SOMEWHERE along the way, what with outside men and brown envelopes beneath tables that couldn’t even be found, an interest in coaching in the GAA developed a seriously bad rap.
It does an incredible disservice to people like James McNicholl.
He is Dungiven’s manager, has been for a bit over a year now.
At 36, if it wasn’t for the combination of being asked to step into the breach mid-season last year and spinal surgery that made playing risky, he’d be out on the field in Owenbeg on Sunday evening rather than caged in the technical area.
McNicholl won a minor championship with the club as a player in 2006.
By then he had started into a lifelong habit of writing down the details of every training session he’s ever been involved in.
“I’ve a mountain of stuff at home. 90 per cent of that is tackling grids and that’s all kinda gone now, football coaching has moved on.”
He was a fresh-faced wing-forward when they last reached a county final 15 years ago, the only one the club has been in since they won Ulster in 1997.
Football has always consumed him.
He played with a coach’s brain, a small but incredibly intelligent footballer who started out in the forwards but eventually made wing-back his forever home.
Despite his relative lack of years, he’s been involved in underage Derry setups going back a few years.
McNicholl and his now-assistant in Dungiven, Darren McShane, were the coaches at Marty Boyle’s right hand when Derry won the first of three recent All-Ireland minor titles in 2020.
He’s been county U16 manager, worked with development squads up through, up into the U20s before spending four months shadowing Rory Gallagher when the Fermanagh man was in charge of Derry.
Coaching is not in McNicholl’s DNA.
It is his DNA.
On Sunday evening, his Dungiven team face last year’s beaten finalists Magherafelt.
The last time the Magpies reached the last four in Derry, they were seven points up on Slaughtneil.
Mark Craig went through on goal and smashed his shot off the underside of the bar.
Slaughtneil fought back to grab a replay that they won on their way to county and Ulster titles, reaching an All-Ireland final in which they were beaten by Corofin.
It was to the Galway giants that Dungiven looked almost a decade ago.
Driven by men like Kieran and Brian McKeever and Sean Owens, they tapped into Corofin’s brains trust, then Dublin’s too.
One of the big developments that came from those conversations was the importance of a Games Promotion Officer.
Dungiven pushed the boat out and hired Emmett Stewart, a Ballinascreen man married and living in the town who’d worked in coaching roles with Derry and Ulster.
“There’s no coincidence that we’ve been more successful at underage since he came in as well,” says McNicholl.
Dungiven won county titles at U20/21 in 2019 and 2021, and he’s adamant they’d have won the one in-between too if Covid hadn’t intervened.
They won an Ulster minor title in 2022 and came through a serious path against fancied Ballinascreen and Lavey teams to get back to the Derry final a few weeks ago, only for this weekend’s senior opponents to swallow up their third crown in five years.
There’s good influence in anything you care to look for.
They can look at Magherafelt and Glen and Corofin and Dublin, and they do, but McNicholl’s eyes are often drawn wider.
Former Brighton manager Roberto De Zerbi’s philosophies often occupy his mind.
The ambition was always to coach but not necessarily to be managing his own club’s senior team at the age of 36.
He references England rugby head coach Stuart Lancaster in terms of how he’s ended up managing when it was never really the thing he wanted to do.
It’s always been about the coaching, the hands-on, technical stuff.
“I was thrown into this a bit and it’s very difficult to manage your own club, I saw John McKeever saying something similar about Portglenone the other day.
“I was very clear with the boys, I’m not here to please anybody. If I was there to please people we wouldn’t get any success out of it, so it is what it is in terms of that.
“I’d no real intentions of being a manager, I just love the coaching part of it.
“When Stuart Lancaster got put in as England manager, I remember him saying the worst thing was that he was never on the pitch doing the coaching.
“That’s obviously a lot bigger scale but it’s the same principle. It’s always in the back of my head that I don’t want to be standing back, I want to be hands-on.”
They’ve won a Dr Kerlin Cup earlier this year and lost out on the league title in a final day showdown with Kilrea, for whom the draw was enough to secure the trophy.
When both teams had a tough opening night in the championship, the weight of the league was in question. Dungiven conceded three quick goals after half-time as Swatragh doled out some punishment.
But they’ve recovered really strongly since then, beating Bellaghy and Kilrea, running Glen to a point and Slaughtneil to two.
Four of their starting team against Glen had just received their A-Level results. They’re exceptionally young.
They’ve also been blighted by emigration.
When McAnallen’s played in the New South Wales senior and intermediate championship finals in August, there were seven Dungiven men togged out for them alone.
But they’re fighting those fires and starting to get the better of them again.
“We’re realistic of where we’re at at the minute. There’s a top four in Derry of Glen, Slaughtneil, Magherafelt and Newbridge, and I think it’s a clear top four if I’m being honest.
“There’s a cohort of teams below that which I think we’re maybe in. People talk about Lavey and Bellaghy maybe being next, but we beat Bellaghy in the championship this year, beat Lavey last year, so I don’t know why we wouldn’t be in that conversation.
“We know we’re still a good bit away from the top four as such, but we’re building towards that.”