Watching the game, Heaney, Quigg and the Burns brothers had already made a pact, they’d make it their business to lead the ultras.

“Us boys,” Heaney begins, “we don’t tie our laces and go out to play on the pitch. I’m just not gifted in that way.

“We then just took the wildest notion to go mad, as such, and to support the lads.

“They’re doing the work, so the least we can do is give a few evenings in the week to put up bunting and flags. It’s all for Glenullin.”

That’s the theme of an hour with the Ultras. Glenullin is bigger than the people in it.

After back-to-back intermediate titles and an Ulster semi-final defeat to Ballyhaise, Glenullin bowed out at the quarter-finals in Derry last year to a Ballinderry team who went all the way to Croke Park.

In the club’s centenary year, they navigated their way out of Derry again with momentum steering them over the bumps to the last two teams in Ulster.

“Look at the nick them chaps are in,” Heaney said of the current team. “They’re giving it their all, out three or four nights a week and if they’re not on the pitch, they’re in the gym.

“It’s actually pushing us on. I think it’s great what’s happening and we’re a small community but our club is massive.”

The team and their winning run are putting Glenullin on the map again, helped with some of younger players having graduated from the ultras.

Cillian Bradley, Ryan McNicholl, Willie John Bradley and Conrad Mullan among those who now have even closer ringside seat.

“They treat them boys like role models,” David Burns says of the younger Glenullin fans.

“They are watching them on the pitch and thinking to themselves, ‘that’s me in a couple of years’ time’. For now, they are throwing on a mask and putting up a flag.”

“We are just the adults of the group,” Heaney adds “Everyone in Glenullin is a leader. We’re just there to help the young boys, they wouldn’t have a bank card yet.

“We bought the hooters and balaclavas. Money isn’t the problem, money comes back, but these memories don’t for the young boys in this club.”

Why balaclavas? They’re not entirely sure. Just to be different. On their way from the quarter-final win over Sarsfields, spontaneity kicked in. A flick through eBay led to a few clicks and that was it.

On the Friday night before the Carrickmacross game, hooters and balaclavas were delivered to the youth of the ‘Glen. Extras were brought to the game. Money? Don’t worry. Cheering on the ‘Glen was all that mattered.

A group chat was set up to get out word of the arrangements, of the need to be mannerly and that they are representing Glenullin.

Every base is covered. Flags and banners are secured. Getting lengths of conduit into a vehicle was an obstacle, but they got there, the last few cable ties nipped off to secure flags in the face of an Omagh gale, just in time for the players running out on the pitch.

Nothing is left to chance, even down to having bin bags to clean up after themselves. Another message – leave it as they found it.

THE MAIN MEN…John Joe Quigg, Enda Heaney, Richard and David Burns, the leaders of the Glenullin ultras

A flare thrown onto the pitch is regrettable. It shouldn’t have happened and the message is clear. A good name is more important than a good time.

On the sensitive side, just before throw-in, there was a minute’s silence called in memory of those connected to the Carrickmacross club who were tragically killed in a road accident.

“Masks off,” came the call and everyone followed ahead of an impeccable minute of respect.

“We treat people the way we want to be treated,” Heaney said. “Hopefully it never happens, but if the shoe was the other foot, and we had an incident, other clubs would do the same.”

The Glenullin ultras’ mantra isn’t documented anywhere but the cornerstones keep appearing through an hour of back and forward chat.

A love of Glenullin. Mighty craic. A desire to be different. A respect of what the players are giving. Making memories. How can we do things bigger? How can we do things better?

“That is Glenullin’s aim all the time, to become a bigger and better club,” Heaney said.

“Our goal is to push them boys on. You saw that in Omagh, all it takes is one per cent to boost them on.”

There has always been ambition in the club. Having floodlights before anyone else allowed them to host the Derry ’93 team for their legendary feisty in-house games in their march to Sam.

