Joe Cassidy on playing to the maximum

Joe Cassidy won county and provincial titles with Bellaghy and All-Ireland u-21 and Ulster titles with Derry, but his career was cut short at 30 due to injury. Here he tells the story of his career and how true success comes from taking part rather than winning

HERE is a room in Joe Cassidy’s family home that is a shrine to the GAA.
His mother started it in the early 80s when Joe’s brother Damian Cassidy started winning titles with St Patrick’s, Maghera. From the early 80s till the year she died in 2007, she was passionate about recording not only her boys’ playing careers, but also the successes of their club, Bellaghy, their schools; St Mary’s and St Pat’s, Maghera, and the county teams that they played on.
The walls are covered in newspaper clippings that recall important games. And there are stacks of scrapbooks that record the games that the Cassidy boys played in.
“She was a proud mum. And that was her hobby,” said Joe Cassidy.
This room makes it clear to the uninitiated who might find themselves in that room that in the Cassidy household, there was nothing more important than football.
“I grew up in a family where football was everything. From day one that was all I ever knew. All our life was going to football matches. I don’t remember anything else.
“That was the life. When your whole life revolves around it, that’s what it became.”
His family is pure GAA. His mother is from Dunloy. His uncle Francie managed the Cuchullain’s to the All-Ireland Club final in 1995, the same year that Bellaghy reached the football final.
His father’s side were big Bellaghy men.
“Daddy has nine senior medals, he wouldn’t be long telling you. All his brothers won a championship.”
Family holidays were trips to the All-Ireland finals weekend. Spending Friday to Sunday in the capital, attending the All-Ireland sevens and the All-Ireland final.
So with that backdrop, Joe Cassidy followed the path of dedicating himself to GAA, and from an early age he left no space on his walls for anything else.
From the earliest age, the priority was taking part, and playing.
His earliest memory is training with Lawrence Diamond during the winter.
“At that stage no one was doing winter training. Lawrence had 80 boys doing training in Bellaghy hall. Then I went to underage when Chris Brown and Kevin Doherty were the coaches.”
If he wasn’t training, he was going to club matches, but they weren’t there to watch the games.
Joe and his mates would be off on the training pitch, playing a small game among themselves.
“That’s where you learn your skills. When the game is going on you have your own game.
“That’s what I did. I met up with Paul Diamond or Gareth Doherty. You hardly watched the senior game.”
Cassidy sees that as the sign of GAA tradition, and he is aware of it now where he lives and works in north Antrim.
“It’s the same in Loughgiel, everyone goes to the Loughgiel match. All the young people go to the match. The young people will go to the game and hit about and puck about.
“If you go to Loughgiel or Dunloy, at half time you could have 100 people pucking about.”
His club now is Armoy, where he says they are working on tradition.
“That’s what tradition is. There is a match on and you go to the match. You have all the community involved. There is an expectation that you are going to play football and you are going to try your best.
“If the young ones are there, and playing on the sideline that shows they care.
“Down here, you go to a senior match in Armoy there would be no young people at it. Tradition is not what it is. That’s one of the things we are trying to change.”
Cassidy has been a teacher in Cross and Passion now for a number of years. He’s been in north Antrim long enough now to know that other clubs don’t have the tradition that he has experienced.
But they didn’t have the upbringing that he had. His brother Damian was 12 years older, and was winning MacRory Cups with Maghera, when Joe was in primary school. As he grew older he watched Damian win Ulster and All-Ireland titles with Derry.
“Damian is a lot older me. It was just a big brother relationship. We got on well. But we weren’t close. We weren’t really hanging out. Really it was a case of looking up in awe.”
But Joe actually cites the Kerry legends as another inspiration, specifically those who appeared on the television show the Kerry Golden Years.
“My memories of growing up are the Kerry Golden Years. If you put that on I would be able to rhyme it off word for word. Football wasn’t on TV. But I watched it so much. I maybe watched it 40 or 50 times. You would watch it and then go out and practice it.
