Barney and Brendan Herron

Barney Herron

Early memories:

“My Da was a Tyrone man and played for Na Fianna (Coalisland). There was a big interest in our house in football, GAA and the Irish language generally. My involvement and my families involvement in Lámh Dhearg came through my brother (Michael). Micky would have been friendly with Sean Maguire, Barney McKenna and a whole lot of other fellas who were associated with the club. Then my brother Jim became involved- Jim originally played for the Johnnies- which a lot of people don’t know. I think through a lot of the people that Michael hung around with- he left St Johns and came to us at a very early age. That’s where the family connection came”.

“I actually remember when I became involved myself, it was the early 70s and I remember that everybody  used to meet at our house in Stewartstown every Sunday. There was a seat along the side of the house and all the boys came there and sat on the seat. We used to get our dinner at 1 o’clock on Sunday- Micky Glackin and boys like that used to come in and my Ma being my Ma would have said ‘that fella, would he take a bit of dinner?’ Of Couse Glackin would have been in the first in the door and you just weren’t sure of your dinner on the plate. My Ma used to make lovely apple bake and the boys would have been queued up outside the back door”.

“Kieran Megraw and myself were very, very young when we started to play for the club and the lowest age was U-16. I remember playing a couple of matches – we were only 13 or 14 and John P O’Kane had something to do with the team. On those days it used to be a big thing- the scorers on the day- their names were put in the Irish News. Kieran Megraw and myself would have been looking at the Irish News and seeing your name in it and thinking you were the best player in the world”.

“Unfortunately, there wasn’t much underage teams in the club apart from U-16 and minor and Kieran, Paddy O’Donnell and myself; we all lived in Stewartstown and we were able to play for a club called Stewartstown McDermott’s. A local guy had started a team when juvenile clubs were just starting out and we played for Stewartstown McDermott’s at U-14 and U-16. After that, we wanted to go and play for our own clubs, so we tied in with the club. That was during the early 70s – Michael, Jim and myself were involved. At stage we were all young and weren’t married and from the Herron section that’s all of us who were involved in the club”.

Family culture at the club:

“I never really played with Michael or Jim- except for a couple of years of senior I played with Jim and then I played Reserve Football with Michael, Sean Maguire, Barney and others. Some of the guys were finishing off their senior careers like Shanty, Fizty, Jackie Duffy, Sean McElhatton, Maxi McNama and wee Jasper [Joe Finnegan]. We’d have played along with them and Michael would have been prone to throwing the fists out and losing the bap- we’d have got into a lot of boxing matches”.

“It was great craic being a part of the club- we went to the County Final when we won it in 1971 and the following year we went on the bus to the final – St Johns beat us, and I think it was up in Ahoghill. We were really starting to get into the club, and it was fantastic to be part of such a club. Everybody in the club was from families: the McCague’s, the Jordan’s, the Herron’s, Maguire’s and you felt a sense of belonging to the club our and the craic was always mighty”.

“Colette was behind me right from when we first started going out with each other – in the early 80s. Colette was right beside me at everything we did in the club, she was huge worker in the original Coiste na nÓg. When I was chair- she was there at every stage and ran the shop and did a lot of stuff around development. It was unbelievable the support that Colette gave me and my own kids”.

“One of the greatest measures is to see your own children grow up and become so involved in the club as well. Conor and Eamonn went on in hurling and football and played at the highest levels. Una-Meabh, originally played for the Scallion Pickers (Glenavy) because we didn’t really have a senior ladies team and thankfully we were able to persuaded her to come back to the club”. One of my greatest days was to see her playing for Antrim ladies in Clones and Roisin came through and won a Championship and league with the ladies juvenile team”.

“Now my sister Maura and Paddy are back and involvement in the club in ladies football. Jim has been back and had a second term as chairman. Kevin has been involved in doing stats for football and hurling, Grainne is involved, and Catriona’s children are involved. Jim’s kids who played for Antrim and Ulster in hurling and football and Micko’s children will be coming through. Ciara is there and is heavily involved in juvenile and plays for the county and Cormac has played at every level and has came up through and represented the club at senior level. As I’ve stepped away Jim stepped back in again, as Jim stepped away Maura is in there and heavily involved with Paddy in the club. There will always be a Herron around the club”.

