AIB All-Ireland Club Intermediate Football Championship semi-final: St Patrick’s, Cullyhanna (Armagh) v Allenwood GFC (Kildare) (Saturday, Pairc Tailteann, 1pm)
AIDAN Nugent wasn’t complaining when he said his Christmas was “fairly quiet and different” – as it gave the St Patrick’s Cullyhanna man time to reflect on a memorable year with his club.
With county and provincial honours banked, the south Armagh men move onto the national stage on Saturday to face Leinster’s intermediate champions Allenwood of Kildare – otherwise known as Johnny Doyle country.
As soon as the county men Nugent, Ross McQuillan and Jason Duffy landed back to their club, it’s been all systems go.
Next game. Next session. Next game.
Every bead of sweat shed over the autumn and winter months has been dedicated to restoring Cullyhanna to its rightful place: senior football.
After an injury-ravaged season with Armagh, Nugent is probably squeezing a bit more out of this club campaign that has been punctuated by a series of incredible highs, albeit at intermediate level.
From their nerve-shredding Ulster final win over Ballyhaise of Cavan on December 10 to now, Nugent has enjoyed the break.
“It’s probably the first time over the last couple of months you’re able to sit back and realise what’s dangling in front of us, whereas before it was game after game, next session, next session,” Nugent says, who runs R8 Train and Recover gym/café hub in Armagh city.
“But we’ve had a few weeks between the Ulster final and this All-Ireland semi-final, so we’ve no problem making sacrifices over Christmas.”
Undoubtedly, Nugent, McQuillan and Duffy are worth their weight in gold to Cullyhanna this season – but they’re not naïve enough to think that everything will click into place once they returned from county duty.
Some hard-bitten experiences have taught Cullyhanna otherwise as they suffered a couple of gut-wrenching relegations that sees them perched on Gaelic football’s middle rung.
Had minds not been focused about the dire situation the club found itself in – they had to fold their reserve team in recent years due to lack of numbers – Cullyhanna could have drifted further away from where they once were.
“This season has been different from the get-go because we got a few boys back from America and Australia - but the lads that had been there over the last six or seven years were sick of how things were going.
“So, we got together last November time for pre-season and got the ball rolling, whereas before there were boys maybe not buying in. But this year we had a full deck to pick from and we knew we’d a serious chance of winning something if the boys knuckled down.
“For that, I think big credit must go to the management because we got relegated twice in three years – it was no fault of theirs – we just weren’t putting the work in as players. They could easily have stepped away, but they stayed on for the club. If they had stepped away, we could have gone into the unknown and if someone new comes in, you don’t know who goes or who stays.
“It could have been a four or five-year project rather than one-year [to get back to senior level].”
From their county final hammering of St Paul’s to Nugent firing over a last-gasp winner against a fancied Pomeroy side in the provincial quarter-finals, to the freedom with which they played in seeing off Liatroim in the semis to Pearse Casey’s winner in Clones over Ballyhaise, all these moments are pristinely preserved in the collective memory bank of St Patrick’s.
For Nugent, though, the genesis of their success was the county championship group stages.
“I thought they helped us a lot because it’s all well and good coming back in from the county and thinking everything’s just going to click into place - but you need that five or six weeks to bed in and see what way the management want to play and fitting into that.
“It’s up to us to fit in; we’re not coming in to stand out and run the show. If you did come in with that attitude you wouldn’t be long upsetting the rhythm of the team.
“We won some of those group games by 15 or 20 points. We were winning well but we were playing well and pushing right to the 60 minutes. That gave us confidence going forward.”
Allenwood, managed by Noel Mooney, are something of a mirror image of the south Armagh men – a club that is using the intermediate rung to bounce back to the senior grade.
The ageless Johnny Doyle remains a key figure for Allenwood and current Kildare ace Darragh Malone is another obvious one to watch from a Cullyhanna perspective.
But, like Cullyhanna, Allenwood very much rely on the collective which has seen them scale provincial heights this season.
What Cullyhanna have also shown, particularly in games against Pomeroy and Ballyhaise, is their adeptness at always being in the game through difficult moments.
“There are times in a game you might think that things aren’t going our way but they are split second thoughts. We maybe weren’t playing our best against Ballyhaise but I don’t think we were outplayed throughout the game.
“It’s important to stay in the game when things aren’t going your way, not panic, and when you go into the final 10 minutes of a game you don’t do anything rash, you just keep chipping away and hopefully it gets us over the line. It worked in the Ulster quarter-final and the semi-final and that gives us confidence.”
