Fermanagh’s Tommy McElroy reflects back on his footballing career

Niall McCoy: What was it like for you growing up in Brookeborough, was your family steeped in the GAA?

Tommy McElroy: I wouldn’t say we were massively involved; my parents wouldn’t have really played it. I, however, lived right beside the pitch so I would have been there every day of the week. I was being dragged out of it a lot of the evenings when I was younger. That would have been where my love of the game would have come from, pure locality.

NMcC: You went on then to St Michael’s, Enniskillen and had success at MacRory level.

TMcE: I would have been on one of the ones we won (2002), not the shared one (2001, shared due to the Foot and Mouth crisis). It would have been James Sherry, Ciaran O’Reilly and players like that. I was fourth or fifth year and I didn’t start that year. Our year would have won the Corn na nÓg and different things coming up. I think the following year in the MacRory we lost in the semi-final.

NMcC: I’m sure St Michael’s was a great learning experience for you?

TMcE: We had a really good crop of fellas. It meant that when you went into the county set-up you knew so many of them already. Fermanagh is such a small county that you probably know everyone to start with anyway. You had James Sherry, Shaun Doc (Doherty), Niall Bogue, Niall Tinney would have been about then too. There were so many who came through and went on to play for the county. Even when we were younger in school there would have Marty McGrath, Barry Owens and boys like that knocking about, so they weren’t strangers to you.

NMcC: It’s amazing how many Fermanagh players have worked with Dom Corrigan in some sort of capacity.

TMcE: Historically a lot of people would have come through St Mick’s, maybe even in sixth or seventh year just for the football! In terms of my development, a lot of it can be put down to the school. Peter McGinnity was another excellent coach and I probably had him more than I had Dom through the years.

NMcC: Were you in the Fermanagh minor squad that made it to the 2003 Ulster final or were you overage?

TMcE: I didn’t play for Fermanagh at minors, I wasn’t selected.

NMcC: It’s amazing when you look at the players in counties who didn’t play minor and went on to be big players at senior level. Was there a part of your game lacking at that time or what was it?

TMcE: In terms of schools stuff, my younger years were better and then I probably had a blip in the middle. Then I probably started developing a bit more again in sixth and seventh year in school. I probably progressed quite quickly from the ages of 18 to 20, 21, but I was still disappointed at the time not to get picked. I had played all the other county stuff before that age but, here, maybe it motivated me to achieve more when I did make the u-21s.

NMcC: You had a couple of good results in your two years at u-21, including beating a Derry side in 2005 that contained so many of their All-Ireland Minor winning squad. Down beat you in the semi-final though, so I’d say that was very disappointing after the Derry win?

TMcE: With the amount of good players on that team we would have fancied ourselves. We had won stuff at Ulster level with the school and we even would have had the likes of Aidan Maguire coming in, someone who hadn’t been at St Michael’s, and that made us even stronger. I recall that Derry match, we were being written off left, right and centre but we were going in quietly confident. Thankfully it turned out the way it did but we definitely would have been disappointed that we didn’t achieve more with that group at u-21 level because of the pick we had.

NMcC: There probably was an Ulster in you then?

TMcE: There wouldn’t have been as much preparation went into it, you just didn’t have the time that you would have had at county senior or even at school level. A fair few of our lads were already playing with the county seniors by that stage too so there were distractions. That’s the nature of football.

NMcC: That was a busy time for you. The next year Brookeborough got to the Fermanagh Intermediate final but lost to Belcoo after a replay. You had a lot of games, and a lot of big games too, at that time.

TMcE: At that age you’re never done with football, you’re never in the house. You enjoyed it too. You train to play competitive matches and that’s where the enjoyment came from, being in those situations where you have to make split-second decisions and dealing with the outcomes. No doubt a lot of football was played and the question of burn-out is still out there, but at the time you really enjoyed it.

NMcC: How did the call-up to the senior team come about then?