Hurling success:

“Fr John O’Donavan came on board when he was a priest up in St Oliver Plunkett- he really brought hurling to a different level at the club. He was bringing in guys that came in from other teams – Tote’s [Brendan Toland] came in from Rossa and Nogie Quinn and a few others. We started out from nothing and some us hardly knew what end of the hurl to hold. Kieran Megraw and myself played for Mitchel’s because the club didn’t have a hurling team. We joined at a young age, we were about 17 or 18. At this stage we never envisaged that we would taste success at the club. We won the Belfast Championship, the league and over the next couple of years we won the Junior Championship and the Intermediate B Championship. The camaraderie in that team was unbelievable and many great memories”.

“We used to have a travelling support with us, and it would be wrong if I didn’t mention Eileen McGuigan. She would have been standing on the sideline effing and blinding like a trooper. She always had a drink for you at half-time, I remember one day she said ‘come on off here if you want a smoke’ – so I came off the pitch and Eileen had a fag lit up for me. Those were the days when there wasn’t that much of an emphasis on health and wellbeing”.

“The craic was unbelievable and winning the Junior Hurling Championship was unbelievable. It brought to the club people who had never hurled before- Russ actually hurled and hurled well on that team and Eddie actually hurled on that team as well- god rest him. We had some strange characters – Jim and Michael played on that team, Paddy ‘The beast’ McCann and wee Joe and Shanty. Guys that had never lifted a hurl in their lives and the hurling on whole was unbelievable – to be a part of it”.

“We actually went on to play in the Intermediate final- on the same day as we won the Intermediate league- and we were beaten that day. It was a bit of a heartbreak, once we eventually went on and won it, it was unbelievable. It  was a huge day in the club to win an Intermediate hurling Championship. It was all good craic”.

Shooting at Budore:

“I think it was back in 1973 and we were playing Dwyers and there were three people shot that day- Anto McCague, Raymond Jordan and the goalkeeper from Dwyers. These guys arrived at the old pitch up in Budore and were only around 10-yards away from the top goal and they opened up with automatic rifles. There was a whole scattering match right down the pitch. I remember running down the pitch with Kieran Megraw and we heard a shout – it was Anto McCague – it dropped because he got hit. We headed down to the tin-hut – which was the changing room. The fear in everybody that day was unbelievable, these guys were determined to cause as much injury as they could. They actually reloaded their rifles and went for a second time – so you could imagine the panic that there was. There were three people injured and I think there was a recording of it somewhere about. I think Barney McKenna, or somebody had a Volkswagen Beetle Car and they were messing around with the tape recorder in it and they actually recorded the sound of the shooting. It scared the ‘crap’ out of us, we all hid in the tin-hut and the panic to get out the pitch that day and get down the road was unbelievable. We were frightened these guys were going to come back again”.

Funny times:

“We’d other funny times and stories being involved in the club – I remember (god rest him) Shaker McGarry bringing us back from a match one day in Glenavy. The UDR stopped us and the guy said ‘right, everybody out’. As we got out- he counted us out and it ended up 13 of us getting out of the back of ‘Shakers’ car. It was lost in 1800 I think – the man said, ‘for god sake Sarg, how many more are going to come out here?”.

“I remember back in the 80s we were playing in the Senior Championship and going out to train at Budore – it was coming up to the final. At times the  UDR would have stopped us at road checks. One day I was in the car with Paddy O’Donnell and Micky Glackin. Of course, O’Donnell couldn’t stop but mess and they said, ‘right sir, what’s your name and where do you live?’ he said Padraig O’Donnell and I live in a house!. That was the kind of things that used to happen- the craic was 90”.

