The night before Derry played Down in the 2000 Ulster hurling semi-final, the county secretary arrived at Geoffrey McGonigle’s house with bad news. McGonigle had exchanged words with a referee after Dungiven had lost a club football game against Swatragh. The referee reported him. McGonigle was suspended for two months.
McGonigle had carved out a solid reputation as a Derry footballer, but he committed solely to the hurlers for that season. Before it even began though, McGonigle’s championship looked over. He was not supposed to train with the hurlers during his suspension, but McGonigle ignored that. “I trained away with the boys, but nobody was looking anyway,” McGonigle says. “Nobody expected us to win the Ulster title, only us.”
Derry had not won it for 92 years, but they were getting close, having lost the previous two finals to Antrim. Trying to beat Antrim in the 2000 final was a much greater challenge again without McGonigle, who scored all but two points of Derry’s total in the 1999 final.
Yet Derry found a way to win, blitzing Antrim with three first-half goals before hitting the winning point from Oliver Collins in stoppage time. It was elation for Derry but bittersweet for McGonigle. “When people say to me I have two Ulster hurling medals, I say back to them that I only have one,” McGonigle says. “I don’t count 2000.”
He was back for Derry’s All-Ireland quarter-final against Offaly two weeks later. Derry started McGonigle in the half-forward line to try to break Offaly’s dominant half-back line. “The first ball that dropped, I went to catch it and Michael Duignan pulled and almost took my hand off,” McGonigle says.
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Derry were trailing by eight points when they switched McGonigle back into his natural habitat of full-forward and early in the second half, he transformed the game with two brilliant goals. “After I scored the second goal I just went, ‘Holy Jesus’” McGonigle says. “The crowd went mental. That’s when it really hit me that we could beat them.”
One of the biggest shocks in hurling history looked on when Michael Collins levelled the match with 12 minutes remaining. Offaly were stumbling but they emptied their bench, bringing on Brian Whelehan, Joe Dooley and Joe Errity, to stem the tide. Johnny Dooley was untouchable, and Brendan Murphy landed his second goal to finally put the game beyond Derry’s reach. “We had nothing to lose,” McGonigle says. “That’s why we were so relaxed.”
Two weeks later, Offaly turned over the reigning All-Ireland champions, Cork, in a classic semi-final. “We nearly felt responsible for that result,” McGonigle says. “I’m sure Cork were thinking after our game, ‘Offaly can’t be up to much.’ ”
That was a serious Derry team. Collins was one of the best hurlers Ulster ever produced. Kieran McKeever was one of the greatest corner backs in the Ulster football history. Kevin McCloy was an effective hurler before becoming a brilliant full back with the Derry footballers, winning an All-Star in 2007.
“We always believed that we were going to beat Offaly,” McCloy says. “If big Ollie (Collins) hadn’t got injured when he did in the second half, we probably could have beaten them.”
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McGonigle was the heart of it. Two weeks before setting up Joe Brolly for the winning goal in the 1998 Ulster football final, McGonigle scored probably the goal of the hurling season when doubling on a Collins sideline cut in the Ulster final against Antrim.
When Derry retained the Ulster title again in 2001, McGonigle’s tally of 1-8 was critical in a one-point win against Down. Yet having lost Collie McGurk, Niall Mullan, Declan Cassidy and McCloy, Derry were not the same team as in 2000. Galway smashed them in the All-Ireland quarter-final by 18 points.
Pádraig Kelly, Conor Murray, Seamus Downey (another All-Ireland senior football winner) and McKeever departed afterwards, and Derry could not sustain those losses. A few seasons of hammerings in Division One dented their confidence and they bombed in Division Two.
Derry arrested the slide in 2005, missing out on a Division Two League final appearance by just one point on scoring difference to Carlow. McGonigle scored 2-3 in that year’s replayed Ulster semi-final defeat to Down. A year later, New York beat Derry in an Ulster semi-final. The glory years were long gone by that stage. And Derry hurling has been struggling for oxygen ever since.
The hurling world has radically changed in the meantime, with Offaly and Derry meeting in today’s Christy Ring final, hurling’s third tier. “It’s changed times for sure, especially for Offaly,” McGonigle says. “But at least we can always look back on that day with pride in Derry.”
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