Some scene: The legacy of Paul Coyle

FOR all the points he kicked, the people he met and the craic he was at the heart of, an hour in the company of his son Peadar tells so much more about Paul Coyle.

And it’s not only in the words. It’s how he speaks. A fusion of love and fun and pride.

Paul’s passing last June rocked their world. A man who gave so much had so much more to give.

Sitting at their kitchen table, there is a smile on Peadar’s face. A lifetime of memories comes flooding back. There is a level of footballing detail that didn’t come by accident.

Paul Coyle was a giant in every way. Family, football and work. Fun, charisma and friendship.

He helped Devenish to half of their 10 Fermanagh senior titles. After meeting Swatragh’s Sally Mooney at the 1987 Sigerson Cup final, a year after he helped UUJ to their first title as a Fresher, he’d eventually move to Derry.

The Fermanagh roots always remained strong. Every weekend, without fail, he’d hop in the car for the four-hour round trip to Devenish, just the width of Lough Melvin from Leitrim. From Connacht.

Their six children, Aoife, Peadar, Niall, Emer, Meabh and Fergal, knew every twist in the road too. It seemed like a rota. Two one week. Another two the next week.

Those four hours in the car were gold then. They are even more golden now. Stories of football, life and of the characters along the way.

With Sally teaching in St John’s PS in Swatragh and Paul repping for Guinness back in Fermanagh, they lived for a year in Omagh.

A transfer to Loughmacrory saw him in the epicentre of promotion to senior football in 1998 and the intermediate semi-final, losing to the Moy after a replay.

Then it was on to Swatragh where he poured everything into the community. As general manager of the Cooperative, he had it thriving.

The farmers’ mart was always packed, with Paul there in the middle of any banter. The Sleacht Néill rivalry was never far from the surface.

With Swatragh, he played for another five seasons at senior level before tipping away with the reserves and eventually getting a thirds team off the ground.

He also threw his lot in with the club committee. As a coach, he mostly stayed away from his sons’ teams. He let them walk their own paths but was always in with one age group or another.

One year there was nobody queuing to take an unfancied minor group but Paul put up his hand. Why? A love of football and a realisation that every team needed looked after.

Saturday’s event in Paul’s memory, which is also a fundraiser for the club’s heart screening programme, has a layer of irony. He was a fantastic organiser of events, often in the middle of it all. Hence the name for Saturday – ‘Some Scene.’

Whether it was a wedding, a reunion or any sort of gathering, Paul would be buzzing. Up would come his hands, he’d clap them together and utter those words everyone heard at some point – “this is some scene.”

Aged just 17, Paul Coyle played at corner-forward as Devenish landed the Fermanagh title. It was only the beginning.

Peadar has been sifting through the video footage of the games. Making a highlights reel to encapsulate his father’s footballing career is an impossible task.

They were champions in 1989. A bullet to the Lisnaskea net put the icing on their 1990 glory. There was a celebration to match the finesse, as they became the first club in 15 years to retain the New York Gold Cup.

Then there was 1993 and a man of the match performance. On the way back from a shoulder injury earlier in the season, it was his greatest hour in blue and white, as they clawed back two early Kinawley goals.

“It was insane, he kicked seven points that day,” Peadar said. “When you are playing u-10 or u-12 and you’re scoring a pile of goals, you think seven points isn’t that much.

“Looking back, he kicked five points in the first half from play. Two off his right foot and three with the left.

“I couldn’t believe the two points he kicked off the right because he’d be a typical left-footer.”

When Devenish returned to the top in 1996, Coyle was the championship’s top scorer. They also cemented their consistency during that era with five league titles.

On the pitch was one aspect. Peadar can only laugh as recalls his father’s stories of the mischief they’d get up to.

One the way home from a night out, James Lyons had his car jacked up outside his own house and the wheel taken off only for him to try and drive it the next morning.

On another occasion, they were on the phone to arrange a lorryload of cement to be delivered to his house that he didn’t order. Anything for a laugh.