TMcE: I don’t think I made the first cut of the squad in November time in 2006. We had a Division Two league final against our friendly neighbours Tempo and we would have won it. I think I had one of my better days and then – it was Charlie Mulgrew managing at the time – I got a call the next day asking did I want to turn up at training on the Tuesday or whatever day it was. I had just come out of the u-21s and I wasn’t really expecting it, to be honest. It was a case of being in the right place at the right time and being seen. Like anybody coming in at that age, it was just about getting in the door and keeping the head down and working to earn your place the following the year.

NMcC: Donegal was your league debut then in 2007 when Fermanagh lost by a point.

TMcE: That was my debut in terms of starting a game but I actually had come on against Dublin. I think we drew that game (Fermanagh actually won by a point) and we were knocking around with the big-hitters at that stage. I would have been around the edges in 2006 but coming into championship I was actually doing very well in friendlies and stuff but then I absolutely wrecked my ankle and I was out for the rest of the year. The following year I was struggling with the ankle still but I played against Donegal, maybe impressed, and that’s when my county career kicked off really.

NMcC: Your championship debut came against Tyrone that summer and they were very lucky to get the win with Gerard Cavlan getting a late winner. What were your memories of that?

TMcE: Back in those days Tyrone and Armagh’s dominance was prevalent. They were always very difficult games. My unenviable task that day was running after Brian Dooher, so you can imagine how much fun that was. It probably went okay for me but Brian Dooher is Brian Dooher at the end of the day. Every year, unless you’ve won the All-Ireland, you’ll look back and be disappointed with something that has happened. Back then we were playing at a very high level in the league, putting it up to the bigger teams, so we felt we could beat these teams in the championship. We feel that we should have ended up with an Ulster title.

NMcC: 2008 was obviously the closest you got to that. You blitzed your way through Division Three and then the biggest surprise in the Ulster opener against Monaghan was that the winning margin was just four points after a great performance.

TMcE: Anyone outside Tyrone and Armagh we didn’t fear. Malachy O’Rourke had come in that year too and had changed a lot of things, and that probably went down very well. He is very astute and he had a good knowledge of Fermanagh football before he came in. It all clicked for us that year. There were a lot of older lads who had been there in ’04 so we hadn’t come out of nowhere. There was a really good backbone of players there already and then the crop from my age had come through as well.

NMcC: You mention not fearing anyone outside Armagh and Tyrone but, and hindsight is a wonderful thing, Armagh were at the end of a cycle when you faced them in the 2008 Ulster final. Going into the game was the thinking that Armagh were on the way down?

TMcE: We fancied it like. We hadn’t struggled with anything that was put up against us all year and we had been in such a rich vein of form. Confidence was definitely high. We had taken Monaghan out and then Derry in the semi-final, two very strong counties, and we did think we could do it. I wouldn’t say we had any fear towards them, it was just that they were one of the teams that was doing a lot in the ‘noughties.’

NMcC: And you could have won it that first day, especially as you destroyed them on the break ball after Martin O’Rourke left the field early on.

TMcE: I don’t know how we didn’t win it. I had mixed emotions after it. We hadn’t been in an Ulster final for 20, 25 years at that stage and it was hard to walk away from that whole occasion feeling disappointed. It was impressive and the occasion was such a good experience but you were waking up the next day feeling different. We knew we had the chances to win it, easily. We could have won it by five or six points. We were crawling all over them for 20 minutes of the second half but we just weren’t scoring. You didn’t have time to dwell on it though because you knew you had to go again in a week’s time and you’d have the exact same chance that you had the week before.

NMcC: Armagh won the replay by six points but, again, wides killed you, especially in the first half.

TMcE: I don’t think we played that well the second day. I don’t remember much of the second half because I was concussed. I don’t know what happened; I think I ran into Brian Mallon. We just didn’t turn up and in hindsight the big build-up and the fact the first day took so much out of us, maybe we were a bit tired. Mentally, maybe more than physically, we were missing a bit. The first day was probably the bigger disappointment.

