December 27, 2023 @ 8am
‘Crippled drunk in my bed with little recollection of the night just passed. Ready to do it all over again with the people I care about so much not able to tell me any different.’
July 31, 2024 @ 8am
Text from Kieran McGeeney: ‘How have you been getting on?’
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SAT on one of the boardwalks that punctuate Long Beach every couple of hundred yards, Justin Kieran’s mind goes back to the summer of 2022.
He’d been perched on those very same steps with Conor Turbitt, Ben Crealey and Barry McCambridge, soaking in the sun, drinking a carry-out, hitting town for the night in the city that never sleeps.
It’s Saturday 6 July, five weeks ago. Kieran takes his phone out, sets it up and records a video post for his social media followers.
“Just got a feed with the boys there and they were going back to the house to drink a carry-out. I knew this spot was down here, just five minutes from this spot. We were here two years ago drinking a carry-out on these exact steps before going out. It’s a much different experience this time, not drinking. Which is probably the proudest things in my life, to be able to come to one of the maddest cities in the world and not drink,” he tells them.
Then his phone dies. The video resumes at 1am, home from his night out, sober.
@justinkieran21 6 months sober in Long Beach, NYC. If this video helps 1 person then it is worth it all 🙏
♬ original sound - Justin Kieran
When he went out last Boxing Night with his friends, he’d been off drink eight weeks.
Promised himself he wouldn’t touch it. Temptation took hold. People in his ear.
‘Ach I didn’t think you were that bad Justy, take a drink, be grand’.
Wakes up at just before 8 the next morning, the eyes dead in his head, the darkness of the night before refusing to lift for a new day.
He’d fallen off the wagon.
Kieran McGeeney was about the first person he told of this problem he had, the inability to leave a night out be. That Friday night turned into all-day Saturday and Sunday as routinely as on the calendar itself.
“Whenever I got started, I found it hard to stop. I wasn’t drinking every single weekend but towards the end, when I did, it made up for all the weekends that I wasn’t.”
As Aidan Forker carries Sam Maguire into the Athletic Grounds’ heaving party, Kieran is there, half a dozen back in the line.
He stands out in his training top and cargo shorts while the others test the seams of their smart grey skinny chinos and uniformed stone t-shirts.
But he belongs there. If he was any way unsure about whether he did, the squad made him feel that this was as much his as it is theirs.
Justin Kieran was on the panel since 2021 right until he left for New York on June 10.
The combination of injuries and dealing with a drink problem created an itch for a break and the Donegal club offered it.
He flies back out there today, fresh from Armagh’s All-Ireland success that he couldn’t bear to miss.
Of the four games he’d played in New York, he was man of the match in each.
Captain of an Armagh U20 team that contained Ciaran Mackin, Tiernan Kelly and Cian McConville, he’d come on in the famous quarter-final defeat by Galway two years ago and kicked an extra-time point in his first year.
It came down to a gut call between progression as a footballer and stunting the progression of his alcoholism.
Did one cost the other all that much? There’s an in-built reticence to agree to any ownership of the success.
“I’m completely aware that I didn’t win an All-Ireland but the boys made me feel like I did, which I really appreciate.”
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If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere
- Frank Sinatra, New York
THE text came through from McGeeney early on the morning after Ciaron O’Hanlon’s wedding.
Postponed from the Friday before the game until the Wednesday after it, the nuptials became the natural extension of a party that rolled on and on.
It was first thing the morning after when the Armagh manager checked in.
‘How have you been getting on?’
Kieran had told McGeeney first around the turn of the year and then opened up to his team-mates in the weeks that followed.
The group threw their protective arms around him.
When they beat Cavan to secure promotion, a message went on the group chat about a night out.
“One of the boys wrote to me separately and was like ‘I hope you don’t feel uncomfortable about tonight, don’t be thinking you have to go out’. Things like that, they go a long way. You nearly think boys have forgotten about it but they haven’t.”
It’s a fine balancing act as he’s discovered the last fortnight.
To remove yourself from the social scene altogether is to miss out. To go is to invite temptation.
One of the two evils had to be faced down.
For three months after he took his last drink, he didn’t go into a bar.
He sat in the house one night the first weekend and it drove him to distraction, so he and his mates would go and play pool over the weekends.
Eventually he reintegrated himself. Supped on a few non-alcoholic beers. Always took the car, so that he could get out at any moment.
“I’m still a young fella, I still want to be part of the craic. If boys are going for a night out after a game, I wouldn’t want to completely remove myself from that environment.
