WHEN Ben McKinless was 18, he was Derry’s first choice goalkeeper.
The summer of 2017 and they’re lining up a shot-to-nothing in Castlebar that became an object of déjà vu last year.
Mark Lynch’s fisted goal took Mayo to extra-time, the difference being that the visitors couldn’t finish the job that day.
The week running into the game, McKinless realised he’d have to change the screensaver on his phone.
It was a picture of Mayo goalkeeper David Clarke.
“I had a photo of him coming out of the tunnel, it didn’t really hit me until close to the game that he was doing nets for them. I forgot myself a bit.
“I grew up idolising that man, he was a great shot-stopper. Everything about him was class, the way he was able to stop a ball was insane.”
The problem with being 18 is that you don’t know half as much as you think you do.
McKinless doesn’t so much admit it as he offers it up himself.
“It’s very hard, there’s very few 18 or 19-year-olds that will listen to every word you say. Let’s be realistic, we all think we know better at some stage.
“No matter how many times I’d have been told things, there was a stage where I thought I knew better and that’s just how it was. Looking back, it was mad.
“You know what it was too, back then I was a lot more boisterous on the pitch and it transferred into my game. The fact I was so young, I thought I needed to be a wee bit of a bigger person on the pitch because as a goalkeeper, the whole purpose back then was a presence and that wasn’t really the case for me being so young.
“I thought it was something I needed to do to make myself more of a presence. Looking back now, it was definitely detrimental to my game the way I approached games, probably from being so young and playing on the big stage.
“I do look back and think had I approached games then the way I do now, things would be a lot different.”
The peroxide tint in the hair, the pristine white co-ordination of everything from the gloves to the under-armour to the cycling shorts and ankle tape, he looked born to stand out.
A day that saw him make a great save from Cillian O’Connor went awry in the end when Jason Doherty picked off his left-footed kickout and finished Derry’s hopes early in extra-time.
Eight years on, an awful lot has changed, but a lot has stayed the same.
He’s now a secondary maths teacher in St Joseph’s Coalisland. He was a year out of the place when St Mary’s Magherafelt won their first MacRory Cup and a year too young when St Mary’s College won their Sigerson under Paddy Tally.
McKinless, who made his championship debut for Derry U21s at 16 before he’d played minor championship, went off to England to study a PGCE, living with Armagh’s Jarly Óg Burns and Down’s Stevie McConville, travelling home at weekends to train with Derry.
That lasted a few months. Before Covid hit, Rory Gallagher had told him to finish up in England and give him a ring when he came back home.
“I never gave him a shout and I waited for him to give me a shout, but to be honest at that stage I wasn’t at it, I knew that myself.
“People would say ‘do you not wanna play for Derry?’ and I’d be saying it’s out of my hands, I was waiting on Gallagher to give me a call. But it wasn’t out of my hands. It was in my hands, it was my fault.
“You have to make yourself wanted in a way, you have to make yourself appealing. When you’re not fit enough, it’s not good enough. Even when I wasn’t fit, I would have come out the field a lot but it’s a lot tougher when you’re not fit.”
Covid interrupted his time and he came back home to Ballinderry in the spring of 2021, which was when he began to knuckle down.
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FOR whatever has changed, McKinless still backs himself.
The decision-making process around what he does and how he does it has been refined but beneath it all, there’s still an 18-year-old buck mad looking out of him.
In the past, his ventures out of goal could be wild and out-of-sync with what was needed. But he’s grown into the fulcrum of their attacking game, back in the pocket, creating 3v2s, getting up the field himself the odd time.
That will change after Sunday again. The new rules will restrain him, turn him into a different type of goalkeeper again. Maybe even frustrate the part of him that enjoys being outfield.
Croke Park is their final destination this weekend.
Their very first league outing this year was under the April lights in Drumanee, a Baltic evening on which they were beaten by Bellaghy.
The slight figure of Dara McVey filled the goalkeeping jersey, poking his way through the press with impressive accuracy for a young lad.
‘Who’s that out at 12? Is that… Ben McKinless?’
We asked ourselves and did double-takes. It was Ben McKinless.
He played the first four league games of the year in the half-forward line. He’d played some of his underage outfield and this season’s Ulster League there too, getting a good taster of what it was when he lined up against his athletic former Derry team-mate Carlus McWilliams for an hour against Ballinascreen.
It was no gimmick, no plan to get mileage into the legs and then send him back to nets. They all had ambitions for the idea.
“At training we were doing running and any small-sided games, there was never an in-house match played for a while, and as training went on before the Ulster League started, Jarlath [Bell] came over to me and said ‘there could be a place on this team for you outfield if you kept yourself fit and got yourself right’.
“I wasn’t gonna argue with it. I liked the idea of it too. But I said to him if it ever becomes detrimental to the team then I’ll just go back to nets.”
But come game five, he was dropped to the bench. Ballinderry couldn’t break the Castledawson press that night. That was the point at which they all called quits on the experiment.
“I said to Davy and Jarlath then ‘if this is the way it’s gonna be, I’d rather be nets’. They agreed. From then on, that was me back in. We joke about it now that I had my time outfield, I had my fun.