“Nowadays social media has gone mad. I go to hurling training. There is a boy there who is called TJ, a nickname after TJ Reid. He mimics TJ Reid. He wears the same gear. The same helmet. And hits frees like him.
“The Kerry Golden Years was our reference point. I can’t think of any other reference point.”
As an underage player, Bellaghy were competitive. It was them, the Loup and Ballinderry that carved up the titles between them.
However, interestingly for Cassidy who has enjoyed fantastic success coaching teenagers to Ulster hurling titles with Cross and Passion, he feels that there is too much emphasis placed on underage success.
“I think some people lose the focus. Sometimes too much can be made of young lads.
“We had a group of young boys who came through in Bellaghy who won Feiles, u-14s and u-16s. I was hearing about those stars. They ended up losing the minor final. The team that came through after ended up winning that minor final. The boys that I never heard anything about, they are the ones that win.
“The main objective is to get young lads through to minor level. Sometimes they think they don’t have to work hard.”
What Cassidy learned was that working hard and taking part was more important.
For a team to earn a place on the scrapbook or on the wall of success, they had to work hard. Cassidy certainly did that.
“The key for me was practice. I can’t remember not practising. When we went to underage training, mammy didn’t leave me to training. “Myself, Ciaran McNally and Sean Doherty, we met at this place in Ballynease and we thumbed into Bellaghy. That’s what we wanted to do. We wanted to be there an hour and half early.
“We went to Gareth Doherty’s and got the footballs. Paul Diamond would have come with us, and Mark Diamond. We trained for an hour and a half before training. We trained, and then we played after training.
“We were lucky that we were born into a group of boys who were all into football.”
Luck was important. Luck that his teammates were like-minded and that he was part of strong teams.
In 1994 he won a minor title with Bellaghy. In 1995 he was part of the Derry minors that won Ulster. A Derry team made up of a mix of players from the Loup, Ballinderry and Bellaghy who had been so strong at underage level.
He also went to the Convent, St Mary’s, Magherafelt, and was lucky to be there when Derry legend Henry Downey joined the school.
“Henry Downey became a teacher in Magherafelt when I was third year. We had done well at B Level. You were just in awe of Henry because he had been part of the Lavey teams that had done well at club level.
“I could listen to Henry Downey all day. His impact was unbelievable, in particular his ability to talk and to motivate you. You were getting the best training. It was some experience.
“We had good players at the Convent. Kevin Madden, Gerard Cassidy, Brian Lavery, Cathal Diamond were all there. Lower sixth Johnny McBride and Paul McFlynn.”
Cassidy won a rake of medals at B level including an All-Ireland title. And they moved up to MacRory level in his final year.
“We topped our group. We played St Colman’s in the quarter final. Three weeks before that Cathal Diamond had done his cruciate. He had played corner back for the club seniors that won the championship.
“St Mary’s had played Armagh u-21s in a challenge game. I got hit a shoulder in the chest and it turned out that I had a collapsed lung. We had a small group at that stage at St Mary’s. Cathal was gone, I was gone.”
Cassidy missed Bellaghy’s Ulster Club run and he missed the MacRory cup game against St Colman’s in the quarter-final.
It wouldn’t be the first time that injury ruined his good luck.
The 1995 Ulster Minor title stands out as an important win for Cassidy.
Chris Brown, Cassidy’s clubmate from Bellaghy, was manager.
That year Cassidy learnt a lesson about the importance of good coaching.
“The 1995 season was a great experience. I knew Chris well. He was my underage manager. Chris was way ahead in the coaching world. To the extent of what he was doing people were thinking that he was off the station.
“He was very forward thinking. It was coaching rather than training. He was the first person to coach how to tackle. How to use your feet. He had Paddy Crozier along with him. He had a good group of players. Maghera had been involved in the Hogan. And we had won the All-Ireland B.
“I remember that year we did a lot of training in Clady school where Chris taught. We played a lot of basketball. That worked on our handling. We did a lot of runs.”
On their way to the title they beat Armagh, Tyrone and, finally, Down in the final.
They met Galway in the All-Ireland semi-final.
“Beating Galway was a highlight because it was my first game at Croke Park. There were about 60,000. I got a goal, and it was one of my best goals.