They even took out an advert in a local Kerry paper ahead of an All-Ireland final – tickets for sale, contact James Lyons. As you’d expect, the phone never stopped.

“The one thing that he was very good at was telling stories,” Peadar said.

“It’s something I look back on now, we were lucky Fermanagh was so far away.

“We were going down there on a Sunday. You had two hours there in the car way and two hours back. And you’re one-on-one.”

It was the same on trek with Fermanagh matches when the game would be dissected on the way home. Every detail looked into.

There would be phone calls to Jim Carty or John McElroy among others. What did they think?

Another common number punched in during those journeys was the legendary Mick O’Dwyer.

“I would say he’d probably met him one night, just introduced himself and that was it,” Peadar said, surmising where the link came from.

“They just stayed friendly. There’s plenty of times when we’d be going down to Fermanagh, he’d say ‘we’ll ring Micko for the craic’ and that would be it.

“We’d take it for granted that he knew Mick O’Dwyer, Malachy O’Rourke, all those people.”

That was Paul. Whether it was an airport on holiday, calling into a shop or dander into Brewster Park, there would always be a random chat with someone.

Alongside his starring role for Devenish, Coyle was at the forefront of Fermanagh’s attack.

Delving into the video vault, 1991 jumps out. Antrim had hit an early Ulster Championship goal but there was a Devenish combination at the other end.

Brian Carty’s vision put Coyle in for a score with Mark Gallagher then playing him in for a cracking goal to sink the Saffrons.

They lost the Ulster semi-final to a Donegal side with the core of their ’92 team on board. Coyle was the thorn, hitting almost half of their 0-13 tally.

“Of all the Fermanagh forwards today, he is by far the most accurate,” came the words of Peter McGinnity on co-commentary.

There were the trademark frees of his left foot. A shuffle, hands out in balance, eyes at the posts and over they went. For one score, he threw Martin Gavigan a dummy before slotting over.

For another, he tempted Martin Shovlin into surveying his right foot, before Coyle jinked inside to kick off the left.

“We’ve been brought up as a Fermanagh supporting family,” said Peadar who was wearing a Fermanagh jersey the day Barry Owens fisted the late winning goal to sink Derry in 2008.

The earliest memory came four years previously when Fermanagh toppled Armagh to book an All-Ireland semi-final date with Mayo.

“We went to every single match,” he recalled of a memorable Erne summer.

“I only remember bits and pieces of it because I was only five or six. I’ll never forget that Armagh match, being at it. The celebrations after were insane.”

Everything was green and white. Flags and bunting everywhere. Brilliant times.

“They should have beat Mayo the first day,” Peadar said, with the benefit of delving back through the footage.

“Even in the replay, with about 10 minutes to go, they were two points up against Mayo, losing by two in the end, and that was a good Mayo team.”

Paul would have always had the games recorded and flicked on that night for a second viewing. He’d hear the pundits’ take.

It was the same in later years when trawling back to analyse Swatragh games. The beauty was in the detail.

Within four years of nearly beating Mayo, Coyle was part of the Fermanagh management team under Malachy O’Rourke as they came within touching distance of an Ulster title, falling agonising short to Armagh.

“We were getting up every Sunday morning at five or six o’clock in the morning to go down,” Peadar recalls of those days when they were with their father every step of the way.

“The Fermanagh squad would be meet at maybe eight o’clock so we’d be going down at that time, getting lifted by one of our uncles or granny.”

That would be the routine, with the car rolling up Swatragh’s Laragh Road as midnight approached.

When Swatragh were winning umpteen camogie championships, Sally was part of their success story. The Mooneys are steeped in GAA. Paul fitted like a glove.

Sport dominated the television. Darts, snooker and golf were a big part. He was an avid reader too with autobiographies of sporting stars prominent. Men like Phil Taylor and Ronnie O’Sullivan.

“We were big into all sports and that came from him,” Peadar said of his father’s influence, “and he always loved the greats of the game.”

