‘Let us go to the banks of the ocean / Where the walls rise above the Zuiderzee’ – The Dutchman
PHILIP Campbell has three memories of his father. Each one of them insignificant and precious.
“That’s all I’ve ever had,” says Philip, who had just turned four when his father was shot dead by loyalists in February 1977.
“I remember getting up early one morning and going into the living room and he was setting the fire, folding up papers.
“I can see him standing there wearing a pair of brown trousers, a pair of shoes and a string vest on him. Another memory was just seeing him standing in the bathroom one day and the other was of him in the garden at the front of the house.
“At that time, to be honest, I didn’t even know he’d been killed. I just ended up knowing. I knew there was something wrong in the house. I would say I was seven, eight or nine by the time I realised.”
Father-of-eight Joe Campbell wanted to join the Garda Síochána like his father, who was stationed in Scotstown, Co Monaghan.
But at that time there was an embargo on recruitment, and when Joe’s family decided to move north he joined the RUC.
Reaching the rank of sergeant, Joe served in Crossmaglen and Derry before being posted to the coastal village of Cushendall in the heart of the Glens of Antrim.
As he locked the gates of the local police station on the night of February 25 1977, he was assassinated by a UVF gunman, suspected to be notorious killer Robin Jackson, now deceased.
Joe Campbell was aged 49 when he was murdered.
The Campbell family have always maintained collusion between elements of the RUC and loyalist paramilitaries in their father’s brutal murder and have pursued the truth ever since.
Currently, the Conservative British Government is drafting legislation to close the book on unsolved murders of the bloody conflict, pre-dating the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
Philip was the youngest of Joe and Rosemary’s eight children.
“My mother was left widowed at 41 with eight children,” Philip says.
“Tommy was the eldest and 21 at the time. He literally had to grow up overnight with seven younger siblings, and he did that. He was studying to be a teacher at the time, everything was on his shoulders.”
He adds: “It’s only in later years I know that my mother suffered great depression. There was a great, great sadness. We didn’t talk about it much.
“I remember there were 10 people in our house but within a year of my father’s murder two of the boys and two of the girls had left to go to England. It was so confusing. A few years after that, there was only myself, Tommy and my sister Sarah left in the house. Sarah would have been a year-and-a-half older than me.”
Later in life, Tommy Campbell met Joan McAlister, a brilliant camogie player who represented Antrim and Ulster.
They married and had three children together – Ciara, Aine and Eoghan.
Tommy was part of the first Ruairi Og, Cushendall squad to capture a senior hurling championship title in 1981. He played Gaelic football for Con Magees, Glenravel and rugby for Armoy and Ballymoney.
He taught at St Mary’s High School, Limavady for 32 years and mentored a young Chrissy McKaigue who worked alongside him, taking school teams together.
A keen golfer, Tommy and Joan’s three children were virtually reared in and around the Cushendall Golf Club where their father held the honour of captain.
He competed in the All-Ireland Scór and of an evening he'd regularly break into song.
He loved singing ‘The Dutchman’.
“Tommy was involved in everything and anything,” says Cushendall and Antrim hurler Neil McManus.
“He was involved in all the local productions of the Lurig Drama Group. A few years back they performed a ‘Cushendall Remembers’ and what the GAA was like 100 years ago; it was a step back in time and how people travelled to games on bicycles.”
Tommy also found time to be a selector of the senior hurling team alongside Terence McNaughton and later assisted his youngest brother Philip when he managed the Ruairi Ogs in 2016 and ’17.
“Tommy was a very pragmatic person, he thought very logically,” says Philip.
“When I managed the seniors I was more head-strong and I’d worry about the problem, whereas Tommy would have thought about the problem and looked for a solution. It never seemed as bad after he spoke to you.”
All the while Tommy was at the forefront of the family’s ceaseless pursuit of justice for their father’s murder.
In February 2019, Tommy was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was given six weeks to live.
He died on March 25 2019. The people of Cushendall were plunged into mourning at Tommy Campbell’s passing.
He was a giant of a man.
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THERE’S a low evening sun combating the cool breeze in Dunsilly. It’s the Antrim hurlers' press night ahead of their Joe McDonagh final at Croke Park.
The usual gaggle of reporters are milling around outside the changing rooms.
Manager Darren Gleeson makes for easy company and is joined by Ryan Elliott, James McNaughton, Gerard Walsh and captain Eoghan Campbell.
“I had a good conversation with Eoghan during training one time with Cushendall,” explains his club-mate McManus.
“He’d kind of been going through the motions and I said to him: ‘Campbell, you’re going to wake up some day when you’re 32 or 33 and you’ll have a massive regret because you’ll realise how good you could’ve been… Don’t answer me now but what would you want people to say about you as a hurler?’
“At the end of the session, with a big red face on him, he said to me: ‘I’d love them to say, I did it my own way.’”
McManus adds: “Now, over the past couple of seasons, he’s really matured for Antrim. He’s become a leader and is a really good captain. I think his personality and leadership have grown into the same level his hurling’s at now. I honestly wouldn't swap him for any other number six in the country."
Eoghan and I take shelter in one of the Dunsilly changing rooms.
Sometimes interviews need a bit of direction, a bit of cajoling - but this one with Eoghan Campbell twists and turns of its own accord. It couldn’t be any further away from conventional.
He jokes: “Most of my friends say I’m extremely odd!”
