By Emmett Farrell

FOLLOWING Internment, Galway GAA responded to a request from Derry County Board to play games to raise funds for the Northern Relief Fund and played Derry in the first game at the Brandywell, home ground of Derry City FC on 5th December 1971. The GAA ban on foreign games had been abolished at the GAA Congress in Belfast that Easter. I had been corner forward on the Galway team beaten by Offaly in the all-Ireland final that September.

We travelled on Saturday 4th and because of the intensifying ‘Troubles’, stayed overnight in the Inter- County hotel on the southern bank of the Finn river at Lifford. Since the imposition of internment on the 9th August, the Provisional IRA had grown from a handful of activists in Derry to more than a hundred and clashes with the RUC and British army including gun battles had become a daily occurrence.

That Saturday night, a bomb planted in McGurk’s Bar in Belfast by the UVF killed 15 and this horrific massacre dominated the discussion on the radio and in the car while travelling to the game on Sunday. The atmosphere was tense when we reached the Brandywell ground and before the match started a full scale battle was in progress around the Lone Moor Road and the adjoining Bogside as young people pelted RUC and British soldiers with stones and petrol bombs and the soldiers replied with rubber bullets.

The Derry County Board had hoped for a big attendance as the receipts were to go to the Northern Relief Fund and to help in the re-development of the adjoining GAA ground Celtic Park but many Gaels from the football heartlands of South Derry stayed away due to the events taking place in the city.

It was a 13-a-side game because of the smaller soccer pitch, resulting in a big win for Derry – 4-13 to Galway’s 3-6. After the game while some of us got into conversation with Derry players and officials, relating to the ongoing political developments, we saw that a group of Derry teenagers had turned up with some items to trade with the Southern visitors after the earlier confrontation with British Army. The price for a souvenir rubber bullet was ten shillings.

One of the Derry players in a good position to know the mood of young Catholics in Derry was Tom McGuiness who played centre-field that day. Tommy Mellon, Derry County Board Chairman, joked with McGuiness: ‘The crowd was smaller than I expected, I thought Martin had put out the word ‘No throwing stones today, the brother is playing with Derry’. They told us that the three year struggle for Civil Rights had evolved and after internment, for the youth at least, it was now a question of a United Ireland.

As the drivers in our party were anxious to get started on the long journey back to Galway, a few of us went to purchase ‘souvenirs’ but they had sold out. Noting our disappointment, Tommy Mellon asked us to wait and disappeared. When he returned he said ‘ we asked them to start up the rioting again for a while to get a few more rubber bullets’. They did and within a half hour I had my rubber bullet souvenir as we headed back down the road to Galway, looking forward to the return game fixed for Sunday 30th January 1972 in Tuam Stadium.

Between the two games the political temperature continued to ratchet up. On Saturday 22nd January protestors on an anti internment march on Magilligan strand near Derry had been brutally attacked by the Parachute regiment. Bernie Mullan, Ballerin GAA club remembers: ‘Many GAA men had been interned and all Derry GAA clubs went on the protest at Magilligan. Paddy Cassidy had a letter of protest from the clubs and was handing it to the British army officer in charge when the officer struck Paddy across the face with a wooden baton. That was Colonel Derek Wilford who ordered the Parachute regiment to shoot to kill in Derry a week later’.

The Derry team received a warm welcome in Tuam and on Saturday night visited the Las Vegas Ballroom with many of the Galway team. The Tuam Herald noted …’visits of Northern teams to these parts are few and far between and it was a welcome innovation when the big Derry team made their first visit to Tuam stadium. The warmth of their welcome might be some compensation for their one point defeat in this game in support of the Northern Relief Fund’ (05/02/1972). The game was nothing like the high scoring Brandywell game and finished Galway 0-6 to Derry 0-5. We waited for the stragglers and made our way with the Derry players to the Imperial Hotel in the Square for a post-match meal.

As we walked into the hotel the RTE news came on the TV…. ‘Six people were shot dead at the civil rights march in Derry today …’. Bedlam ensued as the Derry players who had family and friends on the march ran for the phone. The hotel had one phone plus a public coinbox. In the pandemonium, the Derry party decided to leave immediately and did not wait for the meal.