Administrative side – Juvenile committee:

“I became involved at a young age- Kieran Megraw, Hugh Jordan and myself were involved in various aspects of committee- as youth members. In 1981 I started the Youth Committee, as it was originally called along with Jim Lynch. We started a process of trying to bring the kids together like a youth club and we ran a Monday night Disco. It was a huge thing- all the kids used to come up from Andytown and Lenadoon. It was great to bring all the young people together- because there was nothing to do”.

“What we actually got out of that- we were able to fund the juvenile end of the club, as we raised that much money. It was a brilliant experience and we took a lot of the kids away down to Newcastle for weekends away and adventure weekends. There were a lot of people involved – Claire Lundy, Marie McCartney, Colette, Paddy O’Donnell, myself and a few other people. All the kids that actually ended up playing Senior Football and Senior Hurling would have been involved in the juvenile end – Eamon McGarry, Frankie Fitz, wee Bugsy and a couple of others were involved. It brought everybody together- for the first time at juvenile level because at stage juvenile was taken off at the club”.

“I would have been involved at various through my late teens and in the early 80s in the committee. The original Youth Committee fell away and then around the mid 80s Colm McKenna (treasurer) and Pat McCague (chairman) had brought me into the senior committee and asked me if I would consider re-establishing a Youth Committee. Bukey was always there and Smickers became involved in the 90s. We established a group called Coiste na nÓg and started to formalise a whole committee structure in the juvenile section of the club. It was probably one of the most successful juvenile groupings that had been around in years. We tried to bring in all the people who had previously been involved and also put a structure around all the committee. We brought a lot of woman in and got them involved. It took a number of years and was really, really exciting – it was a time of change in the club. We kept it going for years and the committees we had and the organisation that was in the club was unbelievable”.

“Towards the end of the 80s the whole juvenile involvement in clubs took off and because we worked to the fore in developing that kind of structure- a lot of the other clubs in Antrim copied what we had done. Over the years my committee had quite a few people who have now went on to play significant parts in the club including Deirdre Diamond and Linda Fegan”.

Chairman and Senior Committee:

“At a later stage- a number of people in the club decided that we needed to set a similar structure up in the senior end of the club. I think it about 2009 or 2010 I was asked to put my name forward for chair in the club. Thank god I was selected and became chairman. One of my conditions was that Linda Fegan – who had been instrumental in working through the Coiste na nÓg section- would come on as my vice-chair. We created a real super committee at that time and the sense of pride to be chair at your own club was unbelievable”.

“We set-up a committee and all sorts of sub-committee’s and brought in a lot of very experienced people- probably one of the foremost of them was Jim Ferguson. We had three key areas that Linda and I decided were our priorities – the first was too reorganise the whole senior end of the club, the second was to seek to enhance the role of women within the GAA and Lámh Dhearg and the third was to redevelop the actual structure of the club- in terms of infrastructure of the field and facilities”.

“We started off at great guns and rattled a few cages in terms of trying to do things differently. We were so organised that we won the Club Maith Gold award and we were the first club in Ulster to win that. Subsequently, we went on to become the second club in Ulster to win the platinum Club Maith award – that was a huge part of our success”.

“We restructured the whole membership of the club- which was very difficult to sell to people. We were asking people to contribute £17 a month for membership- previously membership had been £5 a year for 20-years. We brought in huge amounts of money into the club through membership and created a structure. We had Development Committees, a Youth Committee, a new Coiste na nÓg and also did a lot around creating a Committee for Infrastructure and Developing Facilities”.

“We recreated the language and there was a rebirth of language. At the time that we were involved in senior committee we had a great person in Orla Fitzsimons. With Orla’s guidance the club started to rebuild in the cultural and language end of the club and it’s going from strength to strength. The amount of Irish language that you hear around the club is brilliant”.

“Along with Jim Ferguson and quite a few others- we pulled this group together and we decided to try and get a grant to try and tidy up around the club. We did a lot of work in refurbishing the actual club house- a huge amount of work. We built the 3G pitch and the Highway to Health around the club and then the children’s park at the top of the club. All this was done through grant aid – about a million-pound worth of input into the club and we started the process of seeking to develop a second field”.

