CATHERINE Holland sat at her kitchen table one night, scribbling down words one minute, pausing, and drawing a line through them the next.
Miss Holland is the music teacher in Our Lady’s Tullysaran Primary School. She’s also a perfectionist.
The song ‘From Now On’, featured in the hit movie The Greatest Showman, had been dancing around her head for months.
The end of school year play – ‘The Greatest Show-kids’ - was performed immaculately by the P6s and P7s at the nearby community centre.
For two nights running the children brought the house down.
Miss Holland and Mr Forker couldn’t have been prouder of the production and the children’s stage performance.
School had finished for summer and Armagh were approaching their first All-Ireland final in 22 years.
And yet here Miss Holland was, at her kitchen table, moulding, perfecting and scribbling, trying to put an Armagh spin on the song ‘From Now On’.
What she produced in those three or four hours was spellbindingly brilliant. The school would re-open for a day and the P6 and P7 children were asked to come in and rehearse the song with new lyrics.
Miss Holland’s fingers danced on the piano, as they were meant to, and the children rose to the occasion to produce a beautiful, goose-bumped and unforgettable ode to the Armagh players and team captain Mr Forker, the school’s vice-principal.
‘With 15 men from Maghery, ‘Nab and Crossmaglen, we’re proud of them. Let’s hold our flags up high and cheer – Mr Forker got us here. Up Armagh, Up Armagh, Up Armagh – and we will bring Sam home…’
“We wanted to fit into the music of ‘From Now On’ because the children had just performed The Greatest Showman in April in the community centre,” explains Miss Holland.
“It was just getting the lyrics cracked because I wanted it to be good and for it to be meaningful for Aidan and the team as well.”
In the week leading up to the All-Ireland final against Galway, Aidan Forker’s phone pinged relentlessly, telling him, beseeching him, to go and listen to the schoolchildren’s song that had gone viral on social media.
The Armagh captain resisted the temptation. It was a head space he couldn’t afford to tread before the biggest game of his life.
“It was one of the first things I did after the game,” Forker reveals. “I stuck the earphones in in the changing room in Croke Park and watched it.
“It was very emotional and very thoughtful. It just typifies the people of Tullysaran, the community and thankfully my place in it a wee bit.”
There are exactly 183 children that attend Tullysaran Primary School.
“With faith and belief and hard work – anything is possible.”
When Aidan Forker uttered those immortal words from the steps of Hogan, they surged through the Croke Park crowd like electricity, and indeed among the many thousands watching on TV.
It was a captain’s speech that would rival any that had gone before it.
Forker’s inspirational words reached so many people – but his most important audience that day were probably those 183 children from his school.
“I love trying to make people better and children are sponges,” he says.
“You can shape them and mould them really well and we have brilliant children in our school who have great support and families at home who put education front and centre.
“So, I’m delighted to play a part in trying to make them better in my class, maybe light a wee fire and make them realise that you can do what you set out to do if you work hard.
“And the earlier you learn those lessons, the better. I’m sure the kids are sick of hearing stuff like that from me. Impact is my thing whether it’s in the [Armagh] group, in the classroom, in the school as a whole, in the community, in my own home as a family. That would be a real mission of mine.”
IT’S Thursday morning, September 19, 2024. Cars line one side of Milltown Road where Tullysaran Primary School sits.
There are grey skies overhead, but they don’t look too threatening. The burger stall is set up and the bouncy castles sway in the light breeze.
There’s no schoolwork planned on this day as First Minister Michelle O’Neill arrives to celebrate the arrival of Sam Maguire in the school’s assembly hall.
Forker’s Armagh team-mates Niall Grimley and ‘Soupy’ Campbell are also in attendance for this very special Sam Maguire Assembly
And when the children stand up and sing their song, adult hearts in the small hall soar because for those three minutes their voices sound like the greatest symphony ever created.
It’s magical.
“I think back sitting at the kitchen table writing those lyrics,” says Miss Holland, “and then you’re in the hall and there’s about 200 children singing what you wrote.