“You got the buzz from the big crowd.
“In the All-Ireland semi-final we were well prepared. We beat Galway by a point. They had Michael Donnellan, Padraic Joyce, Derek Savage. They went on to win more than we did.
“There was a lot of hype with it.”
However, Westmeath were waiting in the final, and they turned over the favourites Derry.
The paper cutting of the Ulster final win did not have an All-Ireland final winning report to accompany it on the Cassidy shrine to GAA.
Cassidy didn’t have time to feel sorry for himself. He was at the start of his journey as a footballer in demand.
From an early age, football was all he knew, and he always wanted to play. However, that determination to turn up and train, and commit was going to be his downfall. Though he didn’t know it at that point.
After minor was over, he went to University of Ulster at Jordanstown where he played Freshers and Sigerson football.
He was also making his mark for the Bellaghy seniors.
“It was crazy times. After minors I went into Jordanstown and Freshers. You were playing with some of the best players in Ulster. John McEntee, Barry Duffy, Sean Marty Lockhart. We got to a Freshers final and lost to UCC.
“I was on Derry u-21s and brought onto the Sigerson panel. When you look back on it all, now there is loads of coordination, but at that time I was training with all those teams and everyone made you train.”
1996 was an important year for Cassidy because he earned a county title.
“I won a championship in 1994 but I was a sub. But in 1996 I hit four from play in the county final against Dungiven. That stood out. The county finals were at the end of August. There was the good weather.
“[Dungiven] had beaten Lavey in the semi-final. Brolly was in his pomp back then and they had big Geoffrey (McGonagle). We were lucky because we had David O’Neill. He was one of the best defenders I had come across. He had the speed and strength to handle Geoffrey.
“In that game there was a high ball that went in and their ’keeper caught it. Gareth Doherty went in and emptied him with a shoulder. Gareth picked up the break, and give it to Eunan (Cassidy) and he put it in the net. Dungiven were aggrieved that they had not got a decision (a foul called). I suppose you would be aggrieved but Gareth felt that it was fair enough to go for that ball. But even if we hadn’t got that goal we were still in control.”
But there was little time to celebrate.
Cassidy remembers going on a trip to Australia with Jordanstown between the county final they won in 1996 and their Ulster Club campaign.
“After we won the championship I went to Australia with Jordanstown. Myself, Barry Cunnigham, John McEntee and Barry Duffy were asked to go.
“Myself and John got our flights changed because we were in county final. That was the start of Crossmaglen’s run. We won the county final, and I stayed in Bellaghy for a couple of hours and then went down the next day to Crossmaglen and John McEntee’s mother took us to Dublin and we flew out to Australia for two weeks. When we returned we were in the Ulster Club.
“In the following years it was as if each game was morphing into the next. Once club championship was over you were facing into Sigerson. That led into u-21s and then I was called into Derry seniors.
“Every manager wanted you. There was no coordination between managers. That’s what life became.”
He says that he made a mistake back then.
“One of my regrets is not looking after myself. I maybe should have stood up for myself. I should have said enough is enough. Other boys did look after themselves and were a bit more selfish and it stood to them in the long run.”
If we were to look for an explanation for his attitude, it is probably due to his formation as a player with Bellaghy, and his drive to make sure that he was always present. He just wanted to keep filling the walls with clippings.
There would be more clippings for the wall in 1997 but they were all overshadowed by one terrible moment.
“If you mention 1997 to me, the first thing that comes into my head will be Sean Brown. The second thing will be the u-21s.”
Sean Brown, who was chairman of Bellaghy club at the time, was abducted and murdered on May 11 1997.
“In 1997, we won the All-Ireland u-21. That was a huge achievement at that time. Derry have only won two, 1968 and that one. We beat a star-studded Meath team.
“We won that on the Sunday and then Mammy woke me on Tuesday morning to tell me that Sean Brown had been murdered.
“The two of them are connected because they happened in that 48 hours.
“It was surreal times. It was hard to get my head around. Sean was such a character in the club. He was a gentleman and I got on well with him. And I got on well with Chris as well, because of the coaching.”
