Paul Durcan is an All-Ireland winning goalkeeper with his native Donegal but his latest success came from coaching the Mayo goalkeepers to glory. He spoke with Michael McMullan…

It’s Friday, five days after Mayo’s All-Ireland success sparked the week of all weeks out west. Life is good. Insanely brilliant.

It’s Paul Durcan’s second day back to porridge. To normality. Work calls. After three magical days on the bandwagon the real world is waiting.

He talks football. Mayo, goalkeeping and accomplishment. There is a calm sense of accomplishment enveloped around every word.

Back in Mayo, the county is still on wheels. Breakthroughs do that. Durcan knows it well. As goalkeeper on Donegal’s 2012 All-Ireland winning team, they bridged a 20-year gap.

Mayo is different. They’ve had every knockback imaginable. Draws. Replays. Own goals. Hard luck stories. Dublin’s generational crop that hoovered up six years’ worth of medals.

Kerry ended their own famine in 1997 at Mayo’s expense. The Kingdom sent them home twice in the noughties with their tails between their legs.

After chinning Dublin in 2021, Tyrone beat them in a final that cut deepest.

When themselves and Meath Meath in the 1996 final, they were closest to getting hands on Sam.

With 35 seconds left, Colm Coyle’s hit and hope effort from midfield went beyond the Meath defence before bouncing over goalkeeper John Madden and over the crossbar.

The Royals won the replay with Brendan Reilly’s winner with 18 seconds remaining. Fine margins.

It was only the early stages of a painful story they banished by holding off the Clifford brothers as Kerry battled their way back into the final.

Cue the pandemonium. This has been one of the biggest GAA stories ever. Perhaps the biggest.

Mayo manager Andy Moran’s attacking fingerprints were all over it. Paddy Tally was an Ulster influence and had experience of winning All-Irelands.

Another one of Andy Moran’s early phone calls was to Paul Durcan, a former Sligo IT teammate during the college’s Sigerson Cup success story. It was a team that also included Keith Higgins who was also in with Mayo this year.

“Andy was on the team and I got to know him there,” Durcan said of their relationship.

“I was delighted when he called me with the opportunity. I’d stepped away from Sligo (as goalkeeper coach).”

‘Papa’ then turned his attention back to playing with his adopted club – Drumcliffe–Rosses Point.

Playing football never grows old but Durcan wanted to get a handle on the new rule enhancements, up close, with the view of taking the experience into his coaching career. Andy’s call was timely.

“Going back to playing, I suppose it really helped me in the sense of understanding the football more.

“The experience you get through playing, it’s very important to go into the coaching.”

Every team needs a goalkeeper coach now with the importance of kick-outs but Mayo needed one this year more than ever.

After the Connacht exit to Roscommon, Jack Livingston had only 70 inter-county minutes under his belt. He came into the team for the All-Ireland series and had only six games played before this year’s rollercoaster final.

There were so many variables during the season, enough for Keith Duggan to pen the ultimate story of redemption as a sequel to his House of Pain book that charted their gut-wrenching days in HQ. Is it any wonder the Mayo brand has gone global?

The Saw Doctors are back in overdrive with the Green and Red of Mayo and To Win Just Once.

“It was great fun,” Durcan said of last week. “Three or four days of not what you’re used to in the middle of the summer.

“It was good to see the reception for the boys back there. I suppose it’s a long time coming to Mayo and you could see that in the people.”

Fourteen years after winning Sam as a player, it brings Durcan back but not totally.

“It’s a very different experience doing it with where you’re from. You see a lot of similarities in the sense of the aftermath but it’s a different experience to do it.”

There is Mayo blood from his father John having hailed from the Knockmore side of Foxford, a picturesque spot on the shoulders of Lough Cong and Lough Cullin.

“I’ve a lot of cousins down that direction around Mayo and we would have spent a lot of summers down there,” Durcan said.

“We came across the area and a lot of the lads that went to college with were obviously from Mayo, so a lot of friends down there.

“It was good to run into a lot of them too and see how happy they were.”

To the actual game itself, it has been played on repeat all across Mayo. It’s there for evermore Amen.

“It was a heavy game,” Durcan began. “You could see the first 10 or 15 minutes both teams making a lot of mistakes and the quality improved as the game went on.

“There were a lot of balls going wayward and that, but that’s to be expected in an All-Ireland Final. Kerry got off to a hectic start with the goal and the tagged down points.”

