IN the darkened classroom of St Michael’s College, Enniskillen the finishing touches are being put to the Fermanagh ladies’ Ulster JFC final preparations against Derry on Saturday.
It feels like a crying shame the thick black curtains have been drawn as it’s a beautiful sunny evening outside.
But after 30 minutes of video analysis, the three rows of players will decamp to the school’s nearby grass pitch for a training session.
CJ McGourty, roughly six months into his first inter-county managerial role, is holding court at the front of the room.
Video analyst Conor McGovern has cut a series of clips from last week’s drone footage of Fermanagh’s challenge game with Cavan.
It’s clear both McGourty and McGovern have gone over the clips prior to tonight’s presentation.
“Pause there, Conor,” McGourty says, with backroom team members Kane Connor, a former Fermanagh defender, and Sean McCartney of Ardboe sitting at the back of the room.
Connor interjects to make a point about the team’s kick-outs. Short and concise.
“Do not do things literally,” McGourty urges the girls. “You have to play the game in front of you...”
“Get away from the ball... Create space… Stop coming towards the ball...”
With their Ulster final meeting with Derry just four days away, every word uttered by McGourty is positive reinforcement of what the Fermanagh players are doing well in the displayed footage, with some cajoling and encouragement about how moving five yards here or there can make all the difference, when to kick, when to hold, when to get away from the ball, and generally where to be in any given scenario.
It’s not one-way messaging either; the players chip in too, and the mood is quiet but relaxed in the room.
With a blinding low sun peeking over the trees at the back end of the pitch, it’s just too good of an evening to be spent indoors for any longer than is necessary.
Everything is ready to go. The last few cones are laid out as the girls file out onto the pitch.
The first drill starts at a reasonable pace before McGourty demands more speed and intensity.
The Fermanagh girls respond, and the pace duly quickens.
Simple hand-passing drills – “fast, fast, fast, get another ball in” – then a lot of mid-distance kick passing and finally a game of defence versus attack.
The pace of the session is relentless but in a good way. Very few balls are dropped or fumbled. There’s a real slickness and focus about everything this group of girls do.
The awesome quality of Eimear Smyth and Australia-bound Blaithin Bogue stands out like a sore thumb.
Boom. Over the bar. All they need is a half yard. A quarter yard, even. Boom. Another ball sails between the posts.
McGourty is hoarse through shouting instructions and demanding more from the girls.
He calls them together in the centre of the pitch and discusses Saturday’s final in Augher and what they should expect from their Division Four peers Derry.
Fermanagh finished top of Division Four (six wins and one draw) this season but, unlike the format of the other leagues, promotion wasn’t assured - and they were undone by a last-gasp goal from Carlow in a semi-final play-off at the end of March.
Harsh isn’t the word for it. But if tonight’s session is any barometer at all, the Fermanagh ladies have shelved that disappointment.
The sun is about to disappear behind the trees as McGourty and his backroom team call time on tonight’s session.
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Before she heads back to the changing rooms, you ask Eimear Smyth about the session.
“I really enjoyed it,” she says.
“We’re trying to replicate those game-based situations and it’s helping us improve. That session was probably more forwards-based, which I like.
“CJ has been there himself. He’s been in those situations. He gets it in terms of being a player and what we’re looking at on a pitch. He understands it.
“He’s trying to help us problem-solve on the pitch. He can’t be feeding us information from the line all the time.
“As a forward I’ve learned loads off him, different wee tips and tricks.”
Regarded as one of the best forwards in the country, Smyth adds: “There’s no secret about it, we try to play heads-up football and I feel we have the players in Fermanagh to do that.”
And the video analysis? Too long? Too short? Enjoyable? Is it like doing your homework?
“No,” she says.
“I love it because it’s the only way you’re going to get better in terms of reflection. You’re not going to see everything on the pitch and it’s great getting feedback from everybody in the room.”
We cross the footbridge to reach the changing facilities and to where the caterers have already arrived to delve out the chicken curry and rice to the players.
Every squad needs a Geraldine Gleeson – the kind of person you’d miss if she wasn’t around, ironing out kinks you never see and is the oil in this Erne machine.
How did the manager feel their second last collective session before Saturday’s decider went?
