ON the day that Donegal won their first ever Ulster title in 1972, much was expected of Martin Carney.
One of few players in the county’s history to have made his senior inter-county debut while still at school in St Eunan’s Letterkenny, Carney played the first eight years of his career with his native county before transferring to Mayo, with whom he played another 11 seasons.
But faced with Tyrone in Clones fifty-one years ago, he never got into the game.
Recalling that afternoon in the early 1990s book The Game Of My Life, Carney said: “I was marked out of it myself by a small little player called Mickey Hughes.”
Mickey Hughes was Tyrone’s number five, standing 5’7”, ten-and-a-half stone and fast as lightning.
Carney went on to perform well in future games against Tyrone because they moved him out of wing-forward so that he didn’t have to face Hughes again.
“He was some footballer, I just done my best,” the Killyman native offers modestly.
Donegal won that battle but the following summer, the Red Hands travelled to MacCumhaill Park and won an infamous tie that was quickly dubbed ‘The Battle of Ballybofey’.
Tyrone went on and won Ulster off the back of it in 1973.
Hughes was the only player whose club weren’t playing senior football at the time, although he captained Killyman to an intermediate championship that year.
The Down team of the 60s was disappearing, Derry and Armagh hadn’t quite arrived yet, and it was the north-west neighbours who filled the breach for those few years.
Hughes was captain of Tyrone’s minor side in 1970 and would win two Ulster U21 titles, the second of them as captain in ’73, the same year they won the solitary senior crown of his career.
They hosted Donegal in Omagh the following year but lost their Ulster title. Some 49 years on, despite all their recent meetings, that remains the last time Donegal had to travel to Tyrone for a championship match.
Seven years after his senior debut – “scared shitless” coming in as a sub for the injured Pat King in the 1972 Ulster semi-final – he played his last game for Tyrone.
“I played with and against a lot of great footballers. I was probably just ordinary but I had good speed and stamina, I could run around all day, and I tried hard.
“I enjoyed it, that was the main thing.”
He had worked for Powerscreen from the day and hour he left school at 16.
In 1979 Mickey Hughes went to Australia for a year with his wife Sheila and their first child, Ramona, when she was a one-year-old.
“We would go to caravan parks, sleep in a caravan, and next morning I left Sheila and my daughter to go off and look at koala bears and kangaroos while I would go away looking for customers.
“At that time there was no internet. You had to go to a phonebox, pull out the Yellow Pages – sand and gravel, coal, rock, limestone, and go looking for guys. That was tough.”
When Powerscreen opened a branch in Kentucky, he was one of the first to move across from home. That was 1981.
“I came here for two years. Two years became four years and four years became 42. It’s crazy, it’s just like yesterday. The time goes past.
“It was a big enough decision to make but sometimes in life you get a chance and you just have to take it. I don’t regret it, but I missed the football.”
Hughes started his own distributorship four years after moving out and did well out of it before selling his stake to his business partner Alan Coulter six years ago, shortly after his wife Sheila passed away. They’d been together since they were teenagers and had four children together.
Tragically, their son Peter died suddenly at the age of 38 last August, five days before his sister Emily (a former Rose of Tralee contestant) gave birth to the extended family’s latest edition, Colette-Rose.
Ramona and Gary were born in Ireland, the latter a handy American Football player who was involved in three College Bowl games for University of Kentucky.
Yesterday Mickey departed for San Diego to go and spend some time with Gary and his family. But at 11am his time on Saturday morning, he’ll take the phone out of his pocket, turn on GAAGO and watch Tyrone as he does every time they play.
He won three New York championships himself after arriving in the States, reforming an alliance with Frank McGuigan and a few other natives. There were sevens tournaments in Canada and Fort Lauderdale.
A whippet of a half-back, he played until he was 45, after which he eased off with a bit of soccer until his hip started to give in as he approached 50. A hip replacement in 2009 finally put an end to his playing but he still works out five times a week and hasn’t a pick on him.
“I’m 70 but I feel that I’m 41 with 29 years’ experience!”
The twang has never deserted him and the love of the land that made him remains. He was back in the Moy last month and in Healy Park to enjoy their victory over Armagh.
“I got to see Tyrone-Armagh, got to see my club playing one night. And I got to hang out with three of the lads I played with 50 years ago. They came over to the Ryandale, we had something to eat and good craic and good memories.”
That’s what his time with Tyrone was. Good craic and good memories.
Shorter than it might have been considering he was 27 when he went to Australia. When he came back he played most of another year with Killyman before going to America but his county days were over.
He owns a few properties out there under a satellite business he called Kilmoy – an amalgamation of Killyman and Moy. It’s a name that has regularly appeared on jerseys for both clubs.
You can take the man out of Tyrone…
