IT had just gone half five by the time Rory Brennan finally made it up the steps in Omagh.
The clear grey skies that hung overhead at the start of last year’s county final had long given way to a sheet of black by the time Trillick edged an epic extra-time arm wrestle with defending champions Errigal Ciaran.
This was typical of the all-or-nothing drama we have come to expect in Tyrone, where gradually moving through the gears simply isn’t an option. Here, you put the boot to the throttle and see where things go, a kick of the ball often enough for fate to be decided one way or the other.
That’s why it means so much when the long whistle finally blows.
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Rory Brennan had red circles around his eyes as he clutched Trillick’s prize at Healy Park, prodigal son Jody Gormley could barely move for minutes as well-wishers swarmed from all directions. Others simply shook their heads in stunned silence.
Somewhere among the sea of faces, beaming from ear to ear, was Patsy McCaughey.
October 29, 2023 was the ninth time the St Macartan’s have been crowned senior county champions, the first coming in 1937. Patsy has been there for every one of them.
And, even at 91, his enthusiasm for club and community, and his determination to drag the best from every day, has not dimmed.
That’s the reason Martin McCann, a footballer with neighbours Dromore and Tyrone in his pomp, was determined Patsy’s story should be told.
McCann’s late father, Frank, was a blacksmith who would regularly visit the local grocery shop where Patsy was front of house for 53 years, until 2006.
“I wouldn’t have stopped only for I wasn’t fit to handle the new technology coming in; only for that I could be in it yet…”
Frank McCann also played drums in the Moonlight band who would regularly fill out the Fr Matt hall, with Patsy booking agent extraordinaire. Martin McCann and Patsy McCaughey may be sons of rival parishes, but theirs is a friendship that transcends any kind of parochial angst, and always will.
“Honest to God, I admire that man there, he does everything and anything for parish, let alone the club…
“And Patsy,” says McCann with a playful wink, “there’s no point in them doing something about you, and you lying dead.”
A smile takes over Patsy’s face as he stands in the doorway of the house he has always lived in, pulling at the zip of a jacket that proudly bears the club crest on his left breast.
“I know that Martin,” he chuckles, eyes suddenly twinkling, “and sure that’s why I wore my Trillick coat.
“Because I knew you were coming.”
*****************
TEA poured and cake sliced, Patsy McCaughey takes a last look over a couple of old envelopes upon which notes have been jotted down.
“That’s why I have the statue of St Anthony there,” he says, pointing out towards the hall, “if you ever lose anything, he’ll find it.”
St Anthony hasn’t had much work to do here.
Despite the passage of time, very little has been lost from a memory stacked with stories that span almost a century, so many drawn from the streets that surround him.
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Numbers on a page show that Patsy was club secretary for 30 years, assistant for 20, and is current vice-president. But bare figures don’t even come close to quantifying the impact made.
A pioneer who never married – “why make one girl unhappy when I can make hundreds happy?” - he can still be spotted out on his bike, heading up to see brother-in-law Petey Kelly or friend John Donnelly, while his will be among the first faces to greet people on match days, collecting for the lotto alongside Brendan Donnelly.
And then there’s the dances. Three times a week mostly, and still with a major say in the setting up. He wouldn’t have it any other way.
“The Moonlight band would always have brought out a big crowd, then there were the Melody Aces, the Freshmen from Ballymena... there was a carnival every year, and one night we had ‘Big Tom’.
“He was playing in Mullaghdun carnival, so I went up, there was a nice young priest at the door so I asked could I go in and book ‘Big Tom’ for Trillick carnival.
“I went up the back, John McCormack was the manager at the time and I asked him - ah yes, when? No problem. What’s the money? ‘Fifty-fifty’, he says, ‘straight down the middle’. And we had a great night, the marquee was packed.
“That same priest came here in 1987 and is still here – Canon John McKenna. A mighty man and he did a fierce amount of work from he came here… a great goer altogether.”
When Trillick are playing nowadays, one is seldom seen without the other, Patsy and Canon McKenna side by side.
Because while Mick and Margaret’s boy never pulled on the famous red jersey, he has done just about everything else.
“Daddy was steeped in it.
“He would go to every All-Ireland, never missed one. He’d go away on the bicycle to Bundoran junction, take the train to Dublin on the Saturday evening.
“We were digging potatoes out in the field there one time and one of the men said ‘God, Mick must’ve got sick, he never came out after dinner time’. Then mammy says ‘sure he’s away to the All-Ireland!’ Isn’t that a good’un?
“Mammy had a great interest in it as well, she would be wild upset when we’d lose a match - and we lost plenty of them. Ah, she was a great person altogether…
“That’s how we were at the first championship win. Master [Jim] O’Hagan had come just the year before, and he put that extra bit of go into Trillick. Then when we won it again in 1974, John Donnelly, a teacher who had come from Armagh, put that extra wee bit of life into it, a wee bit of a sting into us, and we beat Carrickmore that year, then won it again the next.
“Trillick’s always been a mighty club,” he says, eyes twinkling once more, “we have a band of willing helpers – some willing to help, some willing to let them.”
And it was through Jim O’Hagan that Patsy, at just 14, was first introduced to the inner workings of the Tyrone GAA machine.
“My father and Master O’Hagan would go to the west Tyrone board meetings in Donnelly’s restaurant in Omagh. Master said to me one day after school you should come with us, and you’ll always be learning something, so I went and I enjoyed them right enough, the craic was mighty.
