Naomh Pádraig Uisce Chaoin’s path to Croke Park wasn’t always a straight one. Manager Daniel McCauley has experienced the highs and the lows. He chatted with Michael McMullan…

THE excitement in Daniel McCauley’s voice speaks volumes. It says more than words will ever be able to relay.

It’s days after his brother Oran’s penalty saves paved their emotive semi-final win over Cork side Kilmurray.

It’s an excitement that can only come from a manager steering his native club. His own brothers. His family. His people.

The team continues to churn out results. This is proper dreamland. Next up is Saturday and Mecca.

For some quick context, Naomh Pádraig was formed in 1988 with an u-12 team. Two years after McCauley was born.

It’s a young club, trucking away until underage graduated to a first senior team.

Success was sparse. They played a third Donegal Junior final this year.

After losing in 2010 and 2016, this summer was different. A first ever championship and elation that goes with that.

An Ulster title followed. Like their Donegal success, they dedicated it to late teammate Evan Craig who passed away before their Donegal quarter-final.

When the club gathered for Monday’s ‘Up for the Match’ event, the only thing mentioned as often as Craig’s memory was a 2023 championship exit to Moville. On penalties. A turning point.

“It’s unbelievable,” McCauley said of the excitement. “It’s something I thought we would never experience in our community.”

While it has shortened the winter, a dash out to the shop for a pint of milk is elongated. A 20-minute job now. People want to talk football.

“People you don’t even know want to chat to you about it,” he said.

McCauley was at full back on the club’s first minor team. When injury hampered his playing days, an interest in coaching kept him involved.

Many of the players on the senior team have his fingerprints on them from underage.

He remembers the late John McGonigle putting on a free bus to ferry himself and others from the parish to training.

There were a few temporary pitches. The early days at Wheatfield. Changing in a store when playing on a pitch at the Rock Bar.

“Where the club has come from,” McCauley points out, “is a testament to the likes of Michael McMenamin and Kevin Diver, Sean Lynch, God rest him, Pat Keaveney, Seamus McColgan.

“They were selling tickets so they could fundraise to buy a bit of ground. They’re the men who were the foundations of the club.”

***

The Donegal News ranked Naomh Pádraig 35th in the county before a ball was kicked in 2022.

In the dying embers of the previous season, they were three points ahead, deep minutes into stoppage time against Na Rossa in a play-off to get out of Division Four.

Na Rossa conjured 1-1 in a grandstand finish. For Uisce Chaoin, it was footballing heartbreak.

When McCauley took over as manager, at the heel of 2022, a league restructure squeezed all clubs into three tiers, with Naomh Pádraig still on the bottom rung.

Between a full Saturday and a Tuesday evening, he had sat down individually with every senior and reserve player.

It was a look under the team’s bonnet. 1 v 1. It was also the early installation of belief.

Away from the group, he commissioned his daughter Hannah to draw a picture of a boat at sea.

On the left side, rough waters, dark clouds and thunder to depict the tough days. The storm. On the right, calm sea and sun. Brightness.

Every player signed it. A pact of sorts. A story of what is to follow. Tough days and joy.

Laminated, it has hung in every dressing room since, joined by Evan Craig’s number 13 jersey since his tragic passing. Both will be in Croke Park on Saturday.

For McCauley, the level of expectations in the club had been too high. There would be pre-season goals that would disappear with a first defeat. He wanted a team for the long haul. Good days and bad.

“I explained to the boys that we were going to start a journey,” he said.

The world was their oyster. The talent was there but they needed to use it.

“We also needed to realise that if we suffered a defeat, we had to take it on the chin,” he continued.

It was a five-year plan. Baby steps. If they lost four of five league games, it wasn’t the end. They needed to keep focused on the sun and the calmer waters.

“Áine, my wife, thought it was a very good idea,” McCauley said.

The question was whether the players would swap it with their “pub team” mentality. Would they be saying one thing but dismissing it over a few pints in the nearby Carman’s Inn.

“They didn’t,” McCauley said. “I could see it in their eyes that day. This group of young boys wanted change, they wanted to believe and I got every player to sign that that poster.”

Leaving Parnell Park, there was a moment of panic that the boat had been left hanging up with all the kerfuffle of celebrating their shootout in.

Daniel’s son Jamie had it already tucked away and ready for Croke Park. It was the same day he realised the players had christened him ‘purple patch Dan’.

It came from his fascination of sitting tight when other teams had their purple patch and maximising their own.

The Uisce Chaoin 2023 season didn’t end with silverware. Aside from four experienced heads from the 2010 and 2016 junior final defeats, everyone else was under the age of 24.

There was a crux of players in their first year out of underage. Progress would be in stages. Baby steps.

With Kevin Doherty suspended and with speedsters Rory Hirrell and Caolan McColgan injured, they exited the championship at the hands of Moville on penalties.

Finishing third in the league, they faced into a promotion play-off with Inishowen rivals Burt who were in the lower echelons of Division Two.

Burt’s early brace of 2-1 pushed them seven ahead on a day Caolan McColgan’s hamstring would give up the ghost.

Michael McCarron’s goal and a point from Kevin Lynch left just two points between the teams at half-time that day in O’Donnell Park.

“Walking into the dressing room I told our stats man Brendan McKinney that we had the game in our reach,” McCauley recalls.

“We introduced Evan Craig off the bench. He just caused havoc. With that energy in the forward line, we hit Burt for six and ended up winning by four.”

Victory helped elevate the championship hopes but Moville’s greater nerve on penalties would made the difference. There would be more steps to take.

It was time to focus on the right-hand side of Hannah McCauley’s picture. Belief was more important than ever.

***

By November 2023, disappointments had been shrugged off and gym programmes were in full flow. The pitch sessions began. It’s a bandwagon that has been going since.

