MICKEY McKeefry was a 15-year-old boy when he first joined the club committee in Glen.
All his life, he’s waited and wondered if it would ever happen. He’s seen junior championships in the 1950s and ‘60s, two intermediate titles in the ‘80s, a senior league title in ’87.
He’d seen Sam Maguire paraded through the “black” streets of Maghera, as Tony Scullion famously described them.
But it took 70 years but when the John McLaughlin Cup finally made its way into his arms, that it was his grandson doing the heavy lifting now would only have made it sweeter.
In his post-match speech last weekend, Connor Carville mentioned his grandfather alongside fellow club trustees John J McKenna and Chris McGrath, and how everything the club now is, they owe to men like those.
“He was telling me he first joined the club committee at 15,” says the Glen skipper.
“He’s been on the committee for 70 years now, he’s 85. He’s put a lifetime of work into the club. This is for people like that.
“It’s not about ourselves, the lads in the changing room – it’s about the people that have put so much into the club. It’s just magic to be able to hand the cup to him at the end and say: ‘This is for you’.”
From the great Seamus Lagan on the 1965 minor team through to the McCuskers and Gormley in ’93, and the litany of successes the town’s school has enjoyed in the last 50 years, Glen have routinely been part of success but never owned it for themselves until now.
Carville himself had been up the steps in Croke Park as a teenager to lift the Hogan Cup for St Patrick’s Maghera, a team on which Glen were heavily represented.
The club has been at the heart of Derry’s resurgence at schools and inter-county, but there were times when it felt that it might not come their way.
Ultimately, though, success has bred success.
Of the 20 players they used in their county final win over Slaughtneil, 15 of them had at least one Ulster minor medal.
Danny Tallon was the only man to play in all four provincial finals from 2011-14. Cathal Mulholland would have joined only for missing out in 2013.
Glen captain Connor Carville lifts the John McLaughlin Cup pic.twitter.com/BtTkOSOooP
— Cahair O'Kane (@CahairOKane1) November 7, 2021
Conor Glass, Conor Convery, Paul Gunning and Stevie O’Hara each played in three.
Ryan Dougan, Connor Carville, Tiarnan Flanagan, Ciaran McFaul, Jack Doherty and Conall Darragh were on the field for two, while the team’s elder statesmen, Emmett Bradley and Michael Warnock, were in their final year of minor when Glen won their first in 2011.
Those two are just 28. Glen only reached a first ever senior final two years ago and now having gone one better, they’re going to be around for a while yet.
“It started with the 2008 U14 team that won the Féile, that would have been the like of myself, Ciaran McFaul, Dougie, Danny, Cathal, all those boys,” says Carville.
“A couple of years later we won the Ulster U16 in Dromore, that was a big deal. The following year, it was Emmett and Spike [Warnock] and those boys’ senior year at minor, we won our first Derry minor championship and then the first of the Ulsters.
“It’s been a combination of teams, and you even look at the players we’ve brought on after that – Ethan Doherty is a serious, serious player, I’d say he’s in the top couple of players in Derry at the minute. Conleth [McGuckian] and boys like that as well, it’s taken everybody to get over the line.
“We haven’t lost many of the main men. There’s always been a belief there that we could go on and win a championship. We were disappointed with ourselves in 2019 but the saying’s true, you have to lose one to win one. You have to learn the lessons.
“Celtic Park was a cauldron that day and we weren’t happy with our performance after. We had to go back and rebuild, and the experience has stood to us.
“There was nobody getting too hyped up about anything, we knew we had to come and put in a performance and thankfully it went our way.
“It’s been a long time coming for us. A lot of people said we should have been coming straight out of minor and winning championships but we had to create our own culture and bond at senior level. It took a few years.
“The biggest thing about winning a senior championship is the mentality. You might have the talent but it’s the mentality that’s different.”
The entire project has known its final destination for almost 15 years. To win one Derry senior championship is all they’ve ever craved.
Yet in an arena where teams like Slaughtneil, Magherafelt, Lavey, The Loup were searching for the same answers, there’s no disputing the impact that Malachy O’Rourke has made in directing Glen to where they wanted to be.
One bookmaker has placed them as joint-favourites for the All-Ireland club title with Kilmacud Crokes.
That is an astronomical leap in such a short space of time and given that the route to even a provincial titles starts with having to beat St Eunan’s in Letterkenny on Sundaypossibly Scotstown, Kilcoo and then whoever comes out of the other side, it is a serious ask.
But in O’Rourke they have a man who has been there and worn a very rare t-shirt. Only two clubs in the history of the Ulster Club have won it at their first attempt, and one of them was The Loup in 2003, when Glen’s current manager was in charge.
“The biggest thing, as I said in my speech, has been his calmness,” says Carville.
“He’s coolness personified and that’s been passed on to ourselves. We know what we’re doing, we stick to it, we’ve stuck to it through every game and we have the players to execute it, so it’s worked.
“He’s a great man for instilling belief, a few wee things he does for you.
“His management team as well, Ryan Porter is one of the best coaches in Ulster and Ireland.”
Glen have very quickly been elevated to the same status.
Mickey McKeefry must have thought he’d never see it.
