HIS club was a year old when nine-year-old Dermot Keaveney first pulled on the jersey to play at U10 level in 1990.
He’s 35 now and his club Naomh Padraig Uisce Chaoin (Muff) is coming 36.
“I suppose that shows you how young the club is,” says Dermot.
He played his first senior game 17 seasons ago and his next will be Sunday’s All-Ireland junior championship semi-final.
“It’s a thing of dreams,” he says.
It sure is.
Muff had never won a championship until they beat Carn to make the breakthrough last October and they have kept going by beating the Antrim, Armagh, Derry and Great Britain champions to make it to this weekend.
On Sunday the Donegal and Ulster top dogs play Cork and Munster winners Kilmurry at Dublin’s Parnell Park and the winner gets to play Galway’s An Cheathrú Rua (Carraroe) in the final at the big house a couple of miles down the road.
“We’d never won a county title before so even if we’d been put out in the first round of Ulster, we’d still have been happy with what we achieved,” says club captain Dermot.
“To go and win Ulster and now be in an All-Ireland semi-final… It’s something you dream about.”
Muff had lost county finals in 2010 and in 2016 so last year’s decider was third time lucky for the club in soccer hotspot Inishowen. Their coaches have worked hard to establish themselves at underage level and bring through talented young players including Caolan McColgan, an Ulster Championship winner with Donegal last year.
“There’s been a lot of work put in since we reached that first final in 2010,” explained Dermot.
“There’s been a lot of effort at grassroots and the coaches put in a lot of work at underage and boys have come through in the last two years. It has paid off.
“When to get past 30 it takes longer for you to recover from the training and the games but I knew there was something special coming through with the boys. They were winning a lot at underage in Inishowen and in the county so, although I never thought a senior title would ever come, I just held on and kept playing so this year has been fantastic.”
TRAGEDY struck the club in September when Evan Craig passed away aged just 24. Evan had played throughout the previous season before falling ill and his team-mates promised to win a county title in his honour. They kept their promise.
“He’s always in our minds,” said Dermot.
“Every game before we go out and play, we think about him. He had played in our last game in 2023 – the championship semi-final – and then two months later he was diagnosed with stomach cancer.
“He passed away in September a few days before we were due to play our county quarter-final. We played it three days after Evan was buried so it was tough especially for four or five of the lads who were really close friends with him.
“We were going to try and get the game put back a week but the boys said they wanted to play it and, fair play to them, because that was very tough to go out and play football a few days after you bury your best mate.”
Galvanised and determined to honour the memory of their friend and team-mate, Muff beat Carn by 10 points in the county final and the team held his number 13 jersey proudly as Dermot accepted a cup he thought might never come.
After that success the players quickly refocussed on an Ulster championship quarter-final against Antrim champions Naomh Comhgall.
They were without their county star for the second half but scores from Jonathan Toye, Kevin Doherty and Cormac McColgan got them over the line with a bit to spare.
Caolan McColgan and towering Donegal U20 star Kevin Lynch had to sit out the semi-final but Muff proved too tough for Armagh’s Collegeland.
The county duo returned for the decider against Derry’s Craigbane and both hit second half goals as Daniel McCauley’s side held on to win 3-7 to 0-16.
“We’d never had a run in Ulster before so we didn’t really know what we were getting into,” says Dermot.
“We watched videos of games but it’s hard to know what you’re up against until it’s put in front of you. It was tough against the Antrim champions and then we beat the Armagh champions and, all of a sudden, we’re in an Ulster final and you’re thinking: ‘Maybe we are good enough to win this!’
“But we knew Craigbane were a good team. They were intermediate in Ulster a few years ago (2011) and right to the end it was tight but we held on and to win Ulster was amazing – stuff you never dreamt off.”
Their All-Ireland quarter-final (Twinning Final) against Great Britain champions Tara at London’s Ruislip was postponed from December 7 because of a water-logged pitch caused by Storm Dara.
The team and around 150 supporters came home frustrated but they returned last weekend and, after another pitch inspection, the game was played and Muff cut the Londoners to shreds.
Their goals came from Drew McKinney (a member of Maynooth’s Sigerson Cup side), Oisin McIntyre and Ronan Hoy while Caolan McColgan weighed in with 1-3.
They’ve been in ‘bonus territory’ since clinching their county title but each subsequent victory has made this Muff side hungrier for the next challenge and Cork and Munster winners Kilmurry provide it on Sunday.
About 15 miles from Cork City, Kilmurry isn’t far from Béal na Bláth, the site of Michael Collins’s demise in 1922, and the Rebel county representatives will doubtless be plotting an ambush for their Donegal opponents on Sunday.
They won their sixth Cork junior title before embarking on a Munster campaign that saw them record wins against opponents from Clare, Tipperary (a 30-point victory against Cashel) and Kerry’s Firies.
“We’re looking forward to it,” said Dermot.
“An All-Ireland semi-final… You kind of have to stand back at this stage and think about where we actually are because it’s all a bit surreal. We’d have been happy with a county win so to be in this category now is crazy but we want to kick on.
“We don’t know much about this Kilmurry team but from what I’ve seen they’ll be very strong so it’s probably going to be our hardest game yet. They’re a young, fit team and strong – a bit like ourselves.
“They like to attack and they go in numbers so I think it’s going to be a good game of a football. It’s going to be a big challenge but we have to be confident, we have good, talented players up the spine of the team. Hopefully we can get to the other side of it and get a day out in Croke Park.”
IT took a Kerry man to introduce Gaelic Football to the little corner of Donegal.
Like the rest of the Inishowen Peninsula, soccer was king in Muff but that changed when Sean Lynch was posted there to work for the Department of Customs and Excise in the 1980s.
A native of Valentia Island (almost 350 miles away), Sean, whose brother Ger won three All-Ireland medals with the Kingdom and was an Allstar in 1987, met a local girl, got married and settled in the area to rear his family.
Since he came from such strong GAA roots, he decided to get an underage team up-and-running in the area.
“There was no GAA club around here,” explained Muff clubman Michael McMenamin.
“There had been games played sporadically down the years but never a former club.”
Sean decided to enter an U12 team in the Donegal championship and, lo and behold, in their second season the rookies ended up getting to the final of the competition.
The potential was obvious, the interest was there and so Naomh Padraig Uisce Chaoin GAC, Muff was formed in 1989 with Sean the first club chairman and he served in various roles including manager until, sadly, he passed away at the age of 64.
“The club is here as a result of Sean,” added Michael who has been involved since those early days.
“This had always been a soccer area and the reality is that this crop of players now are the only ones whose parents played Gaelic Football. When we started here there wasn’t a child coming to play whose parents had played GAA.
“There have been many, many people involved over the years to get the club going and keep it going and in the early stages we got great support from the local primary school here in Muff. Tommy Byrne, a Naomh Columba man, was the principal.
“We had good support but I always think about how astute the Kerry man was. He was chairman the first year but he stood down at the end of the year. I said to him: ‘What’s wrong? We need you as chairman!’
“He says: ‘No, we need to get the locals involved, otherwise the club won’t survive’. It was good thinking by him, he knew what he was about and his sons are still very much involved in the club now so the link continues.”
