IN FOCUS: We look back with former Tyrone star Declan McCrossan

DECLAN McCrossan? That’s the guy that had the moustache wasn’t it?

Yes, it was. He’s also the guy that captained Tyrone to the 1997 All-Ireland Minor final, won an All-Ireland U-21 medal and was part of that famous band of brothers that brought the Red Hands to the Promised Land in 2003. He’s that guy too.

That’s not to say that it was solely the best of times. There’s the shoulder that first dislocated when he was 14 that continued to pop out during his career and has left him with a limb “like a 70-year-old,” according to doctors.

There was the disappointment of not featuring in the 2003 All-Ireland semi-final and final having come on for the final moments of the quarter-final trouncing of Fermanagh.

And, of course, there was the tragic loss of two teammates, Paul McGirr and Cormac McAnallen.

When the interview ends and McCrossan heads to the workshop to unwind, those two will undoubtedly be in his thoughts.

A teacher in Derry by day, McCrossan’s evenings are not spent taking in a football match or watching soaps on the TV. Woodturning is his passion now.

A woodshop course at the North West College piqued an interest and just like his football career, it turns out that he possessed quite the skillset to get him along.

“See there when I said that I don’t really think about football anymore, you just asking me questions there is bringing a load of memories back,” he says.

Memories of McCrossan, for many people, will be that line of hair above his lip, making him look more like part of the management team than a player. So does he resent that that’s the image that would spring to mind for some rather than his success on the pitch?

“Not a bit,” McCrossan says. “The moustache and the shirt hanging out, that’s what I always had.

“I headed over to Strawberry Hill in London to do my teacher training. I went over for an interview first and one of the fellas I met was from Offaly. We were sitting chatting about football and this other fella came over and said ‘Jesus you’re the boy that had the jersey always hanging out.’

“It was never a problem. It maybe was a bit different for someone like Jimmy McGuinness with the long hair but it never bothered me.”

He may have looked like a man but the Owen Roe’s player was still a child in 1997. A year when heartbreak would strike both on and off the pitch.

The season concluded with an All-Ireland Minor final defeat to Laois, resulting in a stream of tears everywhere you looked on the Croke Park pitch after a 3-11 to 1-14 defeat.

Twelve months later and now overage, he would watch on as the Red Hands made that final step against the same opposition. Pride was the overriding emotion for the player, but it wasn’t the only one. Jealousy was fighting its corner too.

“Had we not lost in ’97 then we would never have won what we did afterwards,” McCrossan says.

“I remember chatting to Fr Gerard (McAleer) after we won the u-21s. He came to shake my hand and I said to him that the boys from ’97 had seen how well the boys of ’98 were received. That what was drove that side to the u-21s.

“We had come so close to winning it in ’97 and then we were watching from the sidelines and saw all the celebrations and it just made us want it more.

“You learn more from your defeats than you do your victories so we took a lot from 1997.”

Of course 1997 is remembered for different reasons too. Tough memories.

Of the side that started the Ulster campaign, two have now sadly passed away.

Paul McGirr died after a collision in the Ulster Championship win over Armagh, while Cormac McAnallen passed away seven years later.

A large sigh escapes McCrossan’s lips when he starts to talk about it. As minor captain, there seemed to be an extra burden on his shoulders, one perhaps too heavy for a boy of 18 years of age.

The players got through it though, with friendship proving to be the key ingredient when coping with both deaths.

“You didn’t know what you were supposed to do, you were a kid,” McCrossan admits.

“Recently when TG4 did that documentary on Paul, my cousin sent me a text and I kept it because it was such a lovely text. She said that looking back we were only weans. She said she couldn’t get over how young we were.

“We didn’t know how we were meant to react. We didn’t have a huge backroom team. We had a psychologist come in to talk to us one night but I couldn’t tell you a word that was said.

“The car I travelled in had myself, Adrian Ball, Stephen O’Neill. The fella who drove us was called Francie Goulding.

“It was a tightknit family in this car. We laughed and we cried for about five years.

“Every year we had a different soundtrack for the car. One year it was The Sawdoctors, one year it was Status Quo. The craic was flowing from start to finish.

“It was that what pulled everyone through, it was that close bond.

“My young fella is 14 and he is only four years off what I was at that stage. I can’t imagine him going through a life experience like that.”

Many of that ’97 team remained in situ right through to that glorious day in 2003 when Mickey Harte’s side defeated Armagh to take the Sam Maguire to Tyrone for the first time ever.

McCrossan, an Allstar nominee in 2001, was a late substitute in the quarter-final trouncing of Fermanagh before a combination of injury and selection dilemmas meant that he didn’t feature against Kerry or Armagh. Indeed, that game against the Erne county would prove to be his last in the red and white.

Obviously the player would have loved to have been involved in the action in those last two stages, but try telling him that his medal is any less worthy as a result.

