Carrying the cross

Bill and Gene were close. They played in the All-Ireland final and Margaret knew Bill did lots more in his life than miss a penalty, but the world is a fickle, funny place where the sum of even the most distinguished lives is written in bullet points. She feared for Oisín.

Dora and Mairead, her daughters, sat alongside her. Some of her 17 grandchildren were further along, sobbing. A few rows behind, Fr Joseph Mc- Keever, curate in Crossmaglen, turned to his brother Charlie, father of Armagh’s Paddy, and suggested he go down to her. “I think you’d be better use to her,” Charlie replied, “the state she’s in.”

Margaret McConville tells the story and chuckles at the thought, her head in her hands and Charlie McKeever thinking she was ready for the last rites. He was a shrewd judge, Charlie.

“I didn’t lift my head at all,” she says. “People were clapping me on the back and saying cheer up, it’ll be all right. I was saying, ‘This man won’t come home. He’ll be off to America or somewhere’.”

In the second half Oisín confirmed the only place he was going was back to Crossmaglen with history and a cup cradled in his arms. When he hit a crucial goal Margaret tried to stand up but her legs wouldn’t support her.

At the final whistle she watched John Bannon and waited for his arms to stretch out fully. As people spilled from the stands on to the field, she stayed where she was, thanking God that her son, and Sam, would be home.

It was a day when all the strands of Margaret McConville’s life tied neatly together. There is no beginning to her involvement with football. For more than 50 years it has accompanied her in happiness and sadness. Found her a soulmate and helped her raise a family through good days and bad.

Back in the 1950s when Gene was king, she washed jerseys and brewed tea for visiting teams to Crossmaglen. Patsy McConville grew up on the other side of the market square, won county titles with Crossmaglen Rangers as a full-back and, after he married Margaret they raised a family of eight, three of whom would win All-Ireland club medals. A decade ago, Margaret was proposed as secretary of Crossmaglen Rangers and oiled the gears in a glittering period of history that produced the greatest club team ever seen. This afternoon, with Margaret as joint-honorary president, Crossmaglen seek entry to their fourth All-Ireland final and this summer will begin the chase for their 10th consecutive county title. But, as with Bill McCorry, all that is only the part we see.

“One day I met Paddy O’Rourke (the late Monaghan treasurer for over 50 years) at a function,” she says, “and he says, ‘Do you know how long it’s been since I got my first cup of tea off you?’ He says, ‘It’s 50 years.’ I says, ‘Keep that quiet, don’t be talking out loud!’ It’s just then you start thinking about it. But then, I had to take a few years off to produce some footballers, too.”

Margaret and Patsy travelled the country to see football. One week, long after the children were raised, they headed for Killarney on holiday. They were deep into Kerry before the sight of a ball ballooning into the air from a field by the road made them stop. North Kerry were playing South Kerry in a county championship game and after a while Patsy became enthralled by a sleek young forward. It was 1987 and Maurice Fitzgerald was just 17. He turned to Margaret. “That boy’ll be something yet,” he said. They carefully kept the programme and it remains in the house to this day, a tribute to their devotion to the game and, perhaps, to each other.

When Crossmaglen was a turbulent place, football was the family’s constant. Even when the British Army rumbled through the gates of the Crossmaglen Rangers ground in 1971 and the police station just up the road from McConvilles’ was transformed into a heavily fortified barracks, the pitch was still where the McConville boys grew up.

In there, away from the grime and truth of the outside world, the boys could be whomever they wished to be. From the upstairs bedroom window in their home, Margaret McConville could see them and hear the thud of leather and the shouts. If they heard the sharp crack of a bullet or the clapping thunder of an explosion, they knew to duck down in somewhere that gave cover.

In the Septembers when the children were old enough they were taken to Croke Park for the All-Ireland football final. In 1972 Patsy and Margaret brought Jim, Jarlath and Thomas to see Offaly beat Kerry. A girl from Offaly promised Thomas her paper hat if Offaly won. The hat hung at home for a long time after that. It is a memory now tinged with tragedy. “Thomas drowned in 1976 in the Gaeltacht in Donegal,” she says. “He was 16 and a half, just starting to play minor football but it was just one of those things in life.”

