Seamus Woods – A lifetime of service

Seamus Woods was recently recognised for his services to education at the GAA President’s Awards for his sterling efforts on and off the pitch. He sat down with Michael McMullan.

SEAMUS Woods wears many hats. Family man. Gael. Fanatic. Secretary of Ulster Schools GAA.

President of Carrickmore. Former Chairman. Midfielder. Goalkeeper.

Having resided in Drumragh for over forty years, Woods rolled up his sleeves there too.

Now, as Chairman of the Sarsfields, he is surrounded with a vibrant committee.

A 10-year plan is in full flow at Clanabogan. Outside, grass is thickening on their second pitch.

There is a walking track. Even on a Thursday morning, a few are out for their constitutional. It’s more than a GAA club. A community hub. Open to everyone.

Just days after overseeing the inner workings of another MacRory Cup campaign, Woods is seated in the club committee room.

There is the offer of tea. His tones are soft as he chats. You soon realise Woods wears the gentleman hat too.

The detail is bang on. No prompting. No notes. Words flow. Scorelines. Years. Names. Like it was yesterday.

His path could’ve been different. Patrick Woods was from Keady. Bridget McGleenan from Blackwatertown. Both Armagh. Seamus is their eldest of nine children.

“For the Armagh vs Tyrone rivalry, I’ve a foot in both camps, a win-win situation,” Woods jokes, having lived in the Orchard County for seven years.

Working on the railway lines, work took Patrick from Armagh to Kesh for a couple of years before settling in Carrickmore.

It was a skeleton education system in the late fifties. Board at St Patrick’s Armagh, attend the nearby Omagh CBS or stay in primary school until the working world came knocking.

Light years away from the bulging scene Woods and his Ulster Schools committee now co-ordinate around the playing fields of Ulster.

One of four sitting the 11-plus, Woods secured a place at Omagh CBS where he would return as teacher.

“We were in the same (Primary Seven) class as people who were three, four, or five years older than us. All in the same room,” Woods recalls.

“In educational terms, it was such a waste. There was such talent there, in every parish, that didn’t have the opportunity of second level”.

Omagh CBS were vying for three MacRory and Hogan Cup titles in a row this year.

The landscape was different in the early sixties. With a student body in the region of 220, the ‘Brothers’ competed for the D’Alton Cup, then presented to the third-tier senior winners.

Woods was goalkeeper as they won the 1964 D’Alton title, the school’s first piece of silverware in 103 years of existence. The first MacRory success was a decade away.

Galway man Brother Noone was in charge, hence the maroon worn to this very day. He was assisted by Brother Ennis who taught in the nearby primary school.

“It was intriguing, so much of it was a new experience for us,” Seamus said of his school football memories.

“We got on a bus and went to these faraway places, like Ballybay. For a country boy from Carrickmore, or anywhere else, it was over the horizon.”

In Omagh, a small school meant a limited number of subjects. Not like now. It was either the science route or an alternative curriculum of Irish, French and Latin. Woods chose the latter.

It was a passport to Queen’s, culminating in a teaching qualification. Along the way, he continued his goalkeeping with the Fresher team, moving outfield by Sigerson level.

“We also played in the Antrim League with Queen’s,” Woods said of his time living in Belfast. “I can remember a few frosty days, frosty, not in the meteorological sense, when we were glad to get out in one piece.”

University football had that reputation for being a tough, no nonsense sport. Players had to stand their ground. Frees often scarce.

It was there where Seamus cut his teeth in club administration, first as Queen’s GAA Secretary and later Chairman.

“If you were into the football, then you were totally absorbed in it or you were totally detached,” he points out.

“The football crew was like a subset of the university in itself. We used to meet in the chaplaincy every lunchtime.”

With study behind him, a job came up in Omagh CBS. By September 1970 Woods was handed a timetable teaching Irish and Latin. The real world.

***

Carrickmore lead the O’Neill Cup roll of honour with 15 titles. By the mid-seventies, they were again putting their hand up.

A Trillick team bidding for three-in-a-row edged them out “by a whisker” in the early rounds in 1976.

“Trillick were the standard,” said Woods, “maybe the best club I can think of in the 70s, not to win an Ulster club title.”

Before a ball was kicked in the 1977 season, Carrickmore were eight years without climbing to the top in Tyrone.

After edging out Dromore in the final, by a point, they went on a run in Ulster.

They needed a replay to over Ballybofey in the preliminary round before beating Lavey to book a semi-final spot with a star-studded Cavan Gaels who won by a point after a replay. Carrickmore kicked themselves out of it

TAKING AIM…Seamus Woods in action during his playing days with Carrickmore

“We played five and a half hours football and didn’t get to the final,” Woods recalled.

There wasn’t the same drive for the following two years in Ulster, twice losing to Scotstown.

In fact, there was a significant moment in the 1978 Tyrone campaign that turned their season.

In their drawn semi-final with Coalisland, hailed by many as the greatest club game played in O’Neill Park, they trailed by three points.

Their grip on the title was slipping. But they hadn’t the work done. The edge wasn’t there. Between injuries and players missing, they’d been chasing their tail.

“Coalisland led by three, coming to the last minute,” Woods recalls of the frantic finish.

When a shot came down off the post, Carmen skipper John Keenan pounced to nick an equalising goal.

There was still time for Carrickmore to hit the net again only for the goal to ruled out for hotly disputed square ball.

With Damian O’Hagan tied up with Tyrone minors’ All-Ireland quest, the replay was put back a full five weeks.

