Remembering Mattie

By Shaun Casey

ON Sunday, friends and family will gather to remember the late Mattie Lennon, a legend in GAA circles not only around his club Derrynoose or his county Armagh, but across the entire province of Ulster.

GAA was one of Mattie’s many passions, but another was running.

In 2021, Lennon became the first man to run the 25-mile Camino Mhacha route (a trek from Mullaghbawn to Armagh City, retracing the journey of Cú Chulainn, one of Ulster’s greatest mythological heroes), clocking in a terrific time of 3 hours 37 minutes.

This weekend, Aonach Mhacha, the Irish-language and cultural centre in Armagh City, have organised the same run in memory of Lennon, who sadly passed away in January.

“That’s what he spent the last 20 years doing, running the roads in Derrynoose and elsewhere,” said his sister Eileen Hamilton, the hurling Chairperson in the Derrynoose club.

“Everybody loved Mattie because he never made you feel like you were less or that you couldn’t do something.

“Mattie was the first person to ever run that route and that’s where this event has come from. He ran the route from Tí Chulainn in Mullaghbawn to Armagh, it’s a marathon and it was the inaugural run to promote the Camino Mhacha.

“It seems to have lapsed for a couple of years there so this is a revival of it again now. I suppose with Mattie’s passing, they saw this as an opportunity to remember him, he actually ran it twice.”

The trail certainly isn’t a straightforward one, but Mattie battled on with his customary no-complaints approach, backboned by the love and support of his family.

“The family would have supported him,” Eileen continued. “His son, young Matthew cycled alongside him for both of the runs, and his other son Michael would have ran part of the route with him.

“Úna, his wife, would have been in the car behind him and all of us (his family) would have supported him as well.

“Mattie would have supported the Irish language and the culture which the Aonach Mhacha centre promotes so he would have saw it as an opportunity to promote language, culture and heritage which is all part of the GAA as well.”

The GAA was Mattie’s life. The big ball, the small ball, it didn’t matter. He managed various counties and clubs at all levels, all grades and all codes. Coaching was such a big part of what made Lennon tick.

He was part of the Armagh management team that won the U21 All-Ireland for the first time ever in 2004. He won the Nickey Rackard Cup with the Orchard County hurlers in 2007 and again with Tyrone in 2014.

Lennon also enjoyed stints in charge of the Monaghan hurlers. He brought the Armagh camogie team to Croke Park and the All-Ireland final in 2021. He always offered a helping hand around the club, no matter what needed done.

“It was GAA first and then everything else came after that”, Eileen laughed. “Even himself when he was younger, he played soccer and he was involved in the athletics club, and he had lots of irons in the fire, but the GAA was his first love and his main love.

“The GAA is probably what he was most widely known for and that’s not just in Armagh but throughout Ulster and probably further beyond as well I would say.

“He coached all codes and even within our own club, he really would have worked from the grassroots up. Especially with the young ones, that’s where he would have did a lot of his work in Derrynoose.

“I know he did a lot of work with senior teams but in our club, if you mentioned hurling, everyone knew who Mattie was because Mattie was hurling in Derrynoose.

“He nearly ran it singlehandedly with a few guys who would have helped him out and he always wanted to work with the youth teams and the young people; he was really interested in that.

“He would have been very individualised with his players and always wanted to work on whatever they needed to progress them as best he could, as opposed to just focusing on the team, he was very much focused on the player.

“I remember seeing a quote after he had passed away that he was a deadly player’s man and that line really summed him up. He was a player’s man. Whether you were 10 or whether you were 40, he treated you the same, so he had lots of strings to his bow.”