Football couldn’t compete with the emotional loss of that day.
“It had a big impact on everyone in the club. He was chairman, young Sean was treasurer, Damian was on the team and Chris was the manager.
“It was hard to get your head round it. Sean would not have been involved in that side of things in any shape or form (sectarianism).”
Bellaghy mourned Sean, but regrouped the following year.
“Every match we were going out to after that Sean was on your mind.
“Every game after that you were making decisions that were good for Bellaghy.
“We wanted to honour Sean. We did that the next year.
“We won three in a row – 1998, 1999 and 2000. There was so much emotion involved.”
The key to those successful teams of the late 90s was the breadth of talent and experience.
They had experienced players like county stars Damian Cassidy and Danny Quinn as well as veterans like Gerry McPeake. There was the middle group of Karl Diamond, Paddy Downey, Eunan Cassidy, Peter Diamond and Louis McPeake, who had won underage titles.
Then there were the new recruits, Gareth Doherty, David O’Neill, Cathal Diamond, Francis Glackin, Ciaran McNally and Cassidy himself.
“A lot of them had come from good stock, who had relations who had won champions. They came from the tradition, where it was bred into that you were going to win championships. We just cruised through games.
“There was rarely a game that you didn’t feel like you were going to win.
“That’s why, ultimately, in 1997 we found it hard to take losing to Lavey.
“In 1998 we beat Lavey by eight points. That was us saying that the year before shouldn’t have happened.”
Alongside that success with the club, Cassidy was also forging a career with the county senior footballers.
“In 1997 that was my first year with Derry.
“The first league game I was available for Derry was in February 1997. I made my debut against Kildare, Brolly was one corner, Seamus Downey was full-forward and I was in the other corner. That’s what (Brian) Mullins went with. When I was fit I played.
“I had a great year with my first year. I got man of the match when we played Monghan in the championship. We beat Tyrone in the semi-final and I got man of the match again. We lost to Cavan in the final. They got a point that should have been ruled wide. That was a game that got away from us.”
But they would be back in 1998.
Cassidy missed the Ulster semi-final due to suspension but he appeared in the final.
He had hopes of getting a start for the All-Ireland semi-final.
“In the Ulster final no one had really starred. I hadn’t any evidence that I would get dropped for that semi-final.
“It was one of those things. Brian Mullins was doing what he thought was the best decision.
“Enda Gormley had lost form but was actually in training the team.
“Then he hit form with Glen and he made it back onto the team. We played a Dublin select. That was the last competitive game and that was the last chance. I was playing in one corner, Gormley was playing in the other and Brolly wasn’t playing. I scored four points but Gormley had starred as well, but I got dropped. Which was a hard one to take.
“You couldn’t not have played Enda. He was playing that well.
“Ten minutes into the semi-final, Brolly got took off and I went on. But we were well beat. Galway won that All-Ireland with a lot of them boys that we beat in that minor semi-final.
“That was a disappointment, getting dropped in that All-Ireland semi-final.”
It was another match report for the Cassidy wall, and while it was not the result he wanted, it taught him a lesson about dealing with defeat.
He also helped University of Ulster reach the Sigerson final in 1998.
“The Sigerson quarter-final was against Maynooth in Bellaghy.
“The captain of the Galway minors did me and I broke two ribs. It was a race to be fit. I went to an oxygen chamber in Larne. We got by Queen’s in the semi-final and on Sunday in the final I lined out at corner-forward against Tralee.
“Tralee was the strong team. They had Barry O’Shea, who was full-back for Kerry, Padraic Joyce right half-forward, Michael Donnellan, Jimmy McGuinness, Mike Frank Russell.
“O’Shea hit me a bang in the ribs at the start. I got through the game. We led most of the way. But they got two points from Jimmy McGuinness in injury time to lead. Then in the final moments a high ball came in, I won the break and gave the ball to Brian McGuckin. He was clean through and he hit the post. And they blew the final whistle.
“It was a great experience. That was my first experience of Adrian McGuckin.
