Glenullin are looking into their toughest test

After his early disappointing years of senior football, Donal O’Kane is part of the Glenullin renaissance that has taken them to Saturday’s All-Ireland semi-final. He sat down with Michael McMullan

CHRISTMAS is two days away and Donal O’Kane finishes throwing a few darts with Cillian Bradley in Glenullin’s players’ room. There is a competitive edge but there is laughter too.

While the rest of the community could fully embrace whatever the festive party season and the club’s 100th year anniversary brought, it was a welcome haven that the Glenullin squad could call home as they prepared for the championship’s white heat. Days like Strokestown on Saturday.

There’s a huge plasma screen on the wall. It’s their video analysis hub when the mood is serious, with a PlayStation on standby for downtime. There’s a ping pong table. It’s their space to gather when they want.

Seated, the night before Christmas Eve, the arm injury that forced O’Kane off in their Ulster final is long gone.

“The pain was temporary, I didn’t care,” he said through a face of absolute satisfaction.

“I thought it was broken, if my arm fell off, I wouldn’t have cared in that moment.”

His 4-21 makes him their third highest championship scorer this season, behind fellow inside forwards Ryan McNicholl and Conrad Mullan.

With Eoin Bradley and Fearghal Close breathing down their necks for a starting spot up front, the competitive edge keeps everyone honest.

O’Kane began his career as a goalkeeper until moving outfield when he turned into his teenage years.

“I don’t know how good of a keeper I would have become if I stuck at it,” he said with another smile.

He tried his hand at soccer with a few games in the heart of defence with Dungiven Celtic and Limavady United. But the real grá has always been for Glenullin.

His father Danny ‘Tam’ played at midfield on the club’s 1985 senior winning team. Mother Betty Anne is the heartbeat of their social media channels.

He was just six when current teammates Eoin Bradley, John and Eunan O’Kane were to the fore of their 2007 senior title winning season.

Gradually, as that squad ebbed away, Glenullin began a slow decline before beginning the climb again. That’s how generational clubs roll.

A hallmark of their recent progress has been how they’ve honed increasing numbers into underage teams playing at grade A.

The Lavey team who won the Ulster Minor title six years ago this week needed all they had to fend Glenullin off at both u-16 and minor level.

It was a Glenullin team anchored by Donal O’Kane and Cillian Bradley. It has been that overall youthful infusion that has blossomed into the core of their resurrection, even if Bradley, one of their ‘late bloomers’ took a sabbatical.

“Cillian is the biggest example,” O’Kane said with another giggle. “He calls it late rookie season.

“He’s been there thereabouts but this is the first year he really honed in on it.

“At the start of the year, I lived with him up in Belfast.”

Bradley said he’d throw his lot in this season. O’Kane listened but filed it away under the ‘we’ll see’ category.

“Early doors, I knew rightly that he was he was buying into it, he was doing the work and he’s been some player for us this year,” he said.

When Glenullin trailed Cuchulainn’s and in need of an Ulster final kick-start, it was Bradley’s angled pass in the back door that took out four defenders on the way to Ryan McNicholl’s game-changing goal.

That’s been Glenullin’s season in nutshell. There have been many days and many moments but someone different has always lifted the shovel when a tight corner needed dug out of

Relief was the emotion as O’Kane watched the last 10 minutes from the bench of their historic win over Cuchulainn’s side creeping back into contention.

“Sometimes you take a step back and think we actually won Ulster from where we were,” he said. “It would be hard to believe, but that final whistle like it was just euphoria like.”

Every Glenullin story since they’ve began winning has been in two parts. Before and after the crossroads. A play-off defeat at the hands of Slaughtmanus that momentarily sent them towards junior football at the heel of 2021.

One of the many Derry CCC league restructuring moves in recent years saved them but everyone in Glenullin had started taking a hard and honest peek into the mirror.

Paddy Bradley came in as manager. Standards were set, met and since carried on under new boss, his cousin, Michael O’Kane this season.

Of the Ulster title and three Derry successes across the last four seasons, they’ve had plenty of scrapes. A late Daniel O’Kane winner against Drumsurn in the 2022 Oakleaf decider. They needed extra-time against Banagher the following year. Games of inches.

Néill McNicholl’s goal capped off a fine comeback as Carrickmacross were taken to extra-time. Two vital Niall O’Kane saves finished the job. Eoin Bradley’s 1-1 that broke the Ulster final.

Below the surface, Conor Rafferty and Diarmuid McNicholl are the moving parts many don’t notice. It hasn’t come by chance. Collectively, Glenullin have dogged it out.

When they won the 2023 championship, the players had T19 written on their wristbands. A simple but immensely meaningful signpost back to the hardest of yards.

Looking down the mountain, from above Glenullin’s Páirc Seán Ó Maolain, is Brockaghboy Wind Farm, the club’s sponsor. T19 is the last of 19 wind turbines.

Picture the scene. Players running to the highest point. Totally emptying themselves. Flushing out the dirty diesel that took them to the brink of junior football.

“That’s where we finished up, at T19,” O’Kane vividly recalls. “Then, we walked back. Two or three of those sessions stick with you because they were probably the hardest ever that we’ve done.”

While they had luck along the way, those raw evenings of effort leave you at the point where more balls bounce for you than against you. O’Kane taps into the Gary Player motto of the harder he worked, the luckier he got.

Glenullin face their toughest assignment this weekend, a first ever All-Ireland game against 2022 Roscommon senior champions Strokestown.

“You’re 60 minutes from Croke Park, so that’s the goal,” O’Kane said of the carrot dangling this weekend.

They’ve maxed out the season. It ends either on Saturday or it stretches for a further seven days.

“We haven’t looked in too much detail; we’ll be doing that in the coming days.” he pointed of their Christmas research.

“We’ve taken a look at their attack and they are a proper outfit. They have a lot of boys that were playing in the senior final they won.

“That’s all you need to hear to know the pedigree you’re against. It’s going to be our hardest game but you’re not getting any gimmies at this stage.

“This is the big test now, definitely our biggest test.”