While many were surmising another instalment in Keith Duggan’s tale of woe was on the cards, the current Mayo crop are wired differently.

“In fairness, all year, a couple of times that happened, it has been the same,” Durcan added.

“They just keep going and stick to what you’re trying to do. The boys knew the two-pointer was in the bag and they were going to come back on it.”

Durcan speaks with the calmness of a man who believed. Andy Moran had surrounded himself with who had walked the walk in both defeat and in glory. Durcan and Tally knew every crevice of a winners’ enclosure.

While Jack Livingston has been one of the stories of the summer, regardless of Mayo’s victory, Durcan plays down his own role. With a newcomer in the number one jersey, was it a different coaching role?

“Not really, to be honest,” came the reply. “I think Jack himself is the key. He’s a very calm person. I don’t know, maybe he’s got the innocence of youth in some ways.

“Nothing seems to faze him and he deals with a lot of it on his own. As a guy to work with, he’s been excellent.”

It was a big call to put Livingston in ahead of Rob Hennelly, another son of Breaffy before making the move to join Raheny in Dublin.

“He had great support from Rob, which is massive,” Durcan said about the goalkeeping dynamic.

“They’ve grown up together. Jack has grown up looking at Rob in the club and obviously knows him very well, maybe that had a big effect on him as well.”

As championship debuts go, it’s hard to remember a better one than Jack Livingston against Monaghan in Clones. He was a one-man wall that thwarted the home side time and time again.

As the All-Ireland road twisted and turned towards Croke Park, Mayo went all in on their kick-out press. They were no longer prepared to accept the fact that in the new look game a possession guaranteed a shot. It left Mayo less reliant on kick-out possession but Durcan still stressed the importance of positioning.

“The one thing we always said was when we had a kick out, we’d be well set up from it so we’re not conceding off it,” he said.

“We’re in a position that we can press and press hard quickly. It’s a lottery a lot of the time.”

While the All-Ireland final looked like pinball at times, Durcan felt only four of the kickouts lost should’ve ended up in Mayo hands, only to break in different path.

“That’s percentages and that’s part of it,” he added.

“You’re always looking to keep your percentages high, but at the same time, being in a position to deal with it, that’s a big part of it.”

The late Pat Shovlin was the Donegal goalkeeper coach under Jim McGuinness, a charismatic character taken far too soon.

What’s the difference in being a goalkeeper now compared to Durcan’s own playing days?

“You’re definitely more aware of percentages in relation to kickouts, that’s a big change I would say,”

“When I was playing with Donegal, it was probably slightly more free-flowing.

“Jim and Pat both would have worked on kickouts heavily but it probably was not as structured back then.

“It’s definitely about the percentages now, you’re starting to become more aware of it.

“I barely remember what sort of percentages there were (in his playing days).”

One of the key metrics has always been around what kick-outs resulted in scores.

On their way to the 2014 All-Ireland final, Jim McGuinness had trawled hours of Dublin footage before ringing Pat Shovlin. He’d found the Dubs’ kryptonite.

When they pressed up aggressively, they left the back door open. After repeats of the long kick-out and flick ons in training, it opened the door for Ryan McHugh to hurt Dublin on the break.

It burned Dublin. Woke them up. Poked the bear even. They won the next six All-Irelands. Jim Gavin never left the door ajar again but Durcan plays down his own role.

“In fairness, it’s easy when you’ve a target like Neil Gallagher, Rory Kavanagh, or Michael Murphy,” he said of the tactic.

“They’re serious men in the air and they’re definitely easy to hit. I don’t think it was me, it was more the men out there.”

Durcan also plays down his experience of winning games in Croke Park as Mayo were plotting to go all the way this season.

Andy Moran, Colm Boyle and Keith Higgins had watched the movie before. Paddy Tally had won All-Irelands with Kerry and Tyrone.

While he doesn’t say it, Durcan’s impact was there in a dressing room where every voice matters.

There was plenty of Donegal footage in the buildup to this year’s All-Ireland final.

Rewind to last year and how Gavin White winning the throw-in left Dylan Geaney in to kick the opening point after nine seconds.

Much was made about the decision to leave Paudie Clifford free but it was Kerry’s battering of the midfield sector that hurt Donegal more. It made the snowballs Paudie then spooned on to the rest.

“The start Kerry had against Donegal, was probably something we had focused on in the sense of getting the boys ready for it,” Durcan said.

“Unfortunately, then Kerry tipped on a few scores. We never let it get to a point where it was beyond us. That was probably a good thing.”

