Things have come full circle for Kevin McKernan, who captained Abbey CBS to the 2006 Hogan Cup. Shaun Casey writes…

A SLOGAN. A motto. A line to live by. Abbey CBS were willing to do whatever it took to earn glory in 2006. Jody Gormley hammered that into his team.

On the training grounds at the Christian Brothers School, figure-eight runs were a feature of their training sessions. A tough finisher. Gormley wanted his side to be the best school team in Ireland. And he told them so.

A poster was printed out before the MacRory Cup quarter-final and blue-tacked on the wall for the remainder of the campaign. By the end of the 2006 season, Abbey CBS were the best school team in Ireland as Hogan Cup champions.

Kevin McKernan was the captain and can still recall those tough sessions that formed him as a footballer. That mindset of finishing strong was called upon in the MacRory Cup final.

A last-minute goal was the crowning moment. Wing-back Ciarán Coffey busted the net for the Abbey in their 2-4 to 0-9 win over St Louis, Kilkeel, creating the headline of ‘daylight robbery’ in the Belfast Telegraph.

“I remember the game getting away from us,” said McKernan, who is back working in the school as a GAA development officer, a role backed by both Armagh GAA and Down GAA.

“Midway through the second half, Marty (Clarke) hit a great free kick, and it put them one or two up and it was just the doggedness of that team.

“With training standards that Mr Gormley had, we always finished with a run at training. No matter how long training lasted, we’d do that. The old Abbey pitch was quite a unique place to train, it was like a fishbowl.

“We did a figure eight run, and I remember looking down from the school and you could see it marked out on the pitch so we knew we would always be fighting at the end.

“The last five minutes, players stood up that day and just went after that game because we knew, the training that we’d done all year, it was the last five minutes that Mr Gormley always pushed the hardest and to push our bodies to the absolute limit.”

The Abbey got that wee bit of luck too, but you earn your own luck. Sean Gallagher was a first year on Courtney Hill in 1988, the year after the Abbey had won the MacRory Cup. He started working in the school in 2002 as an Irish teacher and has been present on the sidelines ever since.

“We took a shot for a point and a Kilkeel player made a full-length block, and it spilled (for the goal) so it was pure luck, and we did all our scoring early, it was a really low-scoring game,” he recalled.

“We were 1-2 to no score up after 10 minutes and then we only scored two more points until the goal. Marty Clarke’s performance that day was for the ages, against the wind, he was hitting points off the left-hand sideline off his left foot and stuff like that.”

Looking back 20 years on, Gallagher claims the team, “came out of nowhere” but was built from the ground up with a never-say-die attitude.

“It came out of nowhere. The game was different then and that team was built purely on hard work and a recognition that hard work could get them over the line. Before that, people were looking to big players and big names.

“The margin in MacRory matches were all a point either way. That team just gelled and as a group they were dogged. I remember we won the quarter-final (v St Pat’s, Dungannon) after a replay, the semi-final against a fancied St Mary’s, Magherafelt and then Kilkeel in the final.

“Kilkeel had lost the final the year before, but they still had Marty Clarke, Peter Fitzpatrick, Gerard McCartan, so they had a brilliant team. In saying that, our lads were totally devoted to it and totally bought into it.”

There was an obsession there, as McKernan puts it. “There was something quietly building because our quality had developed from second and third year to fifth year – we started to win games and then the team really took off.

“I remember sitting in the old study hall and we would be sketching out our starting 15 and our replacements and we were obsessed. My dad (Brendan) had gone to the Abbey, won All-Irelands with Down and Burren and I wanted to go and do all that.

“That team had a togetherness that still lasts and we meet every year on the 23rd of December for a beer before Christmas. At the time we knew that team was building into something special and there was nobody that trained as hard as we did.”

Before coming together to create magic as coach and captain in 2006, Gallagher and McKernan had prior history.

In October of 2005, McKernan nailed a goal for Burren, against Newry Shamrocks, in a relegation playoff that kept them up. The goalkeeper for Shamrocks? Gallagher.

McKernan was one of the bright lights coming through at the Abbey, a school that combines the neighbouring Armagh and Down clubs as one.

In ’05, the Armagh minors defeated Down in the Ulster final at Croke Park, with Abbey CBS player Kevin Dyas climbing the steps of the Hogan Stand to collect the cup.

The Mourne men had the last laugh however, as they went on to win the All-Ireland.

“There were five Abbey boys on our team. Armagh had won the Ulster and there were four Abbey boys on their team,” McKernan noted.

“After we won the All-Ireland, a very famous kitman Damian Watson was in with the minors and he was buying everyone a pint of Guinness and I said I was okay, that I had a MacRory Cup to win.

“Gerard McCartan, from St Louis, Kilkeel, was standing beside me and after the MacRory final, and he came up to me and reminded me that I said we were going to do it.”

The famed school orchestra, a fixture at Abbey’s MacRory Cup ties, had died down by ’06 but Gallagher still recalls how it got everyone in the school together. Instead of TikTok videos and Instagram reels, they had instruments with the action on the pitch accompanied by music wafting from the terraces.

“For the orchestra, the whole school got involved – the music department basically emptied out every instrument they had. It was before social media so that was the way the school gathered up support.

“There was a teacher in the school, Pat Mooney, who inspired everybody, Pat organised the supporter buses and that created a real buzz that was rekindled in ’06.”

McKernan laughed: “I remember in the build up to our game, chants being designed, created and tested, really badly! I remember the orchestra in the ‘90’ but it didn’t come out for our game, we had the drums.”

After all had been said and done, with the MacRory and Hogan Cups safely secured in the trophy cabinet, Gormley wanted to mark the special achievement.

“Our slogan, and we constantly pushed it, was whatever it takes, whatever it takes,” Gallagher continued, speaking of the psychology the former Tyrone player would have used in the changing room

“Jody was big into concerts, and he got these T-shirts with ‘whatever it takes’ as the logo with the date, venue, opposition and score of each match we played and handed them out after the Hogan.”

“I do believe someone has it,” McKernan smiled “I think it’s in our attic somewhere and I can still see it. It was like a concert T-shirt with the lines of the games, it was crazy.”

As recently as last year, the famed ’06 jerseys were still present in the school, used as training bibs for the aspiring MacRory teams. The ‘06 squad had the 1987 team to look back on, while the current batch has the class of ’06.

McKernan’s men were motivated to end that 19-year wait. Now, the Abbey are aiming to win the competition for the first time in two decades. St Patrick’s Academy, Dungannon stand in their way.

With McKernan and Gallagher both involved, alongside manager Dan Gordon, they’ll do whatever it takes to get across the line. And, who knows, maybe there’ll be new world tour T-shirts printed out by the end of the year.