WARRIORS come in many forms. In some footballers you’ll sense an edgy attitude simmering just under the surface. In others, there’s the intensity of an athlete totally consumed by winning, training and living life in a parallel universe.
You don’t see that so much in Barry McCambridge. He comes across as an easy-going, big fella - maybe a little shy even. He prefers to stay out of the limelight so it took a little gentle persuasion to coax the Lurgan native to chew the fat for a while.
The razzmatazz that goes with what Armagh achieved this year – and what he contributed to that success - isn’t really his thing. He’d avoid it if he could, but he’s too nice a guy to do that.
“Och, obviously you don’t mind,” he says.
“But I just like to keep to myself, I like to keep the head down – I’ve always been like that.”
If he’d been brought up 60-odd miles up the road in his dad John’s native Cushendall, he’d have had a hurley clamped to his hand from birth and would have worn the maroon of Ruairi Og and the Saffron of Antrim like his uncles Conor, Ciaran and Michael did.
But when John married Craigavon native Helen they settled in Gaelic Football hotbed Lurgan where the towns four clubs are constantly trying to outdo each other to be top dogs.
During his school days at St Ronan’s College McCambridge just missed out on the 2018 Hogan Cup win. He was in the year above that group, but he did play in two MacRory Cup semi-finals alongside his friend and club and county teammate Conor Turbitt.
“We had loads of good players at underage,” he said.
“Our Clann Eireann team was always very successful. We were all friends growing up from primary school – me and ‘Turbo’ and all the McConvilles (Aidan, Ruairi and Conor), Eoghan Mulholland, Ryan Owens, Rioghan Meehan… There’s probably 10 of us who are playing for the seniors now.
“GAA is massive in Lurgan and there’s a good, competitive buzz between the clubs. Obviously you go to school with boys from all the others clubs and then you end up playing against them and you get good craic slagging each other and seeing how everyone is getting on.
“I find it’s good for the community.”
He followed in the footsteps of his mum by becoming a PE teacher and started his first full-time job at St John the Baptist in Portadown last month. Helen is a former Northern Ireland netball international and Barry’s sisters Clodagh and Meabh are both Armagh regulars too. Clodagh, the Armagh ladies’ captain and full-back, made her 100th start for the Orchard county in the National League final in April when Meabh, like her mum an international netballer, made her debut.
Sport has been a huge influence in the McCambridge household and last season meant so much to them all. It’s hard to believe it might never have happened for Barry.
IF EVER there was an example of biding your time, staying positive and taking your chance when it comes along then he is it.
He started the first game of Armagh’s League season but then lost his place until the last couple of rounds. Despite getting back in he missed the Division Two final and, although he came on as a sub and scored against Fermanagh, he didn’t feature in the remainder of the Ulster Championship which ended with the chagrin of a penalty shootout loss to Donegal.
After that, as Armagh picked up the pieces for the All-Ireland series, there were talks with Kieran McGeeney.
“I chatted to ‘Geezer’ after the Ulster final and I asked him: ‘Where am I at?’ because I wasn’t sure,” Barry explained.
“He said something along the lines of: ‘Look, I can’t really give you a reason why you’re not playing, these boys are going well but just be ready ‘cos you’ll get a chance’.”
Armagh’s next game was a couple of weeks later against Westmeath in the first round of the All-Ireland group stage. Westmeath had come perilously close to beating Armagh in the corresponding fixture the year previously and McGeeney was loathe to tinker with his defence.
The team was named and McCambridge wasn’t in it but then, just before throw-in, he got his big break and it turned out to have a huge impact on the fortunes of his county.
“I walked into the changing room before the game and somebody came over and said: ‘Be ready’ and I said: ‘I am ready’. Then somebody said: ‘Paddy (Burns) might be carrying an injury’. I was like: ‘Right, ok’.
“But I wasn’t sure and then we did the full warm-up and then we got called into the huddle and Anthony Fearon came over to me and said: ‘I think you’re going to be in here’. Then I was told I was starting and the National Anthem basically started after that.”
He was thrown in there but did he put a foot wrong in the game? If he did, nobody noticed and he puts that down to a different attitude. He cut out all the noise in his head, the fretting over what might be, and just played.
“This year, I don’t know what it was or why it was, but I stopped thinking about games as much and I wasn’t really nervous for any game,” he said.
“I don’t know if I was more laid-back or what it was, I just knew what I had to do and so I just zoned out and just… played.
“In the past I wouldn’t have been like that. I remember when I was younger I used to over-think everything, every game. When I had maybe just got onto the Armagh panel I would have been worrying: ‘What if I did this?’ or ‘What if somebody says that?’
“Then I realised that all that literally means nothing. If I do make a mistake I’m still the same person, it doesn’t really matter that much. A switch sort of turned and I thought: ‘It’s not that big of a deal’ and I just went out and played.
“I knew what I needed to do. I chilled myself out and I just thought: ‘That’s enough, I know what I need to know, I’ll just go and play.”
WESTMEATH got a few late points to take the bad look off the scoreboard but Armagh won comfortably. Next up was a much more daunting assignment at Celtic Park against a Derry team that was expected to throw everything at them.