NMcC: You mention mental fatigue and then six days later you’re playing Kildare at Croke Park in a Qualifier. It was scoreless after 25 minutes and suddenly in a few days the season is over. It must have felt like a real hangover game?

TMcE: The Kildare match, that was probably one of the worst matches I’ve ever been involved in. We could have had 1-5, 1-6 in the first 10 or 15 minutes. Because we had come off an Ulster final where we had been heavily criticised for our shooting and not taking our chances, going out in 10 and 15 minutes and missing a hatful just sent confidence completely out the window. We lost it completely mentally. I think we lost it by a decent bit in the end but the game was over after 20 minutes. Maybe it wasn’t on the scoreboard, but we had lost it mentally by failing to take any of those chances.

NMcC: It might have been a bad ending to the season but you did get an Allstar nomination. Looking back now I’m sure that is something you remember fondly?

TMcE: Looking back it’s nice. It’s something you can say that happened and it’s an acknowledgment for how you played over the season. I’m not going to say I don’t want it but I would swap it, and an actual Allstar, for an Ulster title 100 times over. It was a small consolation. It was only my third season in the panel and as an older person you say to younger ones now that you might never be back here again. I don’t think I thought at that time that I wouldn’t see another Ulster final. That’s the way it turned out unfortunately.

NMcC: You had some more good days under Malachy O’Rourke but you didn’t really have a proper run again before he stepped down in 2010. I’m sure it was great working with him though?

TMcE: He has gone on and proven just how good he is with Monaghan. He would be very astute tactically, as would his backroom team. They put a lot of hours in and brought a high level of professionalism to everything they did. I’m sure if you were talking to him he would say that he made mistakes during his time with us though. The next year after we got to the Ulster final we changed the squad a lot. Should we have done that? In hindsight, maybe not. We didn’t get the results we needed. Strangely that was one of the seasons we trained hardest for though. The outcomes just weren’t great but the amount of pre-season stuff we had done was colossal but I suppose it all comes down to the summer – that’s what everyone remembers. But he was brilliant to work with.

NMcC: I don’t think that I’m taking a big leap by saying that 2011 was probably one of your least enjoyable seasons. John O’Neill came in as manager and you left with three others (Peter Sherry, James Sherry and Niall Bogue) saying you wouldn’t play under him. How do you reflect on that now?

TMcE: Messy would be the word to describe it. I don’t think anyone wanted to see what happened happen. Looking back, the outcome wasn’t for the betterment of the county that year. At the time we didn’t feel the professionalism was there that you’d need at that level. Malachy, the person who was there before, had brought such a high level of professionalism. I think we had high expectations but when you’re in putting in so much time you have those expectations.

NMcC: I’m sure it was a tough time for yourself Tommy, it’s not easy to take a stand in your own county.

TMcE: It was an extremely tough time personally speaking. Even for family members and stuff, I was working in Dublin at the time but some of the stuff you were hearing being said to your family wasn’t nice. You had to tell them to ignore it, tell them it was about me not about them. It happened the way it happened and you have to stand up for your principles at the end of the day. I personally just didn’t think the standard was good enough for the amount of commitment that I was giving, and the other guys were giving too obviously. The following season we got Peter Canavan in as manager, which was an outcome of the reviews and all that happened on the back of the year before. We maybe didn’t get many results with Peter but I really struggle to understand how we didn’t get the results. The amount of professionalism brought by Peter, Kieran Donnelly and the rest of the backroom team into it was excellent. We were really well set up and some of the stuff I learned in Peter’s time I would still use all the time in club football.

NMcC: It sounds like you’d expect Peter to go far in management then?

