Ten years on from his untimely death, John Rafferty and Cathal Corey speak about what made the Kildress and Sarsfields man so special
By Niall McCoy
TEN years ago this week, communities in both Armagh and Tyrone were plunged into mourning following the untimely death of the man with a wizard of a left foot, Kieran McGurk, at the age of just 49.
Kieran represented the Orchard county with pride for over a decade and won an Ulster title in 1982 and he was also was a key man as they reached the 1994 National League final where they lost out to Meath. He also came off the bench in the 1983 National League final when the Orchard county lost out to Down and started at centre half-forward in their defeat to Monaghan at the same stage two years later.
Famed for his penalty-taking ability, the player was a former All-Star replacement and also won a Railway Cup with Ulster.
Towards the end of his career, he became the go-to guy for helping young players settle into the squad, and he was seen as a real father figure in the camp. Those who know him best have spoken of his class as a footballer, and also as a person.
In an Irish News column at the time, Benny Tierney, who nicknamed him ‘The Grinder’ due to his resemblance to Cliff Thorburn (although reports suggest that he only called him it from a distance), wrote how McGurk was the man who went out of his way to make him feel welcome in his first Armagh training session in Ballymacnab in 1989.
“I watched him take it upon himself to welcome and babysit every new recruit or rookie on their first night of county duty for years to come in his unobtrusive and casual manner,” he said.
Jarlath Burns, writing in Gaelic Life back in 2011, was also full of praise for the man, even if the Silverbridge midfielder was often on the receiving end of some of McGurk’s pranks.
“He took me under his wing immediately and taught me more about the hidden curriculum of county football than any amount of years in a county jersey could have done,” he said.
“He was the coolest customer in Ireland and never missed a penalty in an Armagh jersey. His ability to blood the newer players was the stuff of legend.”
Tough as nails, McGurk also had a huge career on the club scene with his native Kildress in Tyrone and Sarsfields in Armagh.
In 1982 he played for the Tyrone side in the Intermediate final as they lost to Moy in Donaghmore but he did get his hands on a championship medal eight years later as he captained Sarsfields to their first Armagh Senior title following a final triumph over Armagh Harps.
McGurk would finish out his playing days with Kildress and would coach there as well as with clubs like Clann Eireann in Armagh, who he guided the 2002 Intermediate Championship, and Donegal outfit Naomh Conaill as they reached the Ulster Club final in 2010. He also took over Sarsfields in 2007.
Ten years on, his untimely death is still sorely felt.
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FORMER Armagh player John Rafferty feels that Kieran McGurk’s name should be known across Ireland given the player’s incredible talents.
McGurk, who passed away a decade ago this week, was one of the stars for Armagh in the late 1980s and early ‘90s – a time when success was a rare thing for the Orchard county.
An Ulster title arrived in his early days in 1982, but his only other honour was a 1994 McKenna Cup medal, and then manager Jim McCorry even played a second string side in that competition.
For Rafferty though, his former teammate and friend was good enough to be considered an Ulster star.
“He was grossly underrated. He had everything as a player. If you wanted to play football, Kieran would out-play you and if you wanted to act the candyman Kieran would put manners on you.
“Kieran was extremely conscientious about training. He was very methodical and hard-working when it came to training.
“I remember, as a young lad trying to break into the panel, having the misfortune of going for a break ball with him one evening in Crossmaglen and it was like running into a bullock. It’s the only way to describe it.
“I played with a lot of fellas that thought they were tough and I played with fellas who really were tough, but McGurk was the toughest of them all.
“The flipside of that is that he had a razor-sharp sense of humour.
“I remember going for a ball in the National League and I might have gotten there a bit late and bumped into somebody and there was a situation and a bit of helped was required. Kieran was marking the fella I bumped into and he came and he pushed me away because people were starting to gather. He winked at me and said ‘Raff I think you’ve killed him.’”
Ask Armagh fans for their best memory of McGurk and Killorglin will likely be the reply. In February 1982, when still a teenager, the attacker scored a last-gasp winning goal to give the Orchard county their first-ever victory on Kerry soil.
For Rafferty though, it was his performance in Tralee seven years later that was the real gem from the Kingdom.
“Everyone talks about the goal he got in Killorglin but he gave a display one day in late ’88 or early ’89. He was completely unmarkable.