“After that, when there’d be a football match or anything on, I was there to do the gate, and when the match started I’d do the line, at half-time I’d go in and chat to the referee and give him a drink of water.
“When the match was over I went into the hall, put on the boiler and put on the tea. If there was a dance on in the hall that night, I was there again, collecting the money on the door, making the tea for the band when they’d come.”
Occasionally, though, his good nature and willingness to help out by whatever means necessary threatened to catch him out.
“I mind one time we had a league game in Trillick, Mick McCullagh from Gortin was the referee. When he arrived I said to him ‘Mick would you do the gate there a wee while until I go and put the boiler on for the tea’. ‘No problem Patsy’, he says.
“While he was there, Derrylaughan arrived on a big bus and him on the gate, so at half-time Derrylaughan says ‘that referee’s a Trillick man - sure he was collecting money on the gate when we arrived!’
“Another day we were playing Pomeroy in the league in Trillick, I was doing the line and one of the Pomeroy fellas came out his best to hit me – he must’ve thought I wasn’t doing the line right – so I just stepped to the one side and he went full whack into the hedge because there was no wire up at that time.
“Then from that kick we scored the winning point! Johnny Dooher was referee, he was in the hall afterwards and he says ‘Patsy, if you’re going to win matches, you’d want to get a better team because the linesmen, the umpire and the referee could’ve been all killed there’.”
For those few moments he is right back there, living it all again. Yet, for all the joy football has brought, forming bonds with people away from the field was always Patsy’s forte.
That’s why, for all the laughs and the jokes, there is a dark day in the village’s history that instantly steals the smile from his face.
“There was a fella, Fearghal Kelly, used to work in the shop with me. Myself and him, it was like a circus every day; mighty craic. He works now in Ederney.
“As a matter of fact he’s the son of the late Patsy Kelly, God rest him, that was shot. Aye…”
Patsy Kelly, a local councillor, was abducted on his way home from work at The Corner Bar in 1974. The 35-year-old’s body was found three weeks later in Lough Eyes; he had been shot six times.
No-one has ever been convicted over the killing, the search for justice continuing 50 years on.
“It was wild sad now… aye. And tara that they got nobody for it. The family’s still trying but… ah, it’s tara. He was a lovely fella, great fella. Me and him was great.
“His wife, Teresa, is a great person. In fact she phoned me the other morning and said any morning I couldn’t get to Mass that she would pick me up.
“Great people. Great people…”
*****************
PATSY McCaughey knows he is a lucky man. Not just to have reached the age of 91, but to belong to a community that has so warmly wrapped its arms around him.
On Saturdays, he and Canon McKenna go to Mahon’s for a meal. Niece Mary Garrity, mother of current Trillick players James and Simon, have him round on Sundays, while nephew Dermot and wife Bernie bring dinner through the week.
John Donnelly and wife Kathleen call almost every day; not out of a sense of duty, but because they want to be in his company. Petey Kelly is his companion at Mass every morning and, until he passed away in May, friend Tommy Hunter would phone through any updates from games Patsy was unable to attend.
“Tommy would phone at half-time and tell you what the score was, and then at full-time with the result… I miss him a wild lot, I really do.”
That is the regard in which Patsy is held among his own – with dancing still at the centre of it all, no matter how many years pass.
Back in 2015 alongside partner Bernie McCarney, he won Trillick’s version of Strictly Come Dancing, receiving a standing ovation. And to celebrate his 90th birthday last year, as well as the 440 cards that arrived through the door, a special dance was organised in Mahon’s Hotel in Irvinestown.
“I still dance away, all around different places - Coa, Omagh, Killyclogher, Sixtowns, Donagh, the Knocks, Kinawley, Glenfarne, Knockmoyle… old time dancing, a bit of jiving, old time waltzes, quick steps and things.
“We have great craic, and I never miss one dance when I’m there - I dance them all. In fact I ran a dance in the house here about five years ago, that’s my dance partners there,” he says, pulling down a picture from the worktop, “most of them’s married, but sure that makes no difference.”
On the other wall, pride of place belongs to a poem penned by late friend Stephen Garry, words that never fail to raise a smile.
Patsy McCaughey, a fine shop man
Worked in Trillick all his life
In spite of some romancing
Is still looking for a wife
He chatted up the ladies
From near hand and far away
And (choice) it is the very word
That Patsy’s sure to say
He never drove a motor car
A tractor or flew a plane
But could throw his leg on the bicycle
And land there just the same
In days of yore now to Dromore
On his bicycle he did hop
To meet a fine young lady
But instead she stood him up
His prayers they were not answered
As the rain came pouring down
The face that always wore a smile
Had sternly pulled a frown
Now he headed back for Trillick
Very much against his will
For every step now of the way
Was all against the hill
So the tempest it was raging
And the thunder it did crack
Patsy, he was soaking
The shirt stuck to his back
So ladies take warning
Make a move now while you can
If you want good looks and money
Patsy McCaughey is just your man
With that same wide-eyed innocence, he laughs all over again. Life is good, just as it always has been.
On Saturday afternoon, another championship campaign gets under way when Trillick travel to Galbally to face Eglish knowing no club has successfully defended the O’Neill Cup since Carrickmore in 2005.
As county crowns go, Tyrone remains the tallest of orders. But, like the start of every year, Patsy McCaughey lives in hope.
“It was Brendan Donnelly who says ‘we’ll have to win a 10th for Patsy before he dies’.
“Well, I’d say they’d want to be getting it soon.”