“It was enjoyable, personally,” McGourty says.
“Girls are buying in. There’s an Ulster final coming up but that’s what they’re like every night.
“It’s just good to be involved, coaching and trying to make people better. All the management team chip in with different coaching points. Everyone’s involved.
“We care about them; we want them to do their best and they’re trying their best for us.
“These girls get very little exposure, but there are some very talented players among them, and they put in as much work and as much effort as anybody in the game.”
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CJ McGOURTY celebrated his 36th birthday on Wednesday – but it feels as if he’s been around Gaelic Games for longer.
A teenage prodigy with De La Salle and his beloved St Gall’s, McGourty’s house was always coming down with cups, medals and other accolades.
Before he left school he was playing for 10 different teams at one point – Gaelic football, hurling and soccer.
He was brash but he was able to back it up most days on the field and is still regarded as one of the most gifted players to emerge from Antrim.
“I was a winner,” he says. “I didn’t care who I was playing for or who I was playing against.”
“He was some player,” says former Antrim manager Frank Fitzsimons, who recalled the St Gall’s playmaker for county duty in 2016 for one final throw of the dice.
“Some of the things he did in the club championship were unbelievable. To be fair, CJ would have tested you too.
“I remember we gave him the GPS down in Waterford and he didn’t wear it and he came away from the game scoring something like 1-4 and getting us over the line.
“You just knew when it came to the latter stages of a match, he was the man you wanted to get the ball to.”
He was only 17 when the St Gall’s seniors fell to Salthill-Knocknacarra in the 2006 All-Ireland Club final at Croke Park, but the Milltown men returned four years later to lift the Andy Merrigan Cup.
Alongside a couple of provincial successes, he also won 14 county championships with the Falls Road club.
Now living in Ardboe with his partner and soon-to-be-wife Claire and three-year-old daughter Eimear, he played a couple of seasons with the Tyrone hurlers and was instrumental in the Red Hands annexing the Nicky Rackard Cup in 2022.
Apart from the occasional soccer match these days, McGourty regards his playing career firmly in his rear view.
He’s proud of his achievements as a player but admits that a lack of life balance didn’t help his growth away from the game.
“I’m calling a spade a spade here - there was that hateful side of me and hateful side of other athletes because they are in that competitive environment.
“It’s almost like a beast inside you to win. There are things I should have done better in life, absolutely.
“I was so engaged in sport, so engaged in St Gall’s, and you didn’t have any life balance. The time when St Gall’s won an All-Ireland, did I really care about getting a job or getting a degree?
“No, I just cared about St Gall’s winning an All-Ireland and when we won one a few years later, I realised that I hadn’t propped up the other parts of my life.
“You become so engrossed in one goal and other parts of your life aren’t happening at all.”
Even during the glory days at St Gall’s, a championship defeat would have had a devastating effect on him.
Losing to Kilcoo (2012), Glenswilly (2013) and Clontibret (2014) in Ulster were bitter blows but arguably the biggest low in his career was St Gall’s falling to Crossmaglen Rangers when they were defending All-Ireland champions.
“If the team lost or if I played poorly, you were rock bottom on Monday and Tuesday, you would have gone out drinking, then lying in your bed and if your mum was coming in and she’s offering you a cup of tea, you’d be saying: ‘No, get out.’
“That’s what I’m talking about the hateful side of it. There were ways I could have dealt better with defeat.
“If I had to do it again, I would have balanced my life a little bit better than I did.”
McGourty spent 10 years as a coaching development officer with the Ulster Council and has been teaching at St John The Baptist College, Portadown for the past two years – a place where sports participation is one of the key tenets of principal Noella Murray’s stewardship.
In the throes of a fantastic playing career, you never truly believe it will end.
But nothing stays the same forever.
Time rolls on and the birthdays come thick and fast – until you find yourself in the middle of a school pitch in St Michael’s Enniskillen on a sunny spring evening in 2024 instructing and cajoling the Fermanagh senior ladies, trying to impart all the things that you learned from people like Paul Buchanan, his father Sean, Lenny Harbinson, Frank Fitzsimons and Pat Hughes.
Always moving forward - and feeling blessed with grass beneath his feet.
