I woke up and it felt like a dream and people say: ‘Don’t let your dreams be dreams!’
It’s an amazing feeling, it’s an unbelievable feeling.
Niall Grimley
HIS dream came true and Niall Grimley knows how proud his brother Paddy would have been on Sunday.
Paddy and his wife Ciera would have been in the thick of the flags and the bunting, the face-painting and the craic before the All-Ireland final.
They’d have followed Armagh around the country and kicked every ball with Niall.
When Sean Hurson finally blew the final whistle there would have been pure happiness followed by the first of many renditions of ‘The Boys from the County Armagh’.
Jarlath Burns presenting the Sam Maguire, Aidan Forker lifting it in triumph and the wait for Niall to do the same… Then there would be the journey up the road with the car horns blaring, the banquet, back to the Madden club…
Sadly, Paddy and Ciera didn’t get to see the greatest day. They and their friend Ciara McElvanna – wife of Niall’s footballing role model Kevin - lost their lives in a terrible accident in November last year.
There’s not a day goes by that Niall doesn’t remember them.
“They would have loved that yesterday and obviously Kevin’s wife Ciara, she was an incredible woman too,” he says.
“Obviously, I’m lucky we have an amazing family. We have a huge family, the Grimley’s in Madden… There’s a lot of them.
“So there’s enough of us to support each other and obviously, Patrick’s three kids. As I said yesterday, it wasn’t really about the medal or the cup or playing in the big matches for me.
“It was sort of just whatever I can do to put a smile on them kids’ faces because they haven’t had much to smile about.
“And it puts things into perspective. There’s more important things in life than football. I miss him, I miss Patrick and Ciera so much.
“Unfortunately, it’s at my doorstep at the minute and it could be at someone else’s doorstep, and I’m just aware of it now.
“It’s something I probably had to learn to deal with. He left for his 40th birthday and he didn’t come back. He just disappeared as if it was a disappearing act and you never see him again.
“It’s harsh, but you just have to learn to deal with it and yesterday, the first thing I was thinking when the final whistle went was: ‘I wish my brother was here to see that because he would have enjoyed it’.
“He was a huge, huge GAA man. He loved Madden, he loved Armagh but look, he lives on, he’s a legend in our house.
“He’s talked about a lot and you just have to get yourself right. I’m doing it for him, I’m doing it for his kids, I’m doing it for his family,
“I’m doing it for my family, because my family hasn’t had much to smile about and my mum has been going through a lot the past eight and-a-half months.
“She’s the leader of the pack and just to see her smile yesterday after the match makes it all worth it.”
TO put his performance in Sunday’s All-Ireland final into perspective, a couple of years ago Niall Grimley (30) was lying in a hospital ward with tears streaming down his face.
One Friday night he had fallen heavily in a practice game and broken his neck and he thought his football career was over.
At the time his wife Emma was 10 weeks’ pregnant with their daughter Olivia.
Niall had surgery the following Monday but he had lost the feeling in his fingers and thumbs.
“I was thinking to myself: ‘I hope I get the feeling back because I want to be able to hold my child’,” he says.
The feeling returned to his hands but he was still faced with the very real possibility that he might never play football again. He knows how lucky he was that it didn’t come to that.
“When you’re lying the spinal unit in The Royal and there’s maybe 12 rooms and there’s wheelchairs sitting outside nine of them,” he recalls.
“There was no wheelchair sitting outside my room. I don’t know, is that luck? There’s people unfortunately who came out on the wrong side of it. I had support from the coaches, the manager, my teammates, my family, my wife... But yeah, that was a pretty mental period.
“My family sent me a video during last week, it was good luck messages and stuff and there was a video of me lying in a neck brace in the Royal and the neck brace when I went home and it just brought it all back.”
He recovered fully from the broken neck, got back on the field and was training again but two weeks’ before Armagh played Derry in last year’s Ulster final – the county’s first since 2008 – he ruptured his ACL.
More surgery, another painstaking recovery.
“That was a huge blow because I had done all the rehab on my neck for seven or eight months and I had got back training for four or five months,” he explains.
Again he got back on the pitch, returned to training and forced his way into Armagh’s matchday squad but for game after game he didn’t touch leather. After a dozen games without a single minute of action he could have been forgiven for fearing he was yesterday’s man.
“My brother Kieran gently reminds me that I sat on the bench for the first 12 games for Armagh,” he says.
“I didn’t get a minute in the League and I didn’t get a minute in the Ulster Championship. I didn’t play the first All-Ireland Championship game against Westmeath and then Geezer gave me the nod against Derry.”
His superb performance alongside Ben Crealey at Celtic Park that day against the much-vaunted Derry pairing of Conor Glass and Brendan Rogers meant he was a certain-starter for the rest of the campaign. As well as a point against the Oak Leafers he landed vital scores from midfield against Roscommon (and was denied another when not awarded a brilliant mark), Kerry (0-2) and another on Sunday.
“People said to me: ‘You played the five important games’ but I don’t know, every game is important,” he says.
“It was nice to finally get into the team but in our squad the competition for places is incredible and there’s lads there like Shane McPartlan, Ciaran Higgins, Jemar Hall… They’re on the sidelines and them boys sacrifice just as much as me. I’m on the pitch but they put in just as much as me.
“Unfortunately, they didn’t get their time, I did. Ciaran Mackin played all the games and then he got injured and I was in. One man’s loss is another man’s gain so when you get your opportunity you have to take it.
“Doing the extra wee sessions and every little extra detail you can do to get yourself back, to get yourself fit, to get yourself ready.
“I didn’t know if I would ever put on a Madden jersey again, I didn’t know if I would ever put on an Armagh jersey again, so it makes all this a wee bit sweeter.
“I was speaking to my dad this morning and as a sports person you can have 1,000 bad days but that one great day makes up for it. It’s amazing. It has definitely been a bit of a rollercoaster these last two years and it’s unbelievable when you have days like yesterday.”
HE has earned his Celtic Cross like Armagh earned their second Sam Maguire. But for bad luck in penalty shootouts in All-Ireland quarter-finals in 2022 and again last year Sunday might have come earlier?
Some pundits have preferred to criticise the losers rather than give credit to the winners but none can say with any justification that the Orchardmen didn’t earn their second Sam Maguire.
“If you go into the finer details of yesterday’s performance, we probably didn’t perform overly-well in comparison to some of our games,” says Grimley.
“But when you get to the final, it’s probably all about getting over the line, getting the job done. It has been an incredible year. We are a tough team to beat which is a good sign.
“We have that attitude where we are never beaten, we were five down against Galway in Sligo and we were five down against Kerry in the semi-final…
“So we sort of don’t know how to get beat. But it all comes from one man, it comes from ‘Geezer’. He is the man leading the charge. It is incredible and it is unbelievable to finish the year off with the cup and a medal.
“It feels strange here (in the Carrickdale Hotel) that we’re not going for a recovery session, or we’re not going to the gym here on Tuesday. I don’t know what I’ll do with myself now!
“It’s a great way to cap the year off, it has been amazing and it’s all the stuff you dream of.”