“People said to me to forget about Sigerson, but I didn’t want to let Adrian down. He always had a word or a line that could pick you up.”
Adrian McGuckin would join the Derry management team in 1999, and that provided a boost for the county.
However, a solo run by Joe Brolly almost ruined that relationship.
“Adrian joined Eamonn Coleman’s management. We lost the National League final to Cork and there was a crisis meeting, which I remember well.
“Brolly landed me and Johnny McBride in it. He made a speech that training wasn’t good. He mentioned my name, Johnnny McBride and Paul McFlynn’s name. But we had never spoken to him about it. He said ‘these boys coming down to Belfast, how are they meant to enjoy that training’.
“So Adrian thought we were complaining about the training, which we weren’t, so that was an awkward one. Brolly just landed us in it.”
Cassidy was dropped for the Cavan quarter-final but played in the Armagh game which Derry lost.
“We played Armagh in a ding-dong game. I got a point to put us a point up, they got an equaliser. Then Henry give a foul away on Paddy McKeever which was never a foul.”
The defeat allowed Cassidy to focus attention on Bellaghy and their bid to try to win another Ulster title.
In 1999 they beat Ballinderry in the county final, and then faced Castleblayney in Ulster.
“We got to an Ulster Club campaign, we nearly blew ourselves out of the water in a preliminary round.
“We had played Castleblayney and they had a fella who nearly retired four of us.
“He was called Emmett Brennan who played left half-back for them, he had white hair and looked about 40, but he was maybe only 29.
“The year before we beat them well. He marked Eunan that year and he hadn’t given him a kick. We took the hand out of Eunan about it, that some old boy had marked him out of it. The next year he marked Eunan again and never gave him a kick. We went to a replay. I marked him, and I got took off. Then in the next replay, he marked Gavin Diamond and Gavin was taken off at half-time. We had three games to get to the first round.”
They beat St Eunan’s in the next round and then went on to play Enniskillen.
“On the way down to the next game they put on Dublin v Galway. Brian got sent off in that game. All the craic on that bus journey was Mullins being a dirty dog. But we got three men sent off against Enniskillen and lost the game. But that was on the back of watching that video. We were well beat that day.”
The hunt for that Ulster final victory to add to the Cassidy shrine to GAA continued.
In 2000, Bellaghy manager Seamus Birt felt they needed to change their approach.
Danny Quinn was coaching the team, but Birt asked him if they could make a change and they drafted in Mickey Moran as the coach.
“He transformed us. We played Glenullin and beat them 3-33 to six points. We played Ballinderry in Celtic Park. That was a game that they maybe deserved to win.”
But they didn’t and Bellaghy won their three in-a-row.
In Ulster Bellaghy got a bye into the semi-final because Cargin were banned.
Disaster struck when Cassidy tore ligaments in his ankle.
“We beat Gowna and then we played Errigal. I didn’t start because I hadn’t been playing.
It was a bad day. There was a strong breeze. But as a sub you knew you were coming in, all you were thinking was would you be playing against the breeze. We selected to play against the wind in the first half. Errigal were four up at half time. We did well against the breeze. David O’Neill did well on Peter Canavan, Peter Diamond got man of the match on Mark Harte. Karl Diamond did a super job on Eoin Gormley. I came on at half time with a gale force breeze and kicked a few scores and looked like a hero.”
They won the game and captured that Ulster title that Cassidy so desperately wanted.
“We had won one in 1994. We had so many near misses.
“That was a big career highlight. It was brilliant.”
However, for Derry, things were not going well and his desire to keep playing for the Oakleaf county was waning.
“My form was starting to dip at that stage. I stepped off the panel in the league.
“Damian was involved. Everything had caught up with me. I wasn’t enjoying my football. I was living in Belfast, and Damian being involved, that added pressure.
“I made a decision after a league game, that I would step away. Eamonn Coleman tried to talk me out of it. I said I wasn’t enjoying it. I said that I wanted to get back to the club.”
He took a break, got his form back and was then asked back onto the panel.
“Then Derry got to the National League final. We drew with Cavan and then I came on in the replay and I tore ligaments.”