Tucked in the corner of the car park, Glenullin now have their own dedicated grocery shop – the Eagle Glen convenience store. Essentials near hand with money coming back into the club.

For their 100th anniversary shindig, they hosted 700 celebrating punters it in a custom-built function room built on their car park.

When they built one of the first club gyms in the county, complete with sauna, they brought in Derry All-Ireland winner Richard Ferris to run it. He helped coordinate the GAA programme in the local school. With increased housing, those young players are the fresh impetus in the senior team who run out at Clones this weekend.

Then there is a never-say-die spirit that has kicked in, especially in the last four years after they stepped out of the ashes of the senior team almost dropping to junior football.

Paddy Bradley came in as manager, standards were set, embraced and kept. He passed the baton on to Michael O’Kane and Glenullin will wake up next year in senior football again.

“Through the years, the boys never give up,” Richie Burns added. “They are always hanging in there.”

“Even at half-time against Foreglen,” Quigg said about this year’s Derry final “They came out and looked like they were coming back again.”

David Burns looks back on Carrickmacross and the comeback, how players just kept on trucking despite the game going to extra-time. There is a running joke surrounding Néill McNicholl’s goal, the last kick of normal time.

Coach Chris Collins, who had been banished by officials outside the wire, was trying to get instructions to Willie John Bradley about his positioning ahead of the last kick-out. His voice was lost in the driving rain coming across the pitch.

The ultras saw what was happening and joined in. “Willie Johnnnn,” they collectively bellowed. He looked across in time to see Collins make a gesture. Seconds later Bradley had hands on the ball on the way to McNicholl’s dramatic equaliser.

Chat turns to the final. More banners. A painted car. Gerard Heaney’s digger lit up in green Christmas lights. A request to chairman Dan Mullan for another 800 metres of bunting. No bother, it would be there in days.

If there is a telescopic loader needed to help put up flags, it’s only a phone call away. It’s all about Glenullin and making memories. And inspiring.

Heaney recalls hearing a couple of excited young fans chatting over a half-time cup of hot chocolate in the semi-final. Both couldn’t wait until they were older and out playing for Glenullin seniors. These are the days.

“It has just brought everybody together,” Richard Burns adds. Quigg agrees. David Burns thinks back to 2007, the club’s last senior title.

IN SUPPORT OF MICK’S MEN…A banner outside Sean O’Maolain Park in Glenullin

“I remember a vehicle being bought and she was green and yellow,” David Burns said. “It was the first time I heard a Dixie horn going down through the ‘Glen.

“There was a wee goat bought, she was painted green and yellow. The whole place was buzzing then. It’s bringing back memories like that, for the young ones. That’ll be what they remember.”

“These are the best days of our lives,” Quigg added, saying how his stand out moment of recent years was how Eoin Bradley’s spectacular two-pointer sealed their Derry title with the last kick of the win over Foreglen.

The Burns brothers have a think before agreeing on the importance of Daniel O’Kane’s 2022 county final winner and how it reminded a community what winning looked like.

“There’s a pile you could think of,” Heaney said, before opting for the win over Carrickmacross and booking a first ever Ulster final berth.

“I was out on the pitch, stopped for a minute and I just looked around,” he said of the final whistle scenes.

“People running down from the stand and everybody was hugging each other, everybody was smiling, it was just pure adoration. This was Glenullin.”

“Everybody thinks, this is Glenullin’s first Ulster final and this is the end of it,” Richard Burns added.

“We’re only getting started. People don’t see the amount of young people out there, mad to get involved, Michael has just pulled everybody together.”

While the players and management finish their preparations, the committee and Glenullin community will sort what needs sorted. Sunday is a first.

They’ll hope the Christmas lights aren’t the only beacon lighting up the Eagle’s Glen.

Fingers will be crossed the floodlights will be back on and there is an All-Ireland semi-final with Strokestown to get their teeth into. Cuchulainn’s will think the same giddy thoughts.

For now, all eyes are on Clones. What will this weekend bring? A community waits….