 

Paul Durcan had been around plenty of corners before Andy Moran asked him to join him on project Mayo.

It has always been about goalkeeping, starting like many others, kicking around in the backyard before following up with the local club Four Masters in Donegal Town.

“We’d be playing with the lads and brothers and I always really liked playing in goals from around 11 or 12 years old,” he recalls.

“I grew and was fairly tall when I was 13 or 14. I got on well in goals and then I started playing senior football with Four Masters.

“I was able to do that because of my height and that is really what got me to where I am now.”

When Four Masters won their last championship in 2003, ending a 19-year gap, Durcan was 20 and had already been a few years on the team.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t get another one and that was a big disappointment,” he said.

“There were some serious quality of players in the club but breaking that duck in 2003 was massive.”

It put Durcan in the spotlight of Donegal manager Brian McEniff, having played minor and U21 for the county.

“U16s was our first one really,” he added. “Martin McHugh was our manager. We played down in Mayo in the Ted Webb Cup and that was my first introduction.”

It was a team that included current Four Masters manager Barry Dunnion. Colm McFadden kicked 1-5 in the final with Christy Toye landing four points.

Within weeks of winning the 2003 Donegal senior title, McEniff rang Durcan with the offer of joining the squad.

“They’d been back training and I was probably hoping to get a call but I didn’t,” he recalls.

“Someone got injured, if I’m correct in thinking, for the McKenna Cup and I got the call to come in.

When Tony Blake then got injured, Durcan seized his chance and never looked back.

He played 137 times for Donegal (Stat: Chris McNulty of Donegal Daily), won three Ulster titles, an All-Ireland senior, league titles and he was twice an All-Star.

While his career was successful, the longevity is something he is also proud of.

“I stuck around a lot when things were tough and I just kept on trying,” he said.

“It was times where we didn’t expect we were going to win anything.”

They won the 2007 National League under Brian McIver. It showed they could compete, with Jim McGuinness then ramping up the professional approach when he came on board.

After winning Ulster in the first season under McGuinness, they came up short after parking the bus against Dublin the semi-final.

It proved they would dance with the best with McGuiness then plugging in a supercharged counter-attacking game that helped land the All-Ireland the following year – ironically at Andy Moran and Mayo’s expense.

When Mayo climbed the mountain last month the players were asking Durcan – we’ve done it, what now?

“It just can’t get any better than this,” he told them. “I made the point that it’s just relief at the moment.

“There’s no joy and that’s my memory of it, pure relief that we finally made the step through.”

It’s the pinnacle. There will never be another first time.

“To win a few more that have been great and all that,” Durcan added, “but it’s the one that can never take that away from you.

“In the first few days (of the celebrations) a few of them said it to me that they got what it meant to them.”

*************

When Paul Durcan moved to Dublin, with his wife Edel, he was on the lookout for a club to check in with.

Having contacted a club and hearing nothing back, he got chatting with his cousin and Dublin player Robbie McDaid who plays for Ballyboden St Enda’s.

“I said to myself ‘if it’s a fit, it’s a fit’ and met with manager Andy McEntee,” he said.

Durcan agreed to make the move but after winning the Dublin title, he took up the offer of a job in Qatar.

“We were there for three or four years,” he said.

“Myself and my wife, we were very lucky with our jobs and enjoyed the work, so it was a good time.

“I ended up working with (Donegal All-Ireland winner) Ryan Bradley out there.”

It was an exciting time but when it was time to start a family, they relocated to Ireland and to Sligo where he now lives.

“Qatar is an experience and there are a lot of Irish playing a bit of football out there,” he added.

“I enjoyed it, it’s very different conditions to be playing in but the social aspect of it is good fun.”

As Ballyboden made their way through the Leinster and All-Ireland Championships, Durcan was jetting over and back from Qatar.

It was something Dingle goalkeeper Gavin Curran was doing from Australia all the way through last season’s odyssey.

“It was well worth it in the end,” Durcan said of adding three more medals to his haul.

“I met Noel Basquel, a man from Westport, on Monday night (during the celebrations).

“He was in with us in Ballyboden at the time, so I made good friends there too.

“Dublin were so dominant at the time. Michael Darragh (McAuley) was part of the club and he was coming off the back of an All-Ireland.

“It was interesting to integrate myself into it but there were a few others from the country.”

Married with three children, Sligo is home now and after playing with the local club, the boots are away now and he’s helping with some of the underage coaching.