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
“Brolly did a story about faith healers recently that reminded me of a story about that time. I got a cast on to my ankle at that time and an uncle landed into me on the Tuesday and he said that he had a boy that would fix me.
“He said the boy would sort out my ankle. He lifted me and took me to this place near Derrylaughan, near the lough.
“This boy cut off the plaster cast, he started praying and rubbing his hands and he asked me when the match was, I said it was on Sunday. He said to me that I would be playing on Saturday evening, I was back the next evening getting the plaster cast back on. I never kicked a ball for about eight weeks.
“The ankle swelled up like a balloon. Don’t talk to me about faith healers.”
However, he was able to get himself fit for what would be an odd 2000 Ulster Championship that began with a game against Antrim.
“I remember that year the first day we played Antrim, Eamonn Coleman was suspended and he couldn’t be on the sideline. But he was doing the team talk and all of a sudden the dressing room door opened and in walks Gerry Adams. Everyone stopped. He welcomed Derry to west Belfast. It was one of those ones where he came up to stop the momentum.”
What happened in that game was surprising as the Saffrons almost turned over the 1998 champions. Were it not for Anthony Tohill’s grab to stop a winner in the dying moments, Coleman would have presided over a frustrating loss.
“I remember the build up to the replay, Eamonn Coleman was at a level I had never experienced before. It was back to the 93 era. He was like a man possessed and we were never going to be embarrassed again.
“He said: ‘Who did Gerry Adams think he was that he could walk into our changing room. Never would that happen again’.
“I remember us going out that changing room. Downey and Tohill were nearly taking the door off the hinges. We blew them out of the water.”
Cassidy played in the final against Armagh, but Derry lost by a point.
“That was my last time with Derry. I was invited back on the panel in 2001. Bellaghy were in the All-Ireland. We got knocked out by Crossmolina, and the Bellaghy boys were asked onto the panel. At that stage I decided to step away.
“I don’t regret that decision. The hunger wasn’t there.
“Bellaghy were going well, I had had success at that level. It was a weight off the shoulders.”
He has no regrets about retiring from county football at that point.
However he says if he were to do things again he would have did more weighs.
“Damian (his brother) tried to push me towards weights. The culture at that time was not to do weights. My opinion was that I am doing okay without them in hindsight I needed them because I wasn’t strong enough.”
His reasoning is that if he had did more weights he might have dealt with the back injury that would, in the end, cut his career short.
“I remember going to this chiropractor. She said to me that I was going to have serious problems with my back. If I had done the work with weights I might not have had those problems.
“That’s my regret. If I had done weights I would have been the only one going. Nowadays everyone is doing weights.”
In 2001, Bellaghy lost the county title to Ballinderry.
“That’s one got away. With three to four minutes to go we had them beat. They had lost it. They were arguing amongst themselves. We felt that we had the game won. They looked as if they were beat.
“We missed a free, and they got a free, the ball went into the square, Declan Bateson got a fist to it and scored the goal. They went on to win the All-Ireland. That was one game that we should have won.”
The fear of Bellaghy was lifted.
The following year, Ballinderry drew Bellaghy in the championship draw.
There was great excitement when that was announced. But Ballinderry won.
Cassidy then decided that he would go to America for the summer.
“It was great. That was the first time that I had to get away. I had a great time out there. We came back and we won an All-Ireland sevens.”
Three years without a county title forced Damian Cassidy to take over the management.
“Damian’s ability is to get the best out of players. Everywhere he went he gets the best out of teams. He did it in Clonoe and in Cargin.
“He did it with us in 2004 and 2005. His influence on that group was so important. In the wrong hands we would have dwindled away.
“At that stage I had five senior medals. He came in and questioned you.
“There were nights when I would have went home and called him all the names of the day.
“But that was part of it. He was trying to challenge you to get back to the next level.
“He said that we had gone soft. He said that to a number of players. We got to the final that year and got beat by Slaughtneil.”
The secret of Damian’s success according to Joe, was that he made winning important again.
