ONE of Conor Glass’s wrenches about departing Melbourne just over three years ago was that he was leaving the coffee capital of the world.
A brief indulgence. While out covering the International Rules series in Australia in November 2017, I met up with Conor.
He arrived on Church Street with his team-mate Conor Nash after a morning yoga session to Axil coffee shop and spent the first 15 minutes amplifying the quality of the coffee shops along this stretch, from which the pair lived ten minutes away with a host family.
Axil was in Melbourne 3121, where the lay of the land is defined by postcodes.
Since returning to Maghera, Glass has tried to bring a bit of Melbourne to the town.
Last October, he fulfilled a long-held dream when opened an artisan coffee shop.
He named it Café 3121.
In an interview at the time, he told of how it “hurt” when people would come in an order a fry. You can only bring a horse to water.
The café sits right at the town’s main intersection.
Time it badly and you could sit as long at the lights in Maghera as you would beneath the high-rises of Church Street in Melbourne.
Almost directly opposite his café is McKeefry’s furniture store.
Mickey McKeefry was on the Glen team that won the club’s first major honour, a junior championship title in 1959. He had joined the club committee as a 16-year-old and was involved in the buying of the land for their pitches and ‘Glen club’, which are housed at different sites.
Now in his late 80s, he is one of its three trustees.
Barely 100 yards up the footpath, the McGrath empire. Chris, another trustee, runs the shoe shop. Across the road, Tommie sells menswear. Together, they have the market for groomsmen in south Derry virtually sewn up.
McKeefry once described Chris McGrath as “the public face of the club in the town”.
Conor Glass finds himself in a place where, should he choose, there are day-and-daily reminders of those that dug out the founds.
He was brought up out the road towards Lavey in Mullaghmore, where his neighbour was Danny Tallon. When the pair combined for Tallon’s goal in the 2021 county final, they joked about their telepathic chemistry.
The Beaver connection - the Mulhollands, the Bradleys, the Dohertys, Ryan Dougan – have become central to the Glen story, but you also had Tiarnan Flanagan, Stevie O’Hara and Ciaran McFaul just out of the middle of the town on Hall Street.
But pretty much from the time of the first contact from the AFL, it became clear that Glass was keen to try and forge his own path.
It is about the only thing in his life so far he’s put his mind to that hasn’t worked out.
Three days after Glen beat Scotstown in an epic Ulster final last month, Glass was sitting an accountancy exam.
Alongside running the coffee shop, in which he’s front and centre, he has continued his studies.
In the space of twelve days, Conor Glass launched his business, won his first county title and picked up an Allstar for his performances with Derry that summer.
When he pulled the shutters down on the AFL dream in October 2020, he was returning to a club that had never won a Derry senior championship and a county that hadn’t won Ulster since 1998.
Before he departed, Glass took two weeks to holiday around Australia. He had lived there for four years as a professional athlete. The travelling he did with Hawthorn fitted that bill – travel to games, travel back to Melbourne.
Those two weeks were his chance to see a bit of the country.
He returned to Ireland on October 9, 2020, a Friday.
On the Monday, he went for a kickabout at the pitch, leaving himself with a sore foot as he readjusted to the sweet spot on a round ball.
That Wednesday night he was in Owenbeg for his first training session with Derry and three days later, the National League restarted after its Covid break with not a sinner in Celtic Park to see Conor Glass make his inter-county debut off the bench against Longford.
Glen have since won their first county title, then their second, then their third. On the last two occasions, they’ve added Ulster. On Sunday, they face Kilmacud Crokes again. Nobody needs reminded of what happened twelve months ago but victory for Glen would see them into a second straight All-Ireland final.
Derry have won back-to-back Ulster titles. Glass won his Allstar for the part he played in the 2022 success and was subsequently made captain, lifting the Anglo Celt in Clones after nailing his own penalty in the shootout win over Armagh.
They fell short in All-Ireland semi-finals against Galway and Kerry.
Hectic would be an understatement.
When Glen began their 2023 championship campaign in Derry, he was back on the Greek island of Santorini for the second time in three years.
Those have been just about his only chances to rest.
Glen and Derry have played 71 games (excluding the McKenna Cup and club league, in which Derry players no longer compete) since Conor Glass returned from Australia.
He has played in 68 of those. Of the eight times he’s been taken off, only the Division Two league final and the subsequent facile win over Fermanagh were anything other than a token end-of-game rest.
It was worrisome when he pulled up in Croke Park that afternoon against Dublin, nobody near him. It was feared the hamstring had popped but he was back out thirteen days later, easing himself back in before being withdrawn early in the second half against Fermanagh when the game had long been won.
His 2021 season ended on December 19. He didn’t play in the McKenna Cup the following month but the Glen players were back in training with Derry the first week of January 2022.
The 2022 season ended on January 22, 2023 with the All-Ireland club final defeat by Kilmacud.
Six days later, Derry’s new captain was leading from the front as they overcame Limerick in their league opener. Three weeks short of another full calendar year and the 2023 season is still running into 2024.
Glen have been the ones to build his rest in. He didn’t start last year’s championship opener against Claudy and only came off the bench in their second game.
This year, in a six-game group stage, he was given the first two games off and only came on as a sub in their third outing against Coleraine.
Malachy O’Rourke has played the smart game. He figured Glen would qualify from the group stage no matter how hard they might try not to. Glass needed a rest.
That seems to have stood to him particularly well in this campaign.
He played last year’s All-Ireland semi-final against Moycullen under the weight of a bad flu and still wasn’t himself against Crokes. A lot of Glen’s midfield donkey work had been done throughout that campaign by Emmett Bradley.
Glass has been back at his best this winter. In almost every game, he has come up with big plays. His sideline score in the Ulster final over Scotstown after breaking Rory Beggan’s kickout and coming charging on to the return pass again was the moment it felt inevitable the ribbons tied to the Seamus McFerran Cup would be green and gold again.
It is his make-up to drive Glen and Derry in the direction they’re going.