“At that point I was done out and I decided that it was time for me to step down and let younger people come on board and do the same thing. I stepped away and thank god I did because about a year later I became very sick and took a stroke and that was me out of things. I haven’t really been as involved in the club since, but you’ve got to watch your health”.

“it was a very exciting time and during that time we won the Intermediate Hurling Championship and the Ulster minor football Championship. Things were really starting to kick-off, we had one of the best Intermediate hurling teams in the county and to achieve what we achieved was unbelievable. For my own two lads to play and be a part of winning the competition that I won myself- was a great boost to me”.

“It was a time to great excitement- we generated a lot of money and brought in a huge amount of people- who previously wouldn’t have been involved and that was particularly a lot of women around Hannahstown and the surrounding areas. That created a huge difference in the club in terms of how we were structured and how we got things done”.

“Winning the Ulster minor- again- was a fantastic achievement under Frank Fitzsimons jnr and Terry McCrudden snr. At that stage, we knew we had the nucleus of a really good team going forward. We were involved in getting Marty Lynch involved in Senior Football and that speaks volumes in terms of what has happened since. We’ve been in quite a few Championship finals and won one and unfortunately. If you look at our legacy- I think our legacy was the growth of our club and the potential for the future. We will win many more Championships”.

Health and Wellbeing and Safeguarding:

“At that stage I decided to step away and as I was stepping away- the outgoing chairman of Antrim (Jim Murray) had asked me to come onboard and set-up a health and wellbeing structure within the county. As much as I wanted to sit back and have a rest- I was pulled into the county scene and created a health and wellbeing department for Antrim GAA and was involved at Ulster level. Then subsequently- I moved to becoming the chair of the safeguarding committee in Antrim and I’m sitting on the Ulster committee for that and I’m currently on the national committee at Croke Park”.

“We oversee all the safeguarding in Ireland, and we’ve done a huge amount of work. It allowed me to open doors for the club to get in Croke Park to look at funding and things like that. The journey has been quite a long journey but something that was unbelievable and I’m proud to be involved in Lámh Dhearg as a player and a manager”.

“It’s been a great life and I have a saying that the GAA when I’m out training for safeguarding – the person that stands beside you on the pitch will be the person that brings you and walks you to your grave. It’s from cradle to grave and that’s the involvement that the GAA has for us. I think it’s the most fantastic organisation in the world- what other sport can say they have a team in every parish in Ireland? We have something like 2025 clubs across Ireland and that’s fantastic. Every parish has their own GAA club and their own history, their own culture and their own language”.

Management:

“I managed four or five teams, myself and Gerry McConville managed a team from U-12 right up to senior reserve level. We won the U-14 league and Championship, U-16 league and Championship, the minor league twice and were beaten in the Minor Final. We brought that team through to reserve football and then a lot of them played as senior footballers as team went on”.

“I’m chair of the safeguarding and committee and some of the stories would break every rule there is to be broken. I remember one of the trips away with the Minor Football team- we were in the semi-final of the Minor Football Championship and we took them away for a training weekend. It was an absolute disaster- everything we wanted them to do they didn’t do, and they were carrying on. I remember on the Saturday night in the Hotel and the boys came to us and said, ‘we want to go to a nightclub?’ I was sitting with Smickers- it was him and I running the team. Smickers looked at me and said what do you think, I said ‘absolutely lads- go for it’. They all went up to their rooms and about an hour later they all came down and asked, ‘where’s the nightclub?’ I said I don’t know lads you’s told me you’s were going. They said but ‘yous said we could go’ I said yes absolutely, and they asked, ‘where is it?’ I said 40 miles away. They asked, ‘how will we get there?’ I said yous will need to get a taxi, they asked ‘how much it would cost?’ I said about £30 and they said, ‘Barney go eff yourself’”.

“They were all dressed up with nowhere to go and we took them somewhere – we took them to chapel. It’s a hell of a difference from going to a nightclub to going to chapel. They all had a shirt and tie on, and we took them to mass at Glencolmcille and got them up at 5 o’clock the next morning. They were running round the hotel all night up to all sorts of stuff they shouldn’t have been doing. I told them to enjoy yourselves but we’re getting up early in the morning”.