Armagh didn’t just win that game, they hammered their hosts and the emphatic style of their victory and the 3-17 they put on the scoreboard served notice that the team was determined to go the whole hog.
“After the Ulster final we went to training and Conleith Gilligan took a wee session and it was just a bit of craic,” says McCambridge.
“Everybody was low after the Ulster final. We had our targets for the season (an Ulster title was one) and then Geezer brought us in and said: ‘Why not win the big one?’ Boys started thinking: ‘Why not?’ and we beat Westmeath and Derry was a game where we needed to go after them and everything clicked for us that day and that gave us all the belief and confidence we needed for anything.
“Everyone was buzzing after Derry because we actually went out and did everything we had worked on and talked about. There’s loads of times the management has told us to do things – like in the League final this year – and it just hasn’t worked or just doesn’t happen.
“But against Derry everything worked out and everyone was happy about that. It was a great buzz in confidence. Obviously Derry were reigning Ulster champions, two-time All-Ireland semi-finalists… To get one over them after them beating us on penalties the year before was massive for us.”
There was still a lot of work to do. Galway were next in Sligo and McCambridge was given the task of picking up Shane Walsh who, on his day, has the pace, physicality and bag of tricks to make a mug out of any defender.
“Shane can do anything,” says McCambridge.
“He can kick with both feet – inside an outside of the boot – he has pace and he is a bit of a nightmare to mark at times because you don’t know what he’ll do.
“We have a very good defensive structure and if I’m doing my job I know I have cover inside to help me. I had the call where I was able to commit to his shots and if I fully committed and he sold me a dummy I still had someone inside me to make sure he didn’t have an easy shot and we always kept pressure on him.
“Organisation and communication is what it’s all about.
“To be fair, we did not play well at all in that game. It wasn’t until the last 10-15 minutes when ‘Soup’ (Stefan Campbell), Oisin O’Neill, Aidan Nugent, Ross McQuillan… came on and gave us an extra lift. That’s where the impact of the bench really started. We were five down and came back and ended up getting a draw which was enough.
“We had talked about how important winning the group was for us – just to give you an extra week to recover for the quarter-finals and we needed the extra week because a load of the boys had heavy legs and had picked up wee knocks after playing three weeks in-a-row. Galway are big men and quality footballers and any time you play them you’re coming out sore.”
GALWAY took the high road to the All-Ireland final while Armagh took the low road and their first opponent in the knockout stage was Roscommon in a quarter-final at Croke Park.
There was a point between the teams when McCambridge passed to Rory Grugan. He went looking for the return and the Rossies’ defence let him run. When he got the ball back he was in sight of the posts and he did exactly what he needed to - he smashed a brilliant shot in off the underside of the crossbar. It was his first ever goal for Armagh.
“You make those runs probably 100 times in a year and you might never get the ball,” he says.
“The one time you do, you’ve got a chance... ‘Geezer’ and Conleith will always tell you that if you’ve got a chance you should go for it - go with your first instinct.
“I thought it was on and I went for it. I didn’t think too much about it, I just hit it and, aye, it worked out alright!”
The importance of that goal cannot be overstated. Opposition managers knew all about Turbitt, Rian O’Neill, Grugan, Campbell, Oisin Conaty… Nobody mentioned Barry McCambridge coming up the field and scoring.
Suddenly they had a new problem to deal with and McCambridge added a couple of points to joint top score with his mate ‘Turbo’.
Kerry had been alerted, but they didn’t – or couldn’t - heed the warning when they met Armagh in the semi-final a fortnight later.
The Kingdom were in control of the game when McCambridge followed a long ball into their square and when Shane Ryan spilled it he stooped and scooped the ball into the net with a deft flick of his right hand and turned the semi-final completely on its head.
“Ben (Crealey) did really well to compete with Shane Ryan and get the ball to spill and I didn’t even think – I just hit it first time with my hand,” he says.
“When I looked back at it I realised that if I had tried to pick the ball up I would have been wrapped up so it was a good job I just hit it – it was right-place, right-time and in it went.”
HE got another point in the final. Just as importantly he stayed stride-for-stride with Walsh again with help from Aaron McKay. The Galway maestro never stopped trying but one point from play from him was never going to be enough to get his county over that fine line between success and failure.
“It was an amazing season for Armagh,” says McCambridge
“You come out of it and you win an All-Ireland and you don’t realise what it means to people. Everyone asked me how did I feel after it and, yeah, it was unbelievable but you don’t realise until you see the reaction of everyone else.
“People coming up to you and thanking you for the best day ever… That’s when you realise what it actually means and what we, Armagh, actually did.
“Seeing my dad after the game and how happy he was, he said it was the best week of his life. He wouldn’t usually say too much, he’d be quiet enough but if you’d seen him - he was a mess! He couldn’t control himself, I had never seen him like that before.
“As a player and a competitor, I’m happy we won and I did rightly but when I saw him and I realised how much it meant to people. I was like: ‘Jeepers, we’ve done something here’.”
Yes, warriors come in many forms.