“I came on as a late substitute in the quarter-final against Fermanagh and that was the height of it but what can you do?

“I was in London the following year doing a PGCE and I phoned Mickey and I said that I wouldn’t be looking to get back on the panel.

“He said fair enough. We had been on a team holiday and he said he was sorry he didn’t get talking to me properly on that and that he hoped everything was okay.

“I told him that he helped put a medal in my pocket and I wouldn’t have a bad word to say about him.

“If he had told me that I would have to come to training every night of the week and you wouldn’t get a jersey but you’d get a medal, I’d say give me that medal.”

Other medals made their way into McCrossan’s pocket, including National League titles in 2002 and 2003.

The first of those was a 0-16 to 0-7 win over Cavan at Clones in ‘02. History, baby!

It was the county’s first ever Division One title, first ever senior national title, after a previous defeat in 1992 when rivals Derry won by two points.

The Red Hands looked in good shape 28 years ago. Mattie McGleenan’s pointed effort skewed off his right foot and looped into the hands of a young Peter Canavan who made no mistake as he finished low to the net.

Tyrone led by three points with minutes remaining and when Finbarr McConnell saved brilliantly from Declan Bateson, it looked a done deal. But Anthony Tohill’s resulting ‘45’ somehow slipped into the net. Tohill and Dermot Heaney then landed late points to secure a 1-10 to 1-8 win for the Oakleafers.

That coveted first senior national title had evaded the county, but there was to be no late drama 10 years later at St Tiernach’s Park as Canavan collected the Man of the Match award and the county strolled to the silverware.

It should have been a day of celebration for McCrossan, who was thrown into the fray in place of Philip Jordan in the final minutes, but instead it turned to confusion.

“One of them finals I don’t remember because I got concussed. I lost about six months of my memory. I remember nothing of it.

“I remember waking up in Enniskillen Hospital and Art McRory was at the bottom of the bed saying hello.

“I hadn’t a fucking notion what I was doing, who I was, I could remember nothing of the game. I’ve seen a bit of it on DVD.

“I had the ball, two fellas came to tackle me, I hit the ground with my head then one of the fellas fell over me, hit me on the head and I hit the ground again.

“We had a free-kick, I got up and played on but now the six months either in front or behind that game, I remember nothing bar one or two small things.

“I remember standing in the shower just after it and it must have been the water hitting me and I turned around and Mugsy (Owen Mulligan) was on my left-hand side. I said ‘Mugsy, what are we doing here?’

“He thought I was messing about, I was asking him how we got on in the match, who were we playing.

“In Clones when you come out of the shower you turn left and you go back to the main tunnel or you turn right and you go back into the changing rooms.

“I had no towel with me and I dandered and luckily I went back into the changing rooms!

“Mugsy obviously came out and told someone that I wasn’t right and after that I have a fleeting memory of being put in a car and being taken to hospital. Next thing I knew Art was standing at the bottom of the bed. Two league medals, but I can only remember one.

“It’s scary now when you see the concussion problem and how it has become more high profile.”

Another league title followed in 2003, in Mickey Harte’s first year since replacing McRory and Eugene McKenna.

McCrossan again came on in the dying embers of that match at Croke Park, completing a return from a serious hamstring injury, but he knew his days playing with Tyrone were limited. The end was near.

“In 2002 I broke my ankle playing with my club, ripped all the ligaments too so I was coming back late (for the 2003 season).

“Mickey Harte didn’t even ask me to a trial in 2003, he just said to come on ahead.

“By the time everything healed I was back for a league game against Donegal in Coalisland. I have a picture one second before I ripped the hamstring off the bone. I just ran past Jim McGuinness with the ball and he is about to tackle me.

“There was a photograph taken then and I was given it, but that next second I ripped the left hamstring.

“That injury, looking back, finished me playing inter-county football properly.

“I have a huge lump of scar tissue now at the bottom of my hamstring. It was never the same. My hamstring was compromised.

“I lost two inches off it and my speed and my acceleration, I knew I didn’t have it anymore.

“I was reading a bit of Michael Owen’s book there recently and he was saying that after his hamstring injury he was running against bang average players and he wasn’t getting away.

“I just said ‘that’s exactly what happened to me.’ I was going as hard as I could but I wasn’t getting past anyone.

“I used to get past them so at that point I realised I couldn’t play the way I wanted to play and I stopped enjoying it as much.”

That famous 2003 All-Ireland success did keep the enjoyment levels up though, and it concluded with the Celtic Cross medal that takes pride of place in McCrossan’s footballing heart. And so that was the end of a county career that produced the lot. Tragedy, triumph and togetherness. That guy with the moustache? He didn’t do too badly for himself after all, did he?

“I got the very most out of everything I had,” was McCrossan’s fitting conclusion. A man that played a big role in the fortunes of the Red Hand county.

n.mccoy@gaeliclife.com