“At 5 o’clock we had them up running the roads and the hills of Donegal and then down onto the beach. To get revenge on me- they all striped down and ran about the beach and the water. I remember a couple walking past us and they said there’s dirty young fellas in the water. This man said it’s a lovely morning isn’t it. You couldn’t have made it up”.

“John Quinn, Stevie Bunting snr and I managed the senior reserve team for a few years and won a couple of leagues. I remember one day going to Ballycastle- we had the league more or less won and played Ballycastle- who are not known as a football team. Micky O’Neill (snr)was the referee and we beat McQuillan’s and won the league – I have to say the referee was definitely on our side. To say that Micky O’Neill cheated to make sure we won the league would be an understatement. They were all the types of things that we did, and I loved every minute of it”.

“Whilst I’m working at county and national level now- I will always be involved in the club and I’m hoping to come back in the next year or so and start off at juvenile level again and take a team. I want to come up through the sporting end of it again not so much the admin end of it”.

Brendan Herron (jnr):

“I can remember Brendan as a juvenile when we were first involved. There weren’t that many originally from the lower end down at Stewartstown, Lenadoon or Hillhead but they all used to meet on a Saturday morning at the library beside Greenways. The old minibus used to come down and pick us up. It was either Shanty, Shaker McGarry or Trooper Dan. Brendan, Ciaran and Micko used to be sitting there excited to go up to training or matches”.

“Brendan would have been a very different guy in many ways- he would have went into the library to get a book out while we’re outside pucking a ball about or kicking a football. I remember on a number of occasions- we went up to Hannahstown and said, ‘where’s Brendan? ’. we went back down the road and he would have  stile been sitting in the library reading a book. Brendan was probably one of the best footballers and hurlers we had in the club and it’s great to have another Brendan Herron in the club”.

Brendan Herron

“We used to walk up and get the bus at Greenways, we would have and stood there and would have been a crowd of us. Shaker McGarry picked us up in an old blue minibus. There was some craic at Greenways waiting for it and there would have been a crowd from Lenadoon. There used to be a wee woman that lived in Greenways and used to tell us to stop kicking footballs and chased us away from the wall outside her house. I just remember Saturday mornings, going up to the pitch and training. It was great”.

“The craic was great at the summer schemes- I was just thinking of who we would have ran about with. There was the McLarnon’s – Sean, Ciaran, Gerard and Mark and you’d have had all the Lynch’s as well. They would have been the main crowd of brothers and cousins we would have ran with. It was great that Ciaran, Michael and myself were able to play together, train together and on the same teams together from a young age”.

“I can remember underage- especially hurling- we always used to be in the B competitions. We always used to be in Division 2 and the B competitions- we had a really good team but in those days we would have been really big rivals with St Agnes’. I can remember many a battle against them in U-10 and U-12. One other good young memory would have been the U-12 Nipper Quinn hurling final – we played St Galls and they beat us, but it was a good memory to get to an U-12 A hurling final at that age”.

“Another good hurling memory for us growing up was winning the Ulster minor 7s. it would have been down in St Johns and Barry Armstrong would have taken us. It was another good achievement from a hurling point of view. We’d have beaten the likes of Loughgiel and St Johns and a lot of big teams at that stage to win that”.

“As we got older we started to become better and coming up into Division One and senior hurling championship and started to do better but in the early days we were definitely down the ladder a wee bit”.

Handball:

“Alex Fitzpatrick [RIP] had died there, and he would have been heavily involved and knocking about the handball when we were younger. I seen a photo on the club social media of John Dunne and a group of us playing handball when we were younger. John Dunne and the Lynches really brought the handball on in the club in those days”.

“When we were younger I had won two all-Ireland’s in U-15 singles, Michael had won, and Ciaran had won county and provincial Championships. It was a new thing for the club and brought great success to the club. I’d a lot of happy memories playing handball for the club and it’s great that there’s still involvement to this day with Raymond representing the Herron’s and the Lynch’s are still heavily involved in handball at the minute”.