“At one point, I stopped singing and just looked around, it was just such a lovely atmosphere, everyone was so happy and when you see all the adults and the players and Michelle O’Neill listening to your song, it’s something I’ll remember.”
The First Minister and players pose with the children for what feels like a thousand photographs before they’re allowed to attack the bouncy castles with gusto.
It’s not the first time the most coveted piece of silverware in Ireland visited this primary school.
Two years ago, two Tullysaran men Colin Trainor and Jason McGahan helped Jack O’Connor’s Kerry team win the All-Ireland and they brought the Sam Maguire through the school gates for the children to see.
In a quiet office later that day, Forker said he always viewed his Armagh career in zero-sum terms.
“I won’t get the fulfilment that I want unless we go on and win something.”
At that stage, Armagh were getting closer but there were no guarantees they’d ever win anything.
Sitting in the lunchtime sunshine at the back of the school and all children having migrated to the bouncy castles, Aidan Forker recalls that day.
“It was a running joke between myself and Tomas [McKee, school principal] that I would just stay behind the camera, take a few photos and do my thing for the school.
“I didn’t want to be too involved in it as it was about the two boys [McGahan and Trainor] and the cup. So that’s what I did but there was a wee seed in me saying wouldn’t it be great to bring the cup to Tullysaran as All-Ireland champions for Armagh.”
Forker adds: “When you’re a player and you’re in it, that’s what you’re chasing and that’s what your self-talk has to be - about winning. Probably it would soften as you got older and you might say: ‘Look, I’d a nice career, I was very proud to wear the Armagh jersey…’”
Life has been more hectic than it has ever been, especially being the totem of Armagh’s class of ‘24.
As captain, Forker has attended as many events and functions as time has allowed since Armagh climbed the mountain on Sunday July 28.
It has been “lovely, intense and overwhelming” for the 32-year-old Maghery clubman.
“I don’t like saying no to people… If there are any charity events, I’d do my best to support them. If there’s anybody I’m close to or know well or has served Armagh, I’ll definitely do that.
“But, yes, there are things you can’t do or doesn’t work out. The reality is I spend a lot of time away from the house training all year and this is my opportunity to be at home with my family and my wife…
“Obviously when you win stuff, you’re in demand, but generally it has been lovely and to be seen in that light when people ask you to come to speak to the children or would you come and take a wee session is very humbling.”
If he’s not watching his son Leo playing soccer on Saturdays – “We have our arguments about not working hard enough at times but sometimes you forget they’re eight-years-old and it’s all about fun” – he’s indulging his latest hobby, Jiu Jitsu at the Kyoujin in Lurgan.
“It’s very humbling getting beat up!”
He’s also reading Kieran Donaghy’s autobiography. It was Donaghy’s wife who “shamed” Forker into reading it.
“I told Kieran, ‘I don’t read GAA books’ – but it’s an absolutely fantastic read. Kieran’s wife was also giving me a hard time for not reading it. She says: ‘It takes you to win an All-Ireland before reading your mate’s book!’
“Hopefully he’ll be able to add another chapter to it about Armagh.”
Becoming an All-Ireland champion has been in the making since Forker was a young teenager.
A keen soccer player, Forker made a big impression at Dungannon Swifts youth academy and showed sufficient potential to earn a week-long trial at Liverpool at 14.
Two years later, Tranmere Rovers expressed an interest in him too – but his attention slowly swung towards Gaelic football around minor grade.
He received a call-up to the Armagh senior team during Paddy O’Rourke’s reign and made his Championship debut against Tyrone in 2012.
It has taken him 13 years and 56 Championship games – a lot of painful defeats among them - to become an All-Ireland champion.
“I think there was a fragility in my mindset when I was younger,” he says.
“I had a couple of great teachers [in St Patrick’s Academy] who instilled the importance of that growth mindset.
“They were great role models but also wise people who would’ve said: ‘You know – suck it up. You just have to work a wee bit harder to get the grades you want. Just because they get it a wee bit quicker than you doesn’t mean to say you can’t get there.’
