Faughanvale’s finest hour: Their 2015 story

A look back at Faughanvale’s run to the cusp of provincial glory in 2015

By Shaun Casey

EVERY cloud has a silver lining and when Faughanvale were disappointingly relegated to Derry Junior football at the end of 2014, they set their sights on immediately bouncing back and bringing some success to the club.

Faughanvale had won an Intermediate Championship title in 1999 but experienced some lean days in the intervening 16 seasons. That was all about to change however in 2015, when the club really turned a corner.

First and foremost, they needed a manager. Someone who knew the team, knew the set-up, knew the club and the players. Who better than Joe Gray? One of the survivors from that ’99 team, Gray was still pulling on the hooped green and white jersey.

Ahead of the 2015 season, he decided to take on the playermanager role.“It’s like anything, if you’re around the club long enough, you’ll get a job,” Gray laughed. “I don’t think there were too many queuing up to actually take us, but I knew there was a real good bunch there.

“I was approached about it, and I thought I may as well. I knew I couldn’t do it all myself, so I brought in two experienced men in Michael McLaughlin and Shay Murrin along with me, so they were a massive help that year.

“Obviously at that time I had input and did the stuff outside of playing, but when I was on the pitch, I had two good lads there to make decisions so that took a lot of pressure off me and I could focus on playing.”

He wasn’t the only member of the team that had a championship medal in his back pocket. Goalkeeper Kevin Morrow was still knocking around, so too was Simon Green, but it was the addition of the younger group that helped turn the tide.

“There wouldn’t have been too many of the ’99 lads left at that stage. That was something we would have said to the boys, once the championship final came round, that it doesn’t matter what level it’s at, they don’t come around often.

“We wanted to make sure we grasped the opportunity because back in ’99, I thought you just got to finals, but we had 16 years of nothing and that went by in a blink, so we wanted to drill that into the boys.

“As a club, a good few years before it, they really began to try and start youngsters started from a very young age. The club got the primary school programme from P1s up and Paul Bradley would have done a lot of that.

“Paul has an All-Ireland Minor medal in his pocket himself, so he had the foresight that we needed to do something different. This group in 2015 was the first group that came through that had been part of that programme.

“The likes of Michael Sweeney and Jordan Curran, Kevin Martin, they all came through, and we got the benefit of all those boys and whilst they were young, we knew that they were all very capable.

“The only thing they were lacking was the experience, but we had a good mix with a few boys that were left from the previous panels still there. It was probably a nice environment to bring those boys into.

“No disrespect to the junior, but in the league, there were a few games that we had the strength in depth so we could bleed them in during some of the games and that was good preparation going into the championship.”

The championship wasn’t the only target Faughanvale had. They wanted to win everything. The Neal Carlin Cup (a district competition for North Derry clubs), the league and the championship. By the end of the season, they had all three trophies in their changing room.

“We sat down at the very start of the year, it was probably one of the first meetings that I had where we actually sat down, got the pens and papers out and discussed what had been happening that was holding us back,” he recalled.

“We tried to get rid of all that early doors and in that meeting we did say that we wanted to win the championship. We knew we were capable, and we said we wanted to win the three local tournaments in terms of the Neal Carlin, the league and the championship.

“It gave us huge satisfaction to do that. For any team at any level, you have to put the work in because it’s very easy sitting in a room talking about what you want and I’m sure there were a lot of teams doing that.

“Wanting to win the championship and actually doing it are two different things. We trained really, really hard and stuck with it all year so to have that on paper and then go and actually do it throughout the course of the year, there was a huge sense of satisfaction.”

With the first two secured, the big prize was the only one remaining. Following a draw in the final against Drum, Faughanvale made sure things wouldn’t be as tight in the rematch.

“We very nearly didn’t get our hands on the trophy; Drum pushed us all the way in the first game.

“They probably came away thinking they should have won it, and they probably should have. In the second game we made a couple of changes, and we went at it from the very first whistle and it seemed to click for us.

“We managed to get a real good lead early doors which helped take a lot of the pressure off. Drum, to be fair to them, they were a dogged team, and they did comeback at it and gave it a right go but the damage was done early on in that game and that got us over the line.

“It was brilliant to see the crowd running onto the pitch and the green and white everywhere. While winning the final in ’99 was great, to be very honest, I was young, and I probably didn’t realise the significance of it.

“This one, there was no doubt about it, I knew how much it matter. Especially with the management side of it as well and knowing what had gone into it, being that wee bit older and knowing they don’t come around all the time, you savour it a wee bit more.

“For the older lads, we had family and kids there as well and it’s huge that you’re able to get photos after a championship win with your own sons and daughters. It was an unbelievable feeling and something that we thoroughly enjoyed.”

Ulster was now on the horizon and with the three titles already tucked away, Gray and Faughanvale began the mission to add a fourth. Wins over Brackaville and Templeport saw them reach the decider where Rockcorry stood between them and history.

“When I first met with Michael McLaughlin and Shay Murrin, between us, we weren’t getting too far ahead of ourselves, but we knew Ulster was a realistic possibility, but it was put to the backburner, and we took it game by game.

“Ulster is a strange experience but what an experience. You’re going to play teams you know nothing about, you’re trying to ring around everywhere to try and get names of players to keep an eye on, and see ingif there’s any video footage around. It’s a bit of a scramble.”

Reflecting on the Ulster final itself, Gray still sees it as a missed opportunity. The Faughanvale folk didn’t do themselves justice on the day and with Rockcorry bursting out of the traps, the Derry side just couldn’t keep up.

“We were on the opposite end of it this time – what we had done to Drum in the championship final, Rockcorry did to us,” Gray recalled. “They flew out of the blocks, and we found ourselves way behind early doors and we were never able to recover from that.

“The worst feeling is that we didn’t give a good account of ourselves, especially in the first half. We seemed to get caught in the headlights a bit – even personally, I never got going and it’s hard to put your finger on what happened.

“We didn’t fully show what we were capable of that day and that’s the hardest thing. If you go out and give it everything you have and are beaten, that’s easier to accept. I’m not saying if we had have played to our maximum we would have won, but it would have been easier to take.”

Ten years on and Faughanvale are now competing at the top level in the Oakleaf County. They lost two Intermediate Championship deciders in between times but have gone from strength to strength.

“Those boys are now playing senior football and while success is never in a straight line, we’ve been going in the right direction. We reached intermediate finals in ’17 and ’24, we were really disappointed not to win it last year.

“Getting back to senior football for the first time in 30-odd years is huge. The boys have been really good this year. Maintaining the league and championship status, that would have been the aim at the start of the year, so I think that was huge to cement that position.

“Hopefully now every year they can continue to grow and continue to expose the new players that are coming through to that level and that’s where we want to be.”