The next few months will be spent in the slow lane after Mayo’s magical tour of emotion, excitement and sheer satisfaction.

While he will keep an eye on Drumcliffe Rosses Point seniors in Sligo, the other is peeking at Four Masters under the guidance of former teammate Barry Dunnion.

It’s exciting times with a group of players who have enjoyed success at club and school level across Ulster.

They won the Donegal league title and look ahead to the start of the Dr Maguire Cup race this weekend.

“I was delighted to see them win that,” he said. “They weren’t far away last year.

“They got to a semi-final and a bit of experience just beat them on the day (after extra-time) against Glenties.

“The boys, they’re young and they’re hungry. I really do think they’re the right man guiding them now with Barry.

“There are a few other boys supporting him too that are strong in the club. It’s a good set-up and I think they should hopefully push on this year.”

On the goalkeeper coaching front, Durcan is excited about what is to come.

While there have been dissenters about the 40-metre kick-out arc, he is not one of them.

A look through his playing days and you can see why. He was a master of the disguised kick-out.

“I think goalkeepers need to get better on medium kick-outs,” he said. “Personally, I love the arc and I think it makes it so competitive.”

In old money, with no arc, teams dropped off and allowed football to transcend into one big fluid game of chess.

The other element is the respect teams have for the long kickers. Durcan refers to Rory Beggan, to Donegal duo Shaun Patton and Gavin Mulreaney.

“They are damaging you long and you can see teams are now starting to think about damaging,” he said.

“Would you have that success from short kick-outs around the D? I don’t think so.”

Then, with teams not totally committed to the full press, there are pockets of space on the fringes of the 40-metre arc the best goalkeepers can exploit.

“I think that’s what makes the game very exciting,” he said.

“Goalkeepers being able to pick out mid-range kick-outs in the next few years, you’ll see guys getting so good.

“They’ll be lifting it up, dropping it over that front line, picking out kick-outs there and that’ll just make the game better again.”

There is one caveat. While he acknowledges the windy days in autumn, Durcan still doesn’t buy into the suggestion by some that the absence of the short kick-out, inside the 40-metre arc, will leave the game a mess.

“It’s 20 metres (of a kick), it’s not 40, it’s not that far,” he added. “Even when you’re standing, I think it’s what, 19 metres, where it’s very close.

“Whereas then, to the left and right of the arc, it’s 24, 25 metres.”

Does Durcan see the value of the two-footed goalkeeper growing? Someone who, with no runup, can clip the ball to a pocket on either wing with no indication to an opposing press.

“You don’t have to be able to hit the ball 30 metres,” he replied.

“It’s just that 20-metre chip, even if it’s with your left-foot if you are right-footed, that is going to separate keepers, but that’s purely confidence.

“We can all hit a ball 20 metres with our left (other) foot but it’s having the balls to do it when you have to.”

Looking back on the All-Ireland final, Kerry came in with the reputation of being potent at building scores from their own kick-out.

Taking Mayo’s aggressive press on opposition defences aside, they often had Shane Murphy scanning Croke Park for safe kicking lanes that didn’t exist. Like Jim and Pat in 2014 with the Dubs, the homework had been done.

“They lost one of their midfielders (Diarmuid O’Connor) essentially before the game,” Durcan added.

“Did that have an effect on us? He was a big target so their percentage went down from their normal average and it could have been a lot to do with coming from that.

“Our guys had focused on really pressing and looking high so it was a good day in that sense.”

It was a product of the weeks of soul searching after their defeat at the hands of Roscommon.

When they pulled their heads together, they spotted chinks that Conor Carroll exploited.

Many tactical questions posed to Mayo after the All-Ireland final flagged up their crossroads.

Go all in on the press or keep staggering around in the dark.

They chose the former and that’s why Durcan saw their defeat to Tyrone as his most satisfying moment of the season.

Yes, they got pinged by Niall Morgan’s delicious two-point winner. Beyond that, Durcan could see the signs.

“For me, that was the day I felt the lads could really, really compete,” said Durcan, who made a pivotal save to deny Martin Penrose on the day his Donegal team set down their own All-Ireland marker.

“In the five weeks in run up, we’d done some amount of work and there was that satisfaction of knowing when they put in that work so that you compete.”

Every successful trek begins somewhere and Paul Durcan has been around more corners than most.His studies took him to Sligo where he met Andy Moran. It was the start of a relationship that helped Durcan become an All-Ireland winner on both sides of the line.