Shaun Casey looks back on Cremartin’s rollercoaster year of 2011

NOT many club teams win a league and championship double and still ponder on what might have been. For Cremartin’s class of 2011, they still look back at the one they missed, rather than the two they won.

The club secured a first Monaghan junior double since 1956 and embarked on a memorable Ulster campaign. Memorable for all the wrong reasons perhaps.

Having beaten Clones in both the league and championship deciders, Cremartin just fell short in the Ulster final against Tyrone’s Derrytresk, with one point the difference in the end. A story the Monaghan club knows all too well unfortunately.

Still, 15 years on, Cremartin can look back on 2011 with immense fondness. Having seen the double slip through their fingers the previous season, they were determined to set the record straight 12 months later.

“There was a hangover from the previous year,” explained skipper Darren Bishop. “We had been beaten in both the league and the championship finals and we were rejuvenated. We knew we were good enough to compete and good enough to win.

“We were within touching distance of winning both and mistakes cost us. We actually went to a replay in the championship final, so we knew we were good enough in year two, and it was just a matter of that experience that you gain in defeat.

“We actually never talked about the double because it was so long since it was done in the club. Cremartin had won the Junior Championship in previous years, but the double was never in our reckoning.

“The opportunity presented itself – we played Emyvale in the league semi-final and they would have seen themselves as favourites because we didn’t play them in the championship.

“We were very lucky and fortunate – things went right for us, and we made it to the league final. We weren’t driven to win the double; it was more that we wanted to be back up playing at intermediate level.”

Niall Flanagan, the midfielder on the team, fondly recalled their history-marking season. “To bounce back after losing the double the year before was probably extra special after the heartache of losing. To come back and go again was a brilliant turnaround for the club.

“It was maybe a bit of relief. I came into the Cremartin senior team in ’99 and in 2000 we lost the league, 2001 we lost the league and championship, 2002 we lost the league again. In ’04 we won the championship and went to intermediate but came down again in ’09.

“I had seen it before and in my head, I knew there was the risk that you mightn’t get out of junior, even though we were good enough, so to bounce back was a big relief. Some of the young lads maybe thought this happened every year but I knew the other side of it.”

Monaghan legend Gerry McCarville was the spark required to go that extra mile. The Scotstown man, along with Maurice Branigan and Noel Marry, took charge of the club and led them to the promised land.

“We had Paddy Martin the previous year who got us to those finals and he moved on. Gerry came in with a vast amount of experience and he passed on his expertise and nuggets of advice to try and get us across the line,” Bishop recalled.

Flanagan added, “Gerry’s a massive player’s person and motivator. He’s great with everybody – it doesn’t matter who the player is, Gerry has time for everyone and that’s just his personality.

“Ultimately it left everyone playing for him and we’d all do anything for him. He was great in the dressing room, and he kept it very simple. His motto, and it has come full circle, was that if you win the midfield battle, you’ll have a foothold in any game.

“He used to drive that home and I played around the middle of the field. We really bought into what Gerry said and some of us were old enough to know what Gerry McCarville had done in his career.”

Bishop had a county final to remember. The captain finished with 0-3 in their 1-6 to 0-7 victory over Clones and earned the player of the match award on a day when the team kicked 14 wides.

“I could account for half of them myself!” he laughed. “Sometimes those are the days you have and what it all boils down to, it’s a bit of a cliché, there’s no I in team and we were lucky enough that boys chipped in for scores that maybe didn’t regularly score.

“Captaining your club team to any championship is an absolute privilege. The photo takes pride of place in my gym at home and it’s something that I’ll never forget.

“There were plenty of bad days, and days when things didn’t go our way, so it’s nice now and again when you get the opportunity to be captain.

“The man of the match is well and good but that day, there were lots of other boys that stood up to be counted when things got tough. It was fantastic to have those boys and the learnings from the year before really helped.”

For the second time in just eight years, Cremartin entered the Ulster Junior Club Championship, a competition set up by the club in memory of Paul Kerr, after whom the club is named.

Unfortunately, like 2004, Cremartin came up against a Tyrone team that just pipped them at the post. In ’04, Stewartstown won by a single point. In 2011, Derrytresk had the same margin of victory.

“Paul was a lad that passed away tragically in a car accident and that would rest very heavily with everyone in the sense that it was something that we always wanted to win,” Bishop continued.

“The family is very well known and very highly respected and we wanted to win it in honour of Paul. We’d been there before – when I first started playing with the seniors, we lost it in 2004.

“We were looking to right that wrong. We had a good run; we played teams from Donegal and Cavan and ultimately Derrytresk in the Ulster final. Unfortunately, again, we fell short by a point. It’s something that I don’t think we’ll ever get over. It was a tough one to take.

“You try to have no regrets in life but those two finals are sources of regret. Personally, representing Cremartin and knowing it was a Cremartin cup and named after someone from the area, it would have been absolutely brilliant to have won, with the family there presenting the cup.

“It’s very tough but unfortunately, such is life. It can be very cruel at times and on that day Derrytresk were very tough opponents and they got the lucky breaks that we didn’t.

“If things had gone our way, it would have been a totally different story. It would have been an absolute historic year for the club, winning the double and Ulster but it just didn’t happen.”

Flanagan explained: “Me and Darren played in ’04 and we probably didn’t do ourselves justice so to get another chance at it was great but it didn’t work out again. The competition meant a lot to us and some of us probably feel like we let people in the community down.

“We didn’t manage to bring it home but ultimately what the club did for the competition outdoes our loss. Paul will forever be remembered, and Paul wasn’t that much older than me. I played minor football when I was 13 and Paul would have been 18.

“He was a person that I would have looked up to, and he was a great character and a great friend to us all. To be playing for a cup named after him is a bit surreal but it’s a good way of keeping his name alive.”

Unfortunately for Flanagan and the entire club, he was wrongly sent off during the first half of the decider, and in a game of such small inches, perhaps he could have been the difference.

“I picked up a yellow card early on and then in the 24th minute, one of our corner-backs put in a tackle around the middle of the field. When the play went dead, the referee called me over and said that the linesman said I had put in a late tackle.

“I received a second yellow card, and the video clearly shows it wasn’t me. After Derrytresk had won their All-Ireland semi-final, they gave a hearing to Cremartin and said they made a mistake.

“It’s unfortunate because I was 24 at the time and won Junior Player of the Year in Monaghan that year and who knows, I might have made the difference. These things happen and that’s sport.”

Reflecting on the year as a whole however, Flanagan doesn’t “look back in anger”.

It was a historic season for Cremartin and Flanagan, who was still a member of the team that earned promotion to senior football just two years ago before retiring, is happy with his lot.

“You can’t look back in anger, and you have to look back on the good days. When you go on a journey like that, as a club player, you jump on a bus heading for Brewster Park or the Athletic Grounds, you don’t play in those places too often.

“It was quite a journey and there were lads that maybe never played outside the county. They were good times and good memories and when you hang them up, all you have is a couple of medals so you can’t look back at the ones you didn’t get.”