“And I applied that to my sport. I started into reading some books. Everyone knows how much I admire Kieran McGeeney but he came into my life at a really good time, in 2014. I was just a sponge for all that.
“He was definitely mentoring me at certain times. I came into Armagh at the start of my adult life, really, and that has created who I am today.
“When I was playing soccer at 16, 17 or 18 – did I have a strong work ethic? Yes. Did I have a lot of focus for my game? Yes, but it didn’t always translate onto the pitch.
“That’s what I learned. It’s all about performing on the day. There’s no point in training and doing all the other stuff if you’re not going to be an eight or nine-out-of-10 at the weekend. It’s been a real journey of forging myself with a lot of help.”
Forker was a pillar of consistency throughout Armagh’s nine-game All-Ireland run, hitting eight points from play – none more important than his two epic scores against Kerry in the semi-final and his brilliant conversion in the first half of the All-Ireland final against Galway.
With Jarly Og’s arms outstretched staring into the lower deck of Hogan as Sean Hurson blew his whistle for the final time, Armagh had reached the Holy Grail.
The Armagh captain was immediately a man in demand.
“I remember they were rushing me up the steps because TV times and all that stuff, so I didn’t have much time to process it.
“Every time you closed your eyes two weeks leading up to the match, you were visualising that we might be up those steps.
“During the day, you were getting wee flashes. You can’t help it. I always vowed if I was ever up there, take it in. I even wrote at the top of my speech – ‘Take a breath, look around…’
“I wanted to take some mental snaps of this day and the horizon and look as far as I could look, look at people’s faces, look at the boys’ faces.
“I’ll be eternally grateful to Jarlath [Burns, GAA President] for bringing my family down beside me, which I would never have thought of because you’re so invested in trying to deliver a good speech, as part of the captain’s role.”
He adds: “The speech was long enough too. I could have talked for five minutes on every one of those in the management team and they really only got a line each, and that’s not enough to capture what they’ve done for this group over the years.”
And not forgetting young Leo, hanging on to his father’s midriff from behind, occasionally back-slapping him - truly, deeply, living the moment in the fullest sense.
As Forker delivered the perfect speech, he was completely “oblivious” of his son’s arms wrapped around him.
“I was on the bus where I was sitting beside Rory [Grugan], ‘Soupy’ and Oisin [O’Neill] and they turned and said, ‘Look at that for a photo’ – and it was Leo hugging me from behind.
“It was very poignant. I got a lovely gift from a friend, a drawing of it. It’s very subtle, a wee outline of Leo and me and Ross (3) – my other son – is just down below as well.
“But, do you know what, the most important person in that photo is Eimear [Aidan’s wife]. She’s behind the camera a lot. She allows me to do this – give my life, basically my whole adult life - to trying to achieve something with Armagh, and it’s been all worth it.”
“When you get to know Aidan he’s a very committed person and will do something to the best of his ability - and he prides himself being an excellent teacher,” says Tomas McKee, principal of Tullysaran Primary School.
“He has a good personality. He can be serious, but he can also have a bit of craic with the kids too. His faith is very important to him and I think the children’s faith means a lot more to them because of Aidan being a role model.
“When I watched Aidan lifting Sam, I was delighted for him but it was all the more special because Eimear, Leo and Ross were there with him. Aidan’s family are everything to him.”
As the sun disappears behind the apple tree at the back of the school, Forker already has a good, clear eye on the challenges Armagh face in 2025 and plans to rely on Kieran McGeeney’s “relentless ambition” - the group’s most important companion.
Aidan Forker is a glowing parable for never giving up and being the best version of himself on the biggest of days.
“It’s that determination – you put in the work, you get the results out of it. You just keep going and don’t listen to that wee voice inside you. When things get hard, you can’t give up.”
Never a truer word was spoken. These are the words not of Mr Forker – but Miss Holland.
The kids of Tullysaran Primary School are in good hands...