“Campbell’s his own man,” says McManus, also a neighbour. “He could walk past you in the street and he’d say: ‘Hiya’. And on he would go. Or he could come into the house here and say: ‘You know, I watched this Japanese war movie yesterday…’ The conversation with him can go absolutely anywhere.”
Despite suffering the loss of his father three years ago, the 27-year-old Cushendall man has played some of the best hurling of his career.
“When Eoghan was eight or nine you knew he was going right to the top,” says his uncle Philip.
“His decision-making is unbelievable; he rarely loses possession of the ball. It’s very much a possession game now and I’d say there are only few other players in Antrim that could play in those top teams.
“His awareness on the field and where everyone else is, he’s whipping passes in so quickly and it’s straight into somebody’s hand. I think that is a natural ability. Instinct. It is something you can’t coach – you either have it or you don’t. Eoghan has it in spades. He was always going to be good. I think he gets it from his mother, Joan, because she was a great camogie player.”
One of the buzz terms in sport these days is, What’s your ‘why’?
Why does someone do what they do? What's their driving force, their raison d’étre?
“I keep on turning up and I ask myself that question a lot, and I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know,” Eoghan says in the Dunsilly changing rooms.
“Darren Gleeson’s thing is: ‘Why do you do it?’ Probably my ‘why’ was my father.
“I’d probably say it’s lessened a bit with my father not being there. Obviously my mother and my father’s two sisters take her absolutely everywhere. They’ve been to Kerry and they’d drive to New York if they could.
“But it is different, it’s different not having him there. The ‘why’ probably isn’t the same but I still take it very seriously, I have an ambition to win but it’s definitely not the same.”
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EOGHAN remembers staring at the doctor in Antrim Hospital “who looked no more than 12 and both of us knew that it wasn’t going to be good news. He said they’d found something...”
The next day Eoghan got the phone call he was dreading. His father was terminally ill and had six weeks to live.
The devastating news spread through the village like wild-fire.
The Cushendall hurlers were preparing for an All-Ireland Club semi-final with St Thomas’s of Galway in Parnell Park the following weekend.
The news of Tommy’s illness became the team’s rallying cry. He got out of hospital and managed to attend the game in which Cushendall suffered an agonising defeat.
“In the first half I was awful,” Eoghan recalls.
“I was marking Bernard Burke and I couldn’t get into it at all. Luckily, I had a fantastic second half.”
Soon after their semi-final defeat, Eoghan and Neil McManus were selected for GAA Allstar Club awards for their endeavours.
“I had a horrendous first half and couldn’t believe I got picked for an Allstar,” Eoghan says. “My father was still alive and I was able to tell him that I got this. It was good to be able to share that with him.”
While his father was ill, Eoghan had decided to take time out from Antrim. He came in on a Tuesday night and sat with his father.
‘What are you doing here?’ Tommy asked.
‘I’m just going to stay here,’ replied Eoghan.
‘Are you not at Antrim training?’
‘No, I’m not going to go back for a while.’
‘Well, there’s no point sitting here with me.’
“And that was that. So I had to drive to Mayo the next week and I lasted 20 minutes before getting the line. I remember every night coming home from training, he’d be up and asking how training went.”
Reflecting on those dark months after his father’s death, Eoghan says he was able to get through them “because my father managed to cope”.
“Eoghan and Tommy were very, very close,” says Philip. “Eoghan is very like him. Tommy and Joan would have gone everywhere to watch him play. That was a big part of the reason why he did it. It was a huge loss to Eoghan. I know that he struggles with the fact that Tommy’s not there. When you’re playing elite sport you’ll keep going because you’re good at it and you’re able to do it.”
It’s only since his death that Eoghan’s had more time to reflect on his father’s life.
When Tommy’s own father was murdered in 1977, he’d no choice but to become the father figure of the house.
Throughout his adult life, Tommy kept asking uncomfortable questions of the British State, but he didn’t allow the murder to define him or impact on his own family.
“There was always that fight for justice for Granda,” Eoghan says. “But it was never a major talking point in the house. If you asked a question about Granda he would answer it, no problem.
“But there was no-one in the house that was going to use it as a sob story. My parents allowed us to grow up in a peaceful Northern Ireland and we’ll not be going back to those days. But the injustice is there that we’ll always be fighting for.”
For now, Eoghan Campbell will lead the Antrim hurlers out into Croke Park this afternoon to debate the Joe McDonagh Cup with Kerry.
He remembers the last McDonagh final two years ago, played behind closed doors because of COVID, and being able to hear the birds squawking high in the stands.
This time he’ll have his mother, his aunts and uncles and his girlfriend in the stadium cheering him on – but Antrim’s captain won’t be getting carried away. It's not a Campbell's nature.
“I still see this as a hobby,” he says.
“I’ve been playing hurling since I was five. When you break it down it’s a very simple thing. When people talk about pressure, it’s a fake pressure. There is no pressure. We go out to enjoy it.
“When it’s something you’ve been doing your whole life, nothing changes. It’s really simple. There is no need to put pressure on yourself. You go out some day on the hurling field by yourself and you stick 10 balls over the bar. You go out the next day, it’s the same thing with 40 or 50,000 people there. I think it’s that simple.
“Perspective has probably come into it with my father passing. It’s a release for people. You look at Domhnall Nugent and what he’s been through; he’s given his all over the past couple of years. It’s a release for him. It’s a release for all of us.”