“I was sitting on the bench waiting patiently to break through and one of the soft-cap brigade was lying over the wire and he tapped me on the shoulder and said ‘hey boy, who is that fella there?’
“I told him who it was and he said ‘by Jaysus, he plays like a Kerryman’ and I thought it was a wonderful compliment.”
McGurk was also a key player during the fractious rivalry that existed between Armagh and his native Tyrone that spilled from the 1980s into the ‘90s.
Rafferty said that even through all the mayhem, McGurk continued to show his class.
“If you wanted a particular incident that summed him then go back to Armagh versus Tyrone in the 1990 Ulster Championship.
“I laugh when people now talk about intensity. If you’d been a lad in the corridor in Omagh in 1989 you got a great introduction to intensity. Everyone has talked about that incident and it was wonderful, even though I was like a rabbit in the headlights not knowing what was going on. Witnessin that was my real eye-opener to intercounty football. This was what intensity really meant.
“It spilled over to 1990 at the Athletic Grounds when they met again and it was intense. There were lots of feelings left over from the year before and that is being very polite about it.
“Adrian McGuckin used to talk about the white hot heat of championship football. Kieran McGurk summed up just how excellent he was when there were boots and elbows and everything flying and outside the 45 he shows the loveliest bit of skill to get half a yard and curl the ball over the bar with the outside of his left boot into what I would call the country end in the Athletic Grounds.
“It summed McGurk up to perfection. He was exquisite in his mastery of his skills. I would encourage anyone who reads Gaelic Life to go onto YouTube and hoke about and look for that point.”
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CATHAL Corey shared the sideline with Kieran McGurk across Ulster for a number of years, and he said there was no better man to go on that journey with.
The pair worked in tandem at a number of clubs, most notably in 2010 when McGurk came into the Naomh Conaill management team as they made it all the way to the Ulster final before losing out to Crossmaglen.
A bond was developed ever since their Kildress days and Corey said there was barely a day that went by when he didn’t have a conversation with Kieran.
“I’d have been talking to Kieran every day of the week,” he said. “We would have gone away together. We would have played pool together. It wasn’t just the football, we were friends too.
“He was such a nice man, such a kind man. He’d never let you pay for anything. If you went into a shop he’d always have to get it. If you went for a drink he’d always have to pay. He was just wild, wild good natured.
“He’d give you the shirt off his back or the bite out of his mouth, that was just the way of him.”
A phone call in the mid-1990s set the duo on a path together, and they would enjoy many adventures up until Kieran’s death in 2011.
“I had seen him play in 1982 for Kildress against the Moy in an Intermediate final. When he played for Armagh you always wanted Kieran to play well and Tyrone to win.
“I was chairman of Kildress and we went looking a manager, it must have been 1995 or ’96. I phoned him at the start of December and he said ‘Cathal, phone me on January 4 and I’ll tell you what I am doing’.
“I waited until then and he came up and had a look. We played a match amongst ourselves and he said there was work to do but he would give it a go.
“He managed Kildress that year and we played Greencastle in a relegation play-off to stay in intermediate. We beat them up in Gortin although Kieran ended up getting sent off.
“We lost our first seven or eight matches in-a-row and he said he’d have to play so he transferred mid-season and played for Kildress. I think that was the only time he was sent off but we won and stayed up.
“He told me the next season that he wanted to play for a few years but he didn’t want to manage so Tony Scullion came up to manage and Kieran played on.
“He was brilliant. We were a young team and he would have protected them on the field. We called him ‘The General’.
“If anyone was struck Kieran would have been the first man in to sort it. We ended up winning the league, getting up to senior and he would have been a big part of that.”
After a stint together in Killyclogher, McGurk went on to manage successfully in Armagh with Sarsfields and Clann Eireann.
In 2010, after helping Donegal side Naomh Conaill to only their second-ever county title, Corey was back on the phone with his friend ahead of their Ulster campaign.
“I went to Naomh Conaill in ’09. Jim McGuinness and myself were managing and Kieran came in and did the odd session for us.
“In 2010, whenever we got to Ulster, I asked Kieran would he come in and give me a hand. He came up and was absolutely brilliant. It was a great experience to have with him.”
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