By John Harrington

The dual-player is meant to be a close to extinct species at the highest level, but Slaughtneil are proving that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.

On Saturday they face St. Vincent’s in the AIB All-Ireland Club Senior Football semi-final. Two weeks later, they’ll go toe to toe with Cuala in the AIB All-Ireland Club Senior Hurling semi-final.

Nine players are likely to start both matches, and around another ten will also be involved in both panels.

Everyone in the club is fully supportive of both football and hurling co-existing harmoniously, and according to star player Chrissy McKaigue that is why they have been able to campaign so successfully on both fronts.

“Sadly it has to be said that duality clubs won’t work unless there is success because people will find a reason for it not to work,” says McKaigue. “But when you get a bit of success people say ‘hang on a minute it can work’.

“That was probably similar in our club too, more people have come around to it that you can embrace being a dual player and its just not about football coming from a county like Derry.

“The players can take a lot of credit for that but also our two management teams Mickey Moran and Mickey McShane.

“I always think if you are part of a GAA club you have a obligation to promote all your codes because at the end of the day we are all gaels. It’s great we give hurling football and camogie the due respect and give our players the best chance of playing it.

“Everyone is talking about Slaughtneil not because of football, hurling or camogie but because of the three and that’s a good place to be at the minute.”

Because they’re campaigning on two fronts, the Slaughneil players didn’t have much of an opportunity to rest on their laurels over Christmas.

Their All-Ireland Football Quarter-Final win over St. Kieran’s of London brought them up to December the 11th, and in the following weeks they had to work on getting their hurling touch back up to speed because football had been their focus since winning the Ulster hurling title on October 23rd.

For the past couple of weeks football has once again come to the fore as they ready themselves for the clash with St. Vincent’s.

"The way we work it in Derry and Ulster is we try and give the week of the match; we give that code the full complement,” says McKaigue.

“So the way it works for the Vincent's game is the hurling has now ceased in terms of the dual players; they (the hurlers) will still continue to train with what they have, but the full focus is on the football.

“And then the same will be for the hurling. That's just the way it has been working depending on if it's a week's gap or a two-week gap."

They’ve rightly been lauded for the success they’ve had on both fronts, but if they lose either of the upcoming semi-finals it won’t be long until someone suggests they ultimately fell between two stools.

So far they’ve proven it’s possible  to excel in both codes, but will that be harder to do against a higher caliber of opposition?

"There's certainly an element of that,” admits McKaigue. “There's pros and cons to it. But many people in our club will say that our best dual players are our best footballers or our best hurlers.

“So the games do, to a certain extent, complement each other. But there's no doubt about it, you're going into a game, you're not as fresh as maybe you should be.

“Or maybe you're carrying a knock or whatever else. But we've kind of gone away from looking at that as a negative in our club because of the actual success.

“It's not in my nature to say it, but you have to stop looking for the perfect preparation or the perfect scenario because it just doesn't exist in a dual club. You just have to embrace that it's going to be a wee bit difficult at times. But at the end of the day, the dual players get to play two All-Ireland semi-finals in two or three weeks so that's the positive!"

The Slaughtneil footballers are a battle-hardened team by now. They’ve won the last three Derry county titles in a row, two of the last three Ulster titles, and reached the All-Ireland Final in 2015.

Despite that impressive CV, they’re rated as underdogs by the bookies ahead of Saturday’s semi-final against St. Vincent’s, a status McKaigue is happy to embrace.

“Definitely, them and Corofin are always tipped to be in the Final,” he says. But we’ve been underdogs before and you just can’t read too much into that. I think the four teams left in the football at the minute all have experience at being at this level before.

“I think that can’t be under-estimated because in 2014 we were almost a wee bit shell-shocked, because we went into an environment, you went into an atmosphere that you hadn’t experienced before.

“Like I said, you expect nothing easy at this stage, nothing easy at this stage. Ballinderry played them in 2013 in Newry, the same venue so they’ll have experience of playing Derry clubs before but we understand how much we are up against it.

“We understand how good Vincent’s are, but there’s nothing we can do about that. We just have to play the way we play and bring our best to the game.”

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