MEET Noah McDonnell. He’s 12-years-old. A bright kid. Irish speaker at Coláiste Feirste and a fine young prospect in Linfield’s youth ranks.
Meet Joe McDonnell. Noah’s dad. A fine footballer in his pomp. In his teens he had a spell with English League club Millwall before returning to play Irish League football with Newry, Ballymena United and Distillery.
In 2017, he won a Steel & Sons Cup with Newington. He works as an employment support officer which is geared to helping people with disability into the workplace.
Tomorrow - Tuesday April 13 - is a hugely significant day in the precious lives of father and son.
Noah will return to football training with his Linfield team-mates at the Olympia complex.
You see, fathers can’t articulate to their sons or daughters exactly what it feels like to watch them take flight on a football pitch.
They can try but they’ll invariably fail.
For every parent or guardian there’ll be ripples of emotion when they drop their child off to their sports this week – for the first time in six months in many cases - following the relaxation of restrictions decreed by Stormont.
As we emerge into the light, what exactly is it that Noah’s father is looking forward to most about tomorrow evening?
“When he turns up and sees all his team-mates, just that buzz of training and seeing him laughing and joking,” he says.
The simple things.
Growing up, young Noah played for local soccer club Newington and joined Star Boxing Club in the New Lodge area of north Belfast.
His father insists sport has given his son everything: confidence, an identity, a sense of purpose, routine, friendships and general happiness.
Before COVID19, Noah had come out of his shell with the Linfield U13s.
“Growing up as a young kid Noah would’ve been quite shy. When I first took him to football he was very timid, so we took him down to the Star Boxing Club and it was brilliant for him. It really brought him on in terms of his confidence around other kids.
“He settled in really well at Linfield and it [lockdown] was a real kick in the teeth for us because he had started performing really well.
“He started becoming more comfortable with his new team-mates and then it was halted.”
As the weeks turned into months, lockdown had a ravaging impact on Noah.
“What sport has done for him is beyond belief,” Joe says.
“But, from lockdown and going back into his shell and not wanting to go outside was a huge concern for us as parents.
“The Noah that we know now to the Noah when he was playing sports is chalk and cheese. How much he has grown as a kid is all down to his sports and down to the coaches that he’s had at Newington, Star Boxing Club and Linfield.
“They have made a huge impression on his life, and he’s only 12. Just the confidence it’s given him. I genuinely mean this, sport is his life, that’s what he lives for.”
Joe doesn’t necessarily subscribe to the view that the ‘kids’ll be grand’ and everything will click into place in a matter of weeks after lockdown.
It’s too blasé of a notion to carry any credibility, especially for Joe who has watched his son struggle with the social isolation of the last 13 months.
“The one thing Noah was never really into was online gaming. He didn’t have any time for it. He went to school, came home and played his sports and played sports all weekend. [During lockdown] he just started to game which, for me, in moderation is fine.
“Now, he’s not going to bed until late, he’s sleeping more during the day. He’s at that awkward age where it is hard to keep him occupied.”
Like many parents, the deep frustration for Joe has been the sense that kids have got a raw deal, especially with the emergence of reams of transmission data that consistently indicates outdoor play is 19 times safer than indoor activity.
“You start reading the data that outdoors accounts for 0.1 percent of cases - I totally understand pubs being closed and even gyms, all the indoor stuff. But kids should be the focal point of all we do.
“I just think they were shafted. They could have had been training in small groups but there wasn’t enough people standing up for them. And you see people partying and you’re thinking: how long are the kids going to suffer because other people are breaking the rules?”
Tomorrow will undoubtedly be a momentous day in the lives of Joe and Noah. In many ways, it’s the start of his and many kids’ rehabilitation from the ill-effects of the last year.
“Noah returning to sport doesn’t make everything better,” his father says. “I won’t say: ‘Ah, this is fine now.’ I’ll be delighted when they’re back but a year of my child’s life has been taken away from him, and for what.
“I completely get the seriousness of the virus, but there could have been so much more done in a constructive, controlled manner for the kids. The easy solution was to keep them in the house.”