“We took the bull by the horns,” Woods said of an upping of the ante. “We were transformed and we won the replay decisively.”

The replay was a blessing. They beat Dromore in the final, something that wouldn’t have happened without those weeks of grind.

Carrickmore won the treble the following year, League, Championship and the Jim Devlin Cup but Trillick ended their O’Neill Cup ambitions in 1980.

Woods moved to Drumragh in 1981 but still answered the call when the championship came round.

By 1984, his playing days were over until an emergency call. Carrickmore had lost their first six league games of the season. Relegation was looming.

“I remember being persuaded to get involved,” he said of taking over the team.

Defeats to Gortin and Dromore followed. Round Nine was a must win Friday in Aghyaran.

“My brother Canice was married and living in England where was playing a bit of football,” Woods recalls.

It was all hands to the pump back and Canice was coaxed back home for as many of the games as possible.

On the day of the Aghyaran game, he was installing power lines in the hills around Guildford.

After driving the tractor all the way to local railway station, there was a train to London and a tube to Heathrow.

The clock was ticking. Jimmy McIlhatton ferried him from Aldergrove to Aghyaran with 15 minutes to spare.

There were 17 souls in the Carmen dressing room. None were a goalkeeper so Seamus stepped into the breach.

“Ciarán McGarvey buried a penalty,” he recalls. “He hit it that hard, it went in over my head. I never saw it.”

Carrickmore won the game and followed it up by beating Ballygawley on the Sunday. From zero points to four, within three days. Progress.

“I had a poster on the wall with the remaining games on it,” Woods added. “It ticked them off as we won them.”

After training, Brian Mulholland, Jimmy McElhatton and Harry Kelly arranged tea and biscuits. A change for players to mingle.

The wins continued but they still needed to beat Omagh in the final game to keep it in their own hands. They did. Seven wins from seven. And breathe.

“The Herald at the beginning of August had us bottom with no points from eight games,” Woods recalls.

“That was transformed into a mid-table much to people’s astonishment, not least Carrickmore people at the time.”

They’ve been a senior club since. Woods is also proud of his 2004 mission with Drumragh seniors, second bottom in Division Three the previous season.

With a sweeper in place and a host of challenge games against intermediate and senior teams across Ulster, they took shape.

He convinced them they belonged higher up the ladder. From a total of 44 points, they had amassed 39. Three draws, one defeat. Belief was their word.

He also threw his lot in with Drumragh Ladies for the climb, from junior to intermediate and on to senior.

“Our first year in senior, we actually stayed in it,” Woods said. “That was pretty extraordinary.”

***

Two results stick in Seamus Woods’ throat. The 1998 and 2003 MacRory Cup semi-finals. His Omagh sides lost to St Colman’s Newry and St Patrick’s Maghera who both went on to lift the Hogan Cup.

The 1998 group was a project since the group of players, including his son Fiachra, coaxed him to take charge days out from the start of the D’Alton Cup.

It was an eleventh hour start without time to put any shape on them. They didn’t get out of the group but they reached the Corn na nÓg semi-final the following year. Losing to St Colman’s by a whisker.

Woods had his eyes open. He saw something in the group.

He ferried a group of them to the Hogan Cup final that year, 1994, to see a St Jarlath’s Tuam side romp to victory against Maghera, a Jarlath’s team with stars like Michael Donnellan, John Divilly and Pádraic Joyce.

Woods told his players they’d be back four years later to play in a Hogan Cup final.

While not pulling up any trees, they improved as a group. By Christmas 1997, he had arranged for a trip to Bundoran.

With a few bob gathered, they stayed over in the Holyrood Hotel with games arranged against leading Connacht side Roscommon CBS and St Jarlath’s Tuam. Omagh beat them both.

They were in the MacRory Cup conversation but went into the semi-final with St Colman’s with regular centre-back Feargal Quinn not fully fit.

Worse was to follow when top scorer Aidan Lynch collided with a wall after a shoulder close to the endline. After a mere 15 minutes, his game was over.

Later that summer, Lynch was the man of the match as Tyrone minors landed the Tom Markham Cup. His loss to Omagh that February was seismic. They lost by a point and St Colman’s waltzed all the way to the Hogan title.

“Ray Morgan (St Colman’s coach) would say to this day, he doesn’t know how they got out of Coalisland that day,” Woods said.

It was a similar story with Omagh in 2003. St Patrick’s Maghera scored two points in a generously long portion of stoppage time.

By the end of the season, Maghera were Hogan champions. Another story of ‘what if’ for Woods and Omagh.

FAMILY TIME…Seamus Woods pictured with his family and Uachtarán Chumann Lúthchleas Gael Jarlath Burns during the Gradaim an Uachtaráin at Croke Park

Since then, Woods has been synonymous with the MacRory Cup from an organisational point of view. Rarely does he miss a game.

He is thankful for a supportive family and for those around him. The committee all chip in.

“It’s just a massive operation in every way,” Woods says of their season. “We have 131 affiliated schools. We have six divisions in football and four in hurling.”

The big picture is what it says on the tin – games for all schools across Ulster. Regardless of size or grade.

“I’m a huge believer in the importance of sport for young people and importance of sport within a school,” Woods sums up.

“I was Deputy Head in Omagh for 12 or 13 years and Head for most of my last year.

“I saw first-hand the difference that that makes in the lives of individuals within the school.”

A Tyrone man from Armagh via Fermanagh, Seamus Woods was a popular recipient of Jarlath Burns’ President’s Award for Education.

A unassuming man doing extra-ordinary things that help shape the lives of many. A lifetime of service.