The goalposts in the garden were well used and there would be regular trips to the nearby Davitt Park.

“He’d be coming with us, with the boots on, shooting away,” Peadar added of another precious memory.

“He would have taken most of his frees off the ground and he would still be striking them over. He’s just made us into a football family.”

For most of their career, Paul stayed away from his own son’s teams. Apart from the 2014 Swatragh minor group.

“We had good underage management,” Peadar recalls. “John Kearney had taken us from u-14 and was a brilliant trainer.”

Paul teamed up at minor level, a year that saw them beat Sleacht Néill three times in the same season – a pre-season cup, league and championship.

“That was his best achievement,” Peadar said of his time with underage. “He’d have working down at the mart at the time and I’d say there was some craic with the Sleacht Néill ones.”

Peadar and Niall saw their father’s level of detail up close, merging perfectly with what Kearney brought in previous seasons.

The small things mattered. All of them.

There would always be people assigned as umpires and to do the line.

He’d know the dimensions of every pitch in Derry and how their setup would need to be tweaked accordingly.

Someone else would be looking after the stats. Kick-outs, possessions, shots. He’d know what the opponents would bring. What side they turned onto.

As a two-sided forward himself, he understood the importance of knowing what battle his players would face. All small details, but collectively, it was massive.

“Me and Niall, we’d have said how it was basic, basic stuff,” Peadar recalls, “but when you look back on it now, you’re like, God, it was way ahead of what anyone else was doing.”

As a player with Swatragh, he transferred at the twilight of his career when many felt he was coming to retire. It was anything but.

The Swatragh players could soon see the array of skills that took him all the way into the team, playing in some capacity until he was 40. His personality helped too.

“Apparently, at the first training, he wasn’t really saying much,” Peadar said. “Then, by the second night, he was straight over to all the young boys.”

Working in Guinness at the time, he’d slip them a crate or two of beer they’d tuck into when they arrived back in Belfast’s Holylands.

As a former Sigerson Cup player with UUJ, he knew the inner workings of the student mind and the importance the social circle.

When the boots were hung up, he was still a regular at Davitt Park. Monday night was minor match night. He’d watch the kids’ games on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Wednesday was minor training night. And so, the cycle continued.

“He’d just be down in the pitch every night of the week and most of the nights, it was nothing to do with us,” Peadar points out, “it was just for Swatragh.”

With his sons coming through, he stayed away from the senior management side of things. He’d dip in with analysis and served wherever a committee needed a pull-out.

The answer would never be no, apart from some calls from other clubs in Derry looking for a senior manager.

The interest wasn’t there.

“He was Devenish and Swatragh and obviously he’d a soft spot
for Loughmacrory,” Peadar pointed out.

“There was also a soft spot for Trillick because he’s a lot of family there but Fermanagh was obviously number one.”

The fact he fitted in so well in Swatragh is no surprise. He fitted in everywhere. Lough Melvin is a long way from Davitt Park, but Paul Coyle gave every ounce of himself.

His passing rocked the community. Young and old. The throngs of people paying their respects at his wake was staggering, some queuing for hours down the lane and onto the road.

“The entire county of Fermanagh must have been here in this house,” Peadar recalls.

“There were boys from Loughmacrory and those he played football with at Ulster University.”

Last Christmas Swatragh’s Michael O’Kane sounded the family out about organising an event in memory of Paul.

The wheels were set in motion. Raymond McPeake and Seamus Kearney came to the house with an idea of bringing Swatragh and Devenish together, in sport and in craic.

Their organising committee rolled up their sleeves, getting all the plans in place.

“He’ll be missed on the day,” Peadar said of his father. “He would have been the centre of it all because he loved the craic.

“He loved the stories and he’d be taking the hand out of everyone that came near him. That’s just the way he was.”

Husband. Son. Brother. Father. Friend. Footballer. Paul Coyle will be sadly missed but the light he shone over everyone lucky enough to have known him will last forever.

He will look down over Swatragh on Saturday and those words will come flooding back, “this is some scene.”