Having raised their children in a place where dealing with violence, intimidation and death was a daily hazard, such a simple tragedy heightened the futility of everything they saw around them.

“You think of Thomas in Donegal being drowned in August. The March before it was Grand National day, and you know the way the father’d send the son for the paper to look at the horses? Thomas had (brother) Sean by the hand as he came up along the road, and there was an attack on the barracks. He went in behind some man’s pier and threw Sean down and lay on top of him. We could hear them talking and we couldn’t go out. The bullets were flying all round the place.

“Then to go to Donegal where there was no trouble — it was strange. You were worried about them going down the town. You weren’t worried about them going to Donegal. You never imagined something like that could happen.”

Throughout 1977, Patsy and Margaret stayed at home and tried to put their lives together. That September, with Armagh in the All-Ireland final against Dublin, Con Short, then president of the Ulster Council, arrived at the front door with tickets for them. It was as much as Crossmaglen could do, but it helped. “From then on, Jim was playing underage and Jarlath and the rest. You just went on ahead. Many a day you’d see (Thomas’) friends coming out and it was a killer, but you had to go. I had Patsy to think about, I had youngsters to nurse out of it. You had to forget you were his mother and try to look after somebody else. That’s what mothers’ lives are about in a lot of cases.”

Years passed, young McConvilles grew up into great players and the club dictated much of their time. Jim starred for Armagh and Crossmaglen and in time Oisín picked up where he left off. In 1996, Crossmaglen won their first county title for 10 years with Jarlath in goal, Jim and Oisín in attack and Margaret as club secretary. The following March they added an All-Ireland title and things started to change.

“There was thousands upon thousands here when they came home. You couldn’t get into a pub down the street and the hall was packed. People were going into each other’s houses just to be together and near where the team was. My late husband came home, he was a man who didn’t take a drink either, and he reversed into his armchair and said, ‘Thank God I lived to see this day.’ That was his celebration.”

Margaret and Patsy never told their boys they were better footballers than anybody else, they never needed to. What the team were achieving now touched more people than they could ever know but, to Margaret and everybody else, they were still sons and neighbours.

In 1999 Crossmaglen were back. Patsy was fighting the final stages of cancer in hospital as they won another All- Ireland title with Oisín kicking the frees that beat Ballina. Margaret thundered back up the road straight after the game.

“We arrived that evening and he was over the moon. And I says, ‘Well, what about him today?’ and he says, ‘I knew he was going to score them.’ It was the first time I ever heard him say it. The last match he saw here (at home) was the Ulster final against Down (Armagh’s first title in 17 years). Kieran McGeeney’s parents called to say hello and I remember Oisín came home and walked straight in and put out the hand. And as McGeeney ’s father said to me, the weak hand went out, and Oisín just clasped his hand and he said, ‘Well done’.”

That August Oisín played an All-Ireland semi-final against Meath, which Armagh lost. The following Wednesday, his father died. Her daughters go to the games with her and Oisín is a fixture at home, but sometimes it’s hard.

“He (Patsy) didn’t want me to leave the club and the club got me over hard days. On the Tuesday night there might be a meeting and it might be a bit of a nuisance but at the same time you pulled yourself together and went on to it. They were very good that way in that they’d ask you to do something, just probably to keep me going. They were very supportive.”

The club and town have flourished in tandem. New houses have sprung up between the drumlins and the watchtowers and business has slowly revived. Since the return of the club’s grounds, a new clubhouse and a second pitch have been added, with a smart stand big enough to house Armagh’s National League games.

In time some of the team’s supporting pillars will need replacing but until then Margaret McConville will be there, lending a hand, planning every Sunday around a game.

“It’s lovely to be in Croke Park and the anthem being played,” she says. “That’s my greatest moment. It doesn’t matter who’s playing but I was very emotional the days Cross played in those All-Ireland finals. You’d nearly be crying before it. Here we are, after all this. They’ve done so much and got so far.”

The ultimate celebration of a simple, triumphant life.