Division One and Senior Hurling:

“I can remember at that stage when I was senior we always were a senior / intermediate team and you would have to give a lot of credit to Barry Armstrong and Peter Kane- who did a lot of coaching with us and kept the same group of boys from underage coming through. We developed and had a really good team at a stage, and we did make it into division one, I can remember at that time- me, Ciaran, Michael and Christy Tumelty all really playing well for the Antrim hurling team at that stage”.

“I can remember playing Division One league – we held our own with most teams and for a lot of players we had the same age profile that came from underage. We good a good team at that stage but probably didn’t have the 15 or 20 players that you needed of a real high standard to be staying up and competing and division one and senior championship”.

“You would always have your day in the sun (or the lashing rain being in Hannahstown) you had that great result against Cushendhall in the senior hurling championship and we’d good results against St Johns. But we’d some tough days as well- I remember we played Dunloy at one stage up in Dunloy and it was a tough day”.

Intermediate hurling Championship:

“I would say in terms of winning things with the club for hurling- the Intermediate hurling Championship would have been the best. I think a few years before that- St Galls beat us in 2009 and it was probably one we let slip. We probably should have won Intermediate long before we did win it. But I thought when we did win Intermediate; we didn’t push on. Middletown beat us in the Ulster semi-final at Casement and I thought we could have pushed on and built upon it, but we didn’t really”.

“I always thought we had a brilliant core of 7-10 players, and you could compete with anybody with those 7-10 players, but it was trying to get the panel to compete with Division One teams in a 15-a side match”.

Senior Football and Championship heartache:

“It’s always going to be the biggest regret of me not winning a senior Championship – we’d a lot of close calls. The first year we got to the final and St Galls beat us after a replay in 2003. I think they won their first the year before that, so it was their second year of winning it. They went on to win a lot and I often think if we’d have beat them at that stage- would we have went onto win some more trophies rather than them to went on to win all the trophies”.

“We got beat against Cargin the 2006 final, we got beat by a point after extra-time. It was hard one because I thought we were the better team in the match and should have won. It was one that definitely got away”.

“It was great to see the boys- even though I wasn’t part of it- it was great to see them winning it a few years ago against St Johns up in Glenavy. It was hard to watch but it was great to see them winning it after all those years of just missing out”.

Decision to move-on and Ballinascreen:

“It was tough decision at the time, but it was the right decision because at that stage I was living up in Ballinascreen and had just taken a new job up in Derry and Altnagelvin. Everything was going away from Belfast in terms of where I was living and where I was working so for me to finish work at Altnagelvin and drive for over an hour and a half down to train- wasn’t going to work at that stage because I had a young family as well and it wasn’t the right time to be playing for the club- even though it was a hard decision”.

“I still wanted to play a lot of football and hurling, and I decided to join Ballinascreen- not because I didn’t want to play for the club anymore. But it was more that it suited me at the time. It was better for the work-life balance, I could still train hard and not be exhausted. It was a great way to integrate into the local community – I got to meet a lot of people and it was a great club and they welcomed me in first time. I had a lot of happy years playing for Ballinascreen as well – but it was always tough to leave your own club and especially tough watching your own team win the Championship”.

“Even last year- we had a great run in the Championship last year- but I can tell you; I didn’t go and watch one single Championship match last year. It just got to the stage where I couldn’t watch them, but It may be made my decision to come back to the club this year because I just missed it so much. My kids are a wee bit older now and aren’t needing as much looking after so there’s a bit more time for me”.

Unfinished business ?

“Definitely, I always said to myself, Patricia and the wee-un’s that I wanted to go back and play for my own club before I retired. I stopped playing last year and wasn’t playing for Ballinascreen. I really missed it- after playing football and hurling for so many years- it’s a big void to fill. Even though I wasn’t playing I was still training away by myself and I still felt fit. I had no injuries and I still felt really good, so I said to myself- what’s the point in stopping now and retiring whenever you still have so much left to give?”