Throughout the evening and night as the number of dead and injured mounted, the British Army propaganda machine went into action claiming shots had been fired at them, that nail bombs were found on the dead and explosive residues on the clothing of injured and dead. Rumours abounded. Jack Lynch was going to deliver on this promise to ‘not stand idly by’, soldiers at Mellows Barracks in Galway who were Derry natives were said to have deserted with their rifles and were hitching to Derry.

Shock and disbelief was widespread and anger grew as the truth of the savagery was revealed. Italian journalist Fulvio Grimaldi called it – accurately – ‘sheer unadulterated murder’. All over the country on Monday and Tuesday, protests took place, workers walking off the job to protest, local authorities meeting to pass motions of condemnation, in Dublin protests at the British embassy gathered strength. The funerals were fixed for Derry on Wednesday and the government declared a day of national mourning. Galway University Republican Club organised a bus to the funerals. Though not then a student I got a seat. The temperature was still below freezing as the bus left Galway before dawn. The bus drove North through a silent country – everything was closed. We got to the border on the St Johnstone road into Derry and had to walk the last few miles.

Derry was packed as 70,000 people turned up for the funerals among them bishops, TDs, Southern government ministers, nationalist politicians and ordinary decent people for all parts of the island. St Marys Church, Creggan had eleven coffins placed side by side. Families, neighbours and friends sympathising, packed the church to overflow, while thousands gathered outside. The burials in the city cemetery during driving rain saw more heart rending scenes of weeping mourners.

We moved through all this in a daze, still shocked at the enormity of the killings. As the funeral crowd dispersed, we went to the site of the killing spree, the various locations already burned into memory, Rossville Flats and Glenfada Park,.. here Jackie Duddy 17 shot dead. Michael Kelly 17, John Young 17, Kevin Mc Illhenny 17, Hugh Gilmour 17 – all shot dead. All thirteen under 41, nine younger than me.

We had agreed to be back at the bus location between 5.30 and six oclock and at around 2pm our group decided to disperse in search of food as no one had had as much as a cup of tea since the night before. Leaving Rossville Street a couple of us bumped into a group of three in animated discussion. I recognised Sean O’Connell who had been full forward on the Derry team which played against Galway in Tuam the previous Sunday and with him was Charlie Gallagher, former Cavan footballer and Derry hurler Liam Hinphey.

They were impressed that we had come to the funerals in solidarity and we discussed the events since Sunday and what might happen next. I asked if they could point us to a café or restaurant whereupon Charlie Gallagher said: ‘Theres nothing open on this side of the Foyle but you are coming home with me and you’ll be fed and watered there and I’ll leave ye back to the bus’. Who could refuse?

Charlie Gallagher had a dental practice in the city and lived in a fine house near Altnagelvin Hospital on the leafy outskirts of the city. His wife Maureen made us very welcome and while we relaxed and were fed and ‘watered’. I felt a bit guilty that the others were at this stage walking back to the bus at the border. Charlie was in great form with stories of Sigerson, Cavan and Ulster football games and adventures and was in no rush and inevitably though ferried to the location by Charlie at the wheel of his Rover car, we missed the bus. ‘No problem‘ said Charlie, we’ll catch up with it – which we did, at Stranorlar.

The UCG bus organiser was furious. Do you realise he asked Charlie Gallagher that you delayed us for nearly two hours while no one on this bus has had a bite to eat since last night?. Charlie responded: ‘Well, ye’ll not leave Ballybofey hungry’. He knocked up Jacksons Hotel where he said ‘we had many a good meal after matches’ and explained that these travellers had come up from Galway to the funerals in Derry and had not eaten all day. Barry Jackson called in his staff and within a short time the whole party was sitting down to steak and chips. Though a sad day, it was also a day when I understood the significance of the GAA in Irish society, North and South.

In the 2020 biography ‘The GAA’s Lost Icon’ by Paul Fitzpatrick, Charlie Gallagher was described as the George Best of the GAA…Cootehill’s boy wonder …a wonderful skillful player … until alcohol destroyed him’. Charlie Gallagher died in a drowning accident in 1989. Sean O’Connell, Derry football legend died in 2003. Liam Hinphey is still with us in his eighties.