Life in Division Two was brilliant preparation for championship plans down the line. Holding their own with eventual league champions Four Masters and senior finalists Dungloe challenged them.

After winning their first group game against Urris, Uisce Chaoin came a cropper against Naomh Ultan. A ten-point humbling. A reality check and time to focus again. Their biggest test would come off the field.

Evan Craig’s form highlighted he’d be a potent threat that season. Either as an impact man or forcing his way into the starting 15.

Teams wouldn’t be able to keep a lid on Craig, Lynch and Caolan McColgan, but it wasn’t to be.

Sadly, he lost his battle with cancer and passed away before their championship quarter-final. It rocked his family and the club to its very core.

LEGACY…Joe Craig, father of the late Evan Craig, carries his son’s jersey in the county final pre-match parade. Photo: Evan Logan

As manager, McCauley just went into autopilot. The funeral was on Wednesday with their Naomh Bríd game fixed for the weekend.

“I treated them boys like my own weans,” he said. “I was involved with Kevin Lynch’s father, we had most of them players since they were u-6, u-8, u-9, u-10.”

A get together was arranged for the following night after the funeral. A kick-about, a penalty competition and a cuppa. It pulled the group together.

“We did the exact same on the Friday night with tea, sandwiches and just a kick-about,” McCauley said.

Saturday was quarter-final day. The squad assembled two hours beforehand. There were two balls of wool – blue and yellow.

“We all got into a circle upstairs in the clubhouse and we wrapped it around each other’s wrists,” McCauley continued.

“I told the boys the wool is Evan and we’d all be connected here. I told him he is going to be with us today and he’s going to get us through the day.”

The footballing messages were simple. Back each other. Lift a man if he is struggling. There was a sizeable crowd. An emotive day. More than a game. Far more than a game.

“If you have to do three men’s jobs today lads,” McCauley told them, “so be it. Just get through the day.

“We didn’t expect anything of the boys that day because we knew what they’d been through. By God, they went out and put a show.”

Three Kevin Lynch goals paved the way for a win that lifted a community that had been rocked. Sport is special. For that hour, everything else goes out the window.

“Naomh Bríd presented us with a bouquet of flowers and sent us a lovely email,” McCauley said of their opponents.

“After that day, I said we’re going to do something special this year and we weren’t going to be beaten.”

They bagged another four goals to see off Naomh Ultan, a semi-final reverse of the group game defeat.

When county final day came against Carndonagh, there were emotional scenes as Joe Craig led the team in the parade, holding his late son’s number 13 jersey.

Lynch and Caolan McColgan bagged goals by half-time of a 2-12 to 0-8 victory.

No longer the nearly men. The perceived pub team tag was gone.

Naomh Pádraig were a serious outfit. They rode out the storms, put their arms around each other and marched as one.

From the days of Michael McMenamin and the late Sean Lynch ferrying a group of u-12s around in overloaded Volkswagen Beetles, the club were county champions for the first time.

It was only the start of the journey. Despite injuries curbing Caolan McColgan and Lynch, they made it to the Ulster final.

The strength in depth that was absent in previous years was there. The young guns were stepping up.

Lynch, McColgan and Drew McKinney hit the net as they accounted for a fancied Craigbane side to become champions of Ulster.

They faced British champions Tara for the right to make it to the All-Ireland semi-finals.

With a storm over the weekend, the game was called off with the squad and entourage in Ruislip.

“We took all the positives out of it,” McCauley jokes.

“We enjoyed ourselves; it was a great team bonding event and I’ve actually believed now it’s worked out better for us.”

It forced a replay after Christmas that carried into their semi-final clash with Kilmurray.

They needed a monster free from Kevin Lynch to force extra-time and when they found themselves in arrears again Caolan McColgan won a late penalty Lynch tucked away.

A point up, they were then reeled in with a late free to take the game to penalties. When they lost to Moville the previous season, wing Jason McCallion went into goals for the penalties with his background as a soccer ‘keeper.

This year would be different. Goalkeeper Oran McCauley told his brother, the manager, he was staying in.

TIME TO SHINE…The nominated penalty kickers ahead of their semi-final shootout

It was as if it was written in the stars. He saved two penalties before opening up in the dressing room about his mind games.

He scrounged a piece of paper from management team member Fergal O’Boyle and stuffed it down his sock.

Before the kicks, he took it out, looked at it and told the kicker he knew where it was going. Except he didn’t. It was a wind up. The page was blank.

“Oran told me in the hotel the night before he was going to save them,” Daniel said with a laugh.

“The rest of his history. It was class what he’d done, I think he got the idea from off Jordan Pickford.

“There was a fella remarked to me one night, how in under Jesus did I take them boys to win an Ulster. They’re a crowd of leaping mad eejits.

“That’s outside of football, but inside, when we’re getting ready for games, they’re very much focused on getting the job done.”

Saturday is the final leg. Naomh Pádraig are heading to Croke Park.

A group of players united in grief, in disappointment and, this year, in success.

Blue and yellow wool will be wrapped around their wrists. They’ve #EC13 on their gear.

Evan Craig’s jersey will be in the Croke Park dressing room. He will never be forgotten.

Cormac McColgan’s boom box will be pumping out the beats until it’s time to for talking.

They’ll also have Hannah McCauley’s picture. They’ll remember good days and bad. All the signatures are there.

Like he did for the Ulster final at Celtic Park, Daniel McCauley will tell his players to enjoy the occasion without getting overawed.

“It was one of the big things we’ve worked on,” he said. “We’ve said it’s just green grass and white lines, like every pitch we’ve played in all year.

“Once we cross that white line, it’s a game of football,” he’ll tell them, “go out and enjoy it. It’s worked so far, so we’re hoping we can go one more step.”