“But playing outfield that wee bit did give me an idea on what was needed from kickouts and defensive structure because you get a different view of it. I definitely felt that.
“As a goalkeeper you’re looking at it and you’re hung out to dry, thinking ‘surely they can make a run’ but when you’re outfield you’re thinking there’s nowhere to go here. It did give me a better view of the game. You feel more comfortable on the ball too.
“You find goalkeepers when they come out the pitch they stutter a bit. If you’re not used to it, you do take that wee second guess and that puts you in a worse position.
“There’s a lot of positions where goalkeepers nearly get turned over because they’ve hesitated, you’re nearly better just beating on.
“I was grateful I did do it because it gave me an idea of where I should be as the goalkeeper, as the pivot.”
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HE’S had to stick to his guns.
At a crucial time of the Derry semi-final win over Banagher, the ball broke down in attack. He ended up out marking Tiarnan Moore in the full-back line, slipping as he went to tackle, missing the block as the ball rolled into an empty net.
In a drawn county final from which they emerged after a replay, he was 40 metres out sprinting back when Faughanvale’s Michael Sweeney beat him with an outrageous long-range finish.
Those two he took on the chin. If he was revisiting those moments, there’s not much different he would do. But the late goal that brought Derrylaughan back into the Ulster semi-final was different.
“You have to look at does the reward outweigh the risk? The Derrylaughan one, I’d take more of the fault on that one, I was too far up.
“Sweeney, I was in the midfield line, he shot from nearly the 45′. My position in that sense was probably correct. But Derrylaughan, I was out of position.
“It takes a bit of maturity in a team to say we’re gonna play this extra man, where is he gonna be, but I know we’ve learned from Derrylaughan, being a wee bit more reserved in a way and not attacking as much because there’s no need for it.
“In games like that, when it is tight, the risk outweighs the reward so you do need to sit back a bit. Against Stacks, I did sit back a wee bit more to protect things and I know against Crossmolina I’ll do the same.”
Goalkeeping is in the blood. It might surprise most to learn that he’s only a far-out relation of team-mates Gareth and Daniel McKinless, whose father Martin is current club chairman and former Ulster-winning manager.
Ben’s father Sean played a bit outfield for Ballinderry in the ‘80s, but his grandfather Thomas James was a stalwart between the posts over almost three decades.
“He was the longest-serving Ballinderry player ever, he played until he was 45. Granda would be 90 if he was still living now. Big Pat [McGuckin] would always tell stories about him and say that I remind him of Granda, the way I kick and everything, which is funny because I imagined the kicking style nowadays would be very different.”
Big Pat and Sean McKinless will be in Dublin on Sunday, neither of them in Croke Park until the final whistle.
They’ve both followed the same nervous ritual for years, unable to sit and watch it, far less able to contemplate missing it. So they’ll mill around concourses and streets, close enough to be near at hand.
The game with Crossmolina, delayed by two weeks amid tragic, heartbreaking circumstances in the Mayo community, has generated wider attention than most intermediate finals because it’s the meeting of the 2001 and 2002 senior All-Ireland winners.
Very few players on either side would have any real recollection of that time.
For Ballinderry, regardless of the outcome, the current team get to make a landgrab on some history.
Because of the redevelopment of headquarters, the 2002 final was played in Thurles.
This will be the first Ballinderry team to play in Croke Park.
“I was three. I don’t even know where I was, I’d need to ask Daddy if I was even at the match. Most of the older men, and I use that term sparingly, Darren [Lawn] and those boys, they remember it.
“But the bulk of our team is 19, 20, 21, 22. Me and [Oisin] Duffin and Sauce [Eoin Devlin] are around 26 or 27. There’s very few of our team would remember that.
“We’ve all watched it on YouTube about 100 times, that’s where my memories of it are from, but very few of us would remember the scenes around the club. But there’s absolutely nobody from those teams playing.
“It’s two fresh teams, two completely different outfits. That’s history, those two games in 2001 and 2002. Everything’s different. It is an All-Ireland final and both clubs want to bring it back to the club and community.
“It is something that is special, getting to play in Croke Park for your club. That makes it special in itself. It is important to strip that back and realise it’s a match that just happens to be in Croke Park.
“I will give those older boys a bit of stick for it though, Kevin McGuckin and Deets, I’ll take the hand out of them about us making it to Croke Park and them not, because they’d do it to you.”
McKinless stayed back at base more against Austin Stacks and was called upon in the traditional sense, using his six-foot, 14-stone frame to mind the house under threat of a few aerial missiles.
Ballinderry were 4/1 outsiders but worth every bit of their victory against the Kerry and Munster champions.
He doesn’t necessarily subscribe to the sense that it was a perfect performance in the semi-final, pointing to the absence of Joe O’Connor and how often Stacks’ shooting uncharacteristically let them down.
He looks at his own errant kickout over the sideline that prevented him achieving a 100 per cent return.
Far from a negative perspective, it just shows a bit of growth.
“We still played well, I just know when you watch it back and it’s all died down, you focus on the positives and negatives, you tend to be critical of your mistakes if you want to be a winner. I find it hard to watch the game and think we were class.”
Even in victory, there’s so much to learn.
Ben McKinless absorbs the lessons now.