TMcE: I would have loads of time for that management team. I’d obviously know Kieran personally because I would have played a lock of years with him at my home club (Brookeborough). Some of Peter’s stuff for set-plays and things like that, you were watching and thinking ‘how have you come up with his?’ It wasn’t just those two, the video analysis and the likes was second to none. We were probably ahead of our time back then, you used to get the link on a Monday to stream or download it and then we’d talk about it on a Tuesday night at training. We’d have done video analysis with Malachy but that would have been sitting in a hut somewhere on a Tuesday after a game, but with Peter you would have had your own stuff on top of that. It took it on a bit further. From Peter’s perspective, he had come into a situation that was far from ideal given what had happened the year before. He had a lot of work to do on relationships and divides in the camp, and I think he did a lot of good work to bring us all back together.

NMcC: Pete McGrath was your last manager but I suppose a few niggly injuries probably meant that you didn’t play as much as you would have wanted during that period.

TMcE: I had tendonitis in one of my knees that gave me a right bit of trouble. I missed a good chunk of one of the league campaigns because of it. When you’re playing at that level for so many years you can’t expect to get away scot-free in terms of injuries. It’s part and parcel of the sport but they’re still very frustrating. Rehab means that you’re doing some mad stuff at six in the morning to try and get yourself right. I was probably lucky enough that there weren’t too many championship games I missed out on because of injury, it was more of a winter problem! Missing pre-season was just a coincidence.

NMcC: You then transferred to Dublin for the club football, yes?

TMcE: I went to Parnell’s in Dublin for a year. I hadn’t really lived at home, Brookeborough, since I was 18 when I went to college. I went to college in Belfast, worked in Belfast for three years and then I went to Dublin. I’d been living in Dublin for three years at that time and the travel with county and club was just starting to grind basically. It was impacting outside of my football life. I think the decision was made at that point. I think every year since I was about 22 I was hearing the rumour that I was moving to St Gall’s. It was the on-going joke with a couple of lads, but it came to the point where it wasn’t feasible to keep it going and I had to make the decision to move. I was living in Dublin and I had planned to live in Dublin for the foreseeable future. It’s never an easy decision to make.

NMcC: That would have been the time that Parnell’s had the likes of Andy Mallon and Conor Mortimer and a few boys like that.

TMcE: We didn’t do that well the year I was there and there was lots of stuff going on in the club. I suppose the big thing for me was experiencing the standard of Dublin football, which was ridiculous. There are boys knocking about some of the club teams. You’ve never heard tell of them and you’re just thinking ‘Jesus, where did this lad come from?’ Division One in Dublin, what do you expect having seen what their county team has produced? It was a good learning experience. There were the names you mentioned and then boys like Colm Begley so it was a high standard. I think I got Player of the Year that year which was an achievement in itself against all of those boys. It was different, it was an experience – that’s probably the best way to put it. Playing with any club other than your own is going to be different.

NMcC: You moved onto Bredagh then, how did that come about?

TMcE: My brother was a member and when I was working in Belfast a couple of years beforehand I basically lived beside Cherryvale.

NMcC: They’ve won a few Down Intermediate titles in your time, although I think you missed the 2016 one through injury?

TMcE: In 2016 I did my cruciate before the semi-final so I didn’t play. I missed the semi and the final and then the Ulster game. We were fortunate to get back and win it two years later and thankfully I got to be involved that time.

NMcC: And can we expect to see you with Bredagh now in the next few months?

TMcE: I’m joint-captain this year so I’m still hanging in there as the body holds on. They’re a great club, they have their hand in everything – football, hurling, ladies football, camogie. The amount of youth players about is chaotic. Cherryvale, every night of the week it is covered in maroon. It’s a credit to the club and the coaches and it’s a really good group of lads I’m playing with.

NMcC: I’m sure it’s nice to work under Brendan Mason too, someone who is held in such high regard.

TMcE: ‘Bundy’ is a good guy. He is just one of those real nice fellas that will stop for a chat with anyone. He knows everyone! He has been there, done that and you can see that in his mentality.

n.mccoy@gaeliclife.com