“One thing he did was that he worked the reserves hard and they went and won the reserve championship. I remember him celebrating. That was a sign. We didn’t usually celebrate that sort of thing. He then trained us for the league and we won that, and we celebrated that. That was the winning habit.
“The 2005 title was one of my most enjoyable. I didn’t know that I was ever going to win another one. I got top scorer, and Damian was manager. It was very enjoyable.
“I remember all the things about that celebrating with my family afterwards. I remember the journey home. I remember going on the stage at Bellaghy. I remember what was said.”
That might have been the final big success to go on the wall at the Cassidy household, but they did defeat Crossmaglen on their run to the Ulster final.
“We went to Crossmaglen. I remember the bus down. The music. We landed in Cross. They felt that they had that right to beat us. We were going to ram it down their throat. They scored a point in the first half. We ended up winning by two points. For a lot of the older boys it was a satisfying win.”
Unfortunately the clippings for the Ulster final victory did not appear, as Bellaghy lost to St Gall’s in the decider.
In 2006, Cassidy would be beset by back problems.
“Paddy Downey took over. He entered us in the Clogher tournament in January.
“I remember before the game not being in great shape. I remember getting to Ballycastle and I had to ring the wife to get me out of the car. I never hit a ball to April.”
His back problem got worse the following year.
“We had won the Mageean with the school (Cross and Passion, Ballycastle). I remember I was putting on the shoes before heading into the school. I remember, ‘bang’, my back went.
“I wasn’t able to go to bed. I sat in a chair. I got scanned. Went to specialists and I had to get an operation on my back in May 2007.
“I came back in 2008 and the specialist told me I would be back to normal and pain free but I wouldn’t play sport to the same level.”
Cassidy still thought he had good days left in him.
“I went back to training in 2008. but I started training and I had nothing more than half pace. We had a rugby guy in and he was making us run and go up through the gears. But I got to the first gear as and I couldn’t get any faster. I went to the specialist again. And he said to me ‘I told you that you wouldn’t be able to train at the same level. The thing that give you the power in your legs is gone.’”
For a man who was in his late 20s, and just a couple of years before had won county titles and played in Ulster finals, that was hard to take.
“I remember the journey home from the meeting with the consultant, I had tears in my eyes. I was only 29. I felt dead on. But I couldn’t go fast. I had no sprint in me. That was hard to take, I felt I had at least another three or four years decent football in me.”
While the management in Bellaghy suggested that Cassidy could still do a job as an impact sub, and a free-taker, he knew that he would be a liability. Lining out on a team without being able to beat his man would only draw criticism from those who didn’t understand his injury.
So he decided that it was time to hang up the boots for Bellaghy.
His mother had died the year before. His career with Bellaghy was over. There was no more space for clippings.
But when you have lived a life playing football, when your ‘whole life revolved around it’, the game couldn’t simply just end.
Cassidy ended up playing a season of football with Ballycastle in Antrim’s sixth tier.
“I remember playing Mitchell’s and there was a guy wearing jeans and some slip-ons. I asked what the story was. They said they were short numbers and they picked up the guy in the street and guaranteed him some beers afterwards if he played for them.”
From the highs of Ulster Club Senior Championship football to the hilarity of recreational football.
“I also remember going to play in Ballymena, and going to hit a penalty. The goalkeeper told me to hold on and I looked at him and he was over at the umpire getting a drag of a cigarette.
“I said to myself ‘a couple of years ago I was playing in Ulster finals and now this.’
“We near won the Junior Championship that year. It was a very enjoyable year. Every game was a laugh.”
The conclusion, if it needs drawing is this. You might be lucky in GAA. You might be part of a family steeped in GAA success. You might be born into a club that has a strong group of players who win titles, and you might be from a county that wins Ulster minor, u-21 and senior titles.
But the purpose of the GAA is not winning titles. Tradition does not come from winning trophies.
A successful GAA career is one where you take part, whether that is for an Ulster-title winning club, or a division six Antrim club.
The clips on the Cassidy wall told the story of both the victories, and the defeats. They told the story of the tradition of taking part.

By Ronan Scott