“If I went into a bar and found it very tough I would have went back out again. I wouldn’t say tough, I find it strange trying to get used to your role in a bar being much different.
“You’re probably more reserved, more quiet. It was just getting used to how things are different – in my eyes, in a good way, but it just took a while to get used to it’s not going to be the same in a way.”
On the day of the All-Ireland final, he took his mother down in the car.
Driving has become a form of accountability.
That’s what drove him to go public with his story as well. He began making TikToks and posting to Instagram after six months of sobriety.
“I was thinking ‘what’s the highest form of accountability I can have?’ and to me, that was to let everyone know about it.”
When he arrived in New York in June, he had told his new housemates and anyone he could find connected with Donegal club that he was trying to stay sober.
The first game they won, the traditional cooler full of beers arrived into the changing room.
Ronan McNamee’s radar went off. A quiet word in the chairman’s ear and moments later, a couple of non-alcoholic bottles were delivered to the changing room. The little big things.
New York was a challenge Kieran felt he had to face head-on.
Temptation is multiplied to the nth degree. Every day is a drinking day.
“It was a massive decision but one I don’t regret,” he says.
He’d begun the year with a groin injury and then hurt the hamstring. It was just about healed up when he told McGeeney that he thought some game time for his club Grange would help him. Minutes into the second half of the first game back, the hamstring went again.
And then it went again later in the year. There was hardly a week from January until June that he was fit.
“I was probably looking for football as my outlet to get away from the stuff off the field but I couldn’t even get that because I was injured all the time. I never even got a chance to put my hand up to play.
“That’s not so say I would have because I’m aware of how competitive the environment is, but I’d back myself to not be far away from it if I’m fully fit.
“I can’t even give off about my injuries because there’s boys like Niall Grimley, Ciaran Mackin, Tank [Conor O’Neill], boys like that. It happens to everyone. It’s just part of the journey.”
Kieran had set his sights on getting fit for an All-Ireland quarter-final. It eluded him and the offer came from America.
Who, at that time, saw the season ending where it did?
Through tears of joy he texted Hugh Campbell, the team’s psychologist with whom he’s grown very close, to congratulate him straight after watching Armagh beat Kerry in the semi-final.
Campbell video called him back from the changing room. A moment in time that he was able to share in from the far side of the big blue sea.
He knew he couldn’t be there for the final. Donegal New York gave him their blessing to go home and come back out again, and he arrived back at the beginning of the week of the All-Ireland.
It was Hugh Campbell again who spotted him trying to convince Croke Park’s security team to let him down on the pitch after the final.
“He’s a top man, he’s been so helpful to me.
“It was tough trying to persuade the security to let me in. Hugh spotted me from the crowd and went up to them and said ‘he’s part of this team’ and to let me on, and they did then.
“I actually was on the field and looked up and saw my Mum waving down, and it was unbelievable for her to see her son on the field looking up after Armagh winning the All-Ireland, even though I wasn’t playing, that was such a great moment.
“I’ve probably watched the game 20 times because every time I come into the house, my Mum has the game on TV.
“It’s brilliant for people like her and I’m sure there are so many people around the county that are so glad they got to see a win like that.”
The days and hours that follow are a manic tidal wave of emotion and alcohol.
The abnormality of one and the normality of the other blended together in a cocktail that could grip someone in his position so easily.
‘Ah sure just a sip, Justy. Be grand’.
He drank the place out of Red Bull for three days.
There’s an intense pride in himself.
It’s just gone 230 days since he last touched a drop.
When he wobbled at Christmas, he resolved that it had to be for himself or it would never sustain.
“Nine times out of ten, it doesn’t work if you try to do it for someone else. I did it for myself and I believe that is why it’s working, because it’s for me, not anyone else.”
An All-Ireland has been won.
The way the Armagh group put their arms out to him over the two weeks sends him back feeling he was genuinely part of it.
He didn’t go into the changing room because he had his mother with him and, unlike the team bus, he had no police escort to the Carrickdale for the banquet.
The personal invitation to it that arrived his way the week of the game meant so much.
“I thought it was a mistake originally. I thought they’d just put my name in because I had been on the panel but when I dug deeper, I found out I had been invited which I thought was brilliant, that they were still thinking of me in the middle of all that was happening.”
Today, he steps on the plane back to the States to finish out the season.
Two weeks of chaos in Armagh and life in New York either side of it.
If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.
