COLM McKinstry was a colossus on the field, off it he was an unassuming gentleman and a quiet family man devoted to wife Nuala, his daughters Niamh, Grainne and Eimear and his grandchildren.
News that the former Armagh and Clan na Gael midfielder passed away suddenly on Sunday night has been greeted with shock and sadness in his native Lurgan, throughout Armagh and across the country.
A genuine icon of Orchard County football, McKinstry won an Allstar at midfield in 1980 alongside Kerry’s Jack O’Shea. Jimmy Smyth, his lifelong friend and teammate with ‘the Clans’ and their county never heard a bad word said about the man he knew as ‘McKink’.
“It’s very sad news,” said Jimmy yesterday.
“I’ve been getting texts all day and every one of them has the word ‘gentleman’ in it. That’s exactly what he was.
“He had no airs of graces about himself, he just went about what he had to do and did it well.”
Smyth and McKinstry first met 65 years ago when they were in the same class at St Peter’s Primary School in Lurgan. Their teacher was Gerry Fegan (later Armagh county chairman) who introduced them to Gaelic Football which became their lifelong passion.
“We hit it off even though he used to eat my sandwiches!” says Jimmy.
“I remember one time, years after primary school, we were up the town in Lurgan.
“It was at the height of the Troubles and we were driving round past the church and a policeman stopped us and, it was the usual: ‘Name sir?’
“I said: ‘Jim Smyth’ and then he looked into the car and says: ‘And I suppose that’s Colm McKinstry sitting beside you?’ Colm was well known!”
With McKinstry and Smyth at the forefront, Clan na Gael were the team to beat in Armagh and from the late 1960s through to the early 1980s the talented team won 10 county senior titles and three Ulster crowns.
Both were called up to the Armagh senior panel in 1968 and Smyth says it was a McKinstry goal against Cavan that sent the Gerry O’Neill-managed side on the way to the 1977 All-Ireland final.
“He wasn’t renowned for scoring goals and he didn’t get that many but he scored an important one that day and it won the game for us,” said Jimmy.
“We won that quarter-final and went on to win Ulster and that was coming from a background of us getting hammered 1-22 to 2-1 by Derry the previous year! That win over Cavan was the beginning of it all.
“He had a great pair of hands. I remember in the 1980 Armagh championship final for the Clans when we decided that we would play Colm as the targetman at full-forward. The ploy was that I would kick frees into him and he would knock them down for our forwards and it worked a treat.
“I remember us going down to play Nemo Rangers in Cork in 1974 and he gave an absolute exhibition down there. The story was that Nemo offered him a job down there after that game which wouldn’t have surprised me because he was superb!”
A determined competitor who didn’t like to be beaten, success followed McKinstry throughout his playing days and after knee injuries finally forced him to hang up his boots he went on manage the Clans and later the Tullysaran and Middletown clubs.
Next year Clan na Gael will mark their centenary. The celebrations won’t be the same without the ‘Man with the mighty reach’.
“Noel O’Hagan summed it up,” said Jimmy.
“He said: ‘We’ll be celebrating all our wins but the man who was responsible for most of them won’t be there’.
“He was a big, quiet fella and everyone who contacted me regarded him as a gentleman. That’s as nice an epitaph as you can get.”
