New York senior football team manager Ronan McGinley. Photo by Shauna Clinton/Sportsfile
By Micheál Clifford
The GAA’s capacity to shrink the globe into a parish will literally be there for all to see Tullamore on Saturday.
New York come to Glenisk O’Connor Park to take on Offaly in the preliminary quarter-final round of the Tailteann Cup and the sense of multiculturalism will be accentuated by the fact that both counties will be headed up by two Tyrone men from Errigal Ciaran.
"I think one is a bit more of a household name than the other," jokes Ronan McGinley, the New York manager.
Few will argue with that given that McGinley’s neighbour two miles up the road in the Errigal Ciaran parish is Mickey Harte, Offaly’s joint manager along with Declan Kelly.
Still, the sport that bonds also reunites.
McGinley was once a pupil in Harte’s classroom when the three-time Tyrone All-Ireland winning boss was teaching at St Kierans. He also got to see the impact the great man could have on a team up close and personal when as a 17-year-old, Harte led the Errigal Ciaran Under-21’s to a county title.
If being forewarned is being forearmed, McGinley has few excuses when it comes to any charge of being blindsided by the scale of the task he and his team faces this weekend.
"If you look at wherever he has been, with Tyrone, Louth, Derry and now Offaly, he has had success.
Danny Cummins, Galway, and Ronan McGinley, New York, following a 2015 Connacht SFC clash at Gaelic Park. Photo by: Ray Ryan/Sportsfile
"He is a proven winner, he has got that thing where players always respond to him.
"Offaly have the talent, it is not that long ago since they won the All-Ireland under-20 and for young players like that to get access to someone of Mickey’s stature and experience, I think there was always going to be a pay-off for that
"The respect he has for what he did with Tyrone is obvious, with the minors, under-21s and seniors, the longevity of his tenure and the success he has had at every step singles him out of the greatest managers across the entire history of the game."
McGinley has reason to appreciate that more than most, given his older brother, Enda, won three All-Ireland medals under Harte, but the latter was not the only inter-county footballer in the family.
Having spent the last 15 years in New York, where he emigrated with his now wife Kerry - they have a five-year old son Tomas - Ronan was a cornerstone for the exiles for more than half a decade as a player, finishing up in 2017.
And he returned to the county last year as a coach under Alan O’Mara, before taking up the reins this year to prepare the team for the Connacht championship clash with Galway, in which they performed admirably.
Despite being hampered by the usual but crippling handicap of not having preparatory match practice, they trailed by just three points at the interval, before being blown away by a blistering third quarter from their prestigious visitors.
However, as appreciative as New York are for their inclusion in the Connacht championship, their presence in the Tailteann Cup has been something of a game-changer in terms of becoming a competitive entity.
Joint Offaly senior football team manager Mickey Harte. Photo by Thomas Flinkow/Sportsfile
"The Connacht experience is a little difficult because you have the likes of Galway and other Division One teams coming out and is it very difficult to feel that you have a chance when you are coming up against teams like that.
"I know a lot of the teams in the Tailteann Cup are of a very good standard, but we have to see ourselves on a par with those teams and our challenge then is to replicate or even better the performance that we put in against Galway in the Connacht championship.
"But it is really hard for us to get a gauge of where we are at; the teams that are in the Tailteann have played in their provincial championships and now have three games under their belt after that, and they will have won at least one if not two of those games, so they also bring that momentum.
"They have found their form again and every team that reaches the preliminary quarter-final stages will feel that they can win it out.
"We have to use these games to bring us up to the level where we need to be.
"The one thing we don’t want to be is staying stuck in the same place or getting worse year on year."
The evidence thus far has been positive. Getting to play in two competitions has provided the group with purpose and stability, with 18 of last year’s panel involved this time.
They proved their competitiveness last summer, when they put the frighteners on Laois in O’Moore Park, leading going into the final quarter before eventually losing by four.
Ronan McGinley captained New York in the 2012 Connacht SFC against Sligo at Gaelic Park. Photo by David Maher/Sportsfile
By the season’s end that performance looked even better when Laois went all the way to the final.
It begs an obvious question, what happens if New York win the Errigal Ciaran derby to set up a place in the quarter-finals the following weekend?
"Last year, there were zero provisions if we had won," admits McGinley.
"I don’t know if that was a measure of our expectation but this year we have at least talked about it.
"There will be a bit of a scramble, I will put it like that because there are lads who are flying back to America because they can’t have time off work and there are others who are planning to spend a bit of time at home.
"The scramble would be trying to book hotels, it certainly would be difficult in terms of preparing for a quarter final if we got there with the panel on both sides of the Atlantic.
"And the boys who have gone back would have to fly home for the match which would mean crossing the Atlantic three times in a matter of days to play against one of the top seeds so it would certainly be a challenge. It is not ideal but we are not thinking about that now.
"We have enough on our hands."