“I wanted to go back and play for the club for one more year before I retired. They’d such a good year last year and I thought it would good to go back and see if I’d anything left to offer, even if it was a just bit here and there or maybe coming on in parts of games. I just thought I would give it a go and see what’s what and not put too much pressure on myself”.

“It was great to get back training at the start of the year – it was great craic and still some of the boys that I would have played with. The likes of Micko, Paddy [Cunningham] and Conor [Murray]. It was great and I was looking forward to a great year until the coronavirus hit”.

“I can’t see anything happening until the summertime- maybe we’ll play a wee bit of the league and then hopefully Championship by August time. Hopefully everything will be settled down a good bit so maybe we’ll get a Championship played but there won’t be the extent of a league that there would have been in years gone by”.

Representing the County:

“Ciaran played one season for the footballers but didn’t enjoy it as much as the hurling and Micko played for a season as well. But it was great that the three of us were playing in the county hurling team- it was brilliant. There was great bond between the three of us and we would have travelled to training together and it was great on the pitch to line out together. You were very proud to play with your two brothers”.

“I think there’s a photo up in the living room at home of the three of us before a match in Wexford Park against Wexford and different photos on the wall at home of us after winning the Ulster hurling Championship and lining out at Croke Park. It was great that the three of us were able to line out on the same team- it definitely was”.

“I spent the summer of 2002 in San Francisco and 2003 was my first year on the panel. But when we played Wexford in the All-Ireland quarter final, I was on the subs bench because it was my first year on the panel. In 2004 it was a big one against Cork and a couple of days before hand Ciaran was having a puck-about on the sideline with Paddy-Joe at the club he got hurt. I was very disappointed for Ciaran to miss out. I can remember getting ready for the Cork match and Dinny Cahill was going mad and winding things up in the media. Cork just tore us apart that day in Croke Park and they were playing out of skins and I think they won the All-Ireland that year”.

“That would have been my first time playing senior hurling Championship in Croke. I would have played minor in Croke before and maybe played league matches in Croke but that was the first senior hurling Championship. I was doing corner-back that day and I think I played well enough that day and enjoyed the experience. Whenever I was playing in Croke- I never seemed to be nervous, it was just more excited. I never seemed to be nervous the few times that I did end up playing in Croke – it was more just the excitement rather than the nerves”.

GAA family:

“I come from a real GAA family, I remember the early days when I was younger and going up to watch my Da play some matches- which was great. There is always a lot of Herron’s involved in the club- my uncle Michael, uncle Barney and it was great that they were involved. Raymond was more into the hurling- that maybe got us interested more in the hurling because my Da really wouldn’t have been into the hurling much at all. He would have been more into the football. Maybe Raymond spurred on the interest in hurling for us. Patrick came along last and when me, Ciaran and Michael would have been involved in the County in the early days – When Dinny Cahill was involved Patrick would have come along to the matches and done stick-boy at the matches and they would have been good memories as well”.

Herron Hotel:

“They were great days- the boys from the club were all great and good fellas. There was messers and great craic but there was no badness in any of them. You’d have a lot of time for them and there wouldn’t have been any bad eggs that you would say or wouldn’t have wanted about you. You’d have had no problem inviting the boys to the house and having a bit of craic because you knew they weren’t going to wreck the place. You always had some great banter and great stories as well”.

“You always used to love the craic in the club after winning a Championship match or winning something. There would have been boys dancing on top of pool tables and putting tiles through on the roof on one occasion after winning the Intermediate Championship. It would have been a great nights craic. There was no better feeling than winning Championship games back in those times that we were pretty successful in Championship- even though we didn’t win one we were always getting to semi-finals and finals and we would have had a lot of Championship victories over the years”.

“One of the best wins we had would have been the night we beat Portglenone in the semi-final back in 2003. I think Portgleone were six-points up at half-time and we came back and beat them by a point. It was one the best come-backs and wins that we had- it was a very good Portglenone team at the time. It was the first year we got to the final and it was a great nights craic in the club afterwards and it was always great celebrating those good victories”.