IT WAS JUST like old times.
Donegal and Meath were deadlocked at 1-14 apiece when Ryan McHugh found himself in possession and surrounded by three Meath jerseys. Paddy McBrearty was lurking behind him, anticipating McHugh’s next move. He knew the ball was coming.
Sure enough, the diminutive number 5 spun away from the traffic and slipped a pass to McBrearty who was stationed back on the 45m line. McHugh pointed towards the posts, signalling for his team-mate to have a pop. McBrearty didn’t need a second invitation.
Deep into injury-time, he sent the ball sailing between the posts. Never in doubt. McBrearty’s seventh point of the game sent Meath packing and edged Donegal into Round 4 of the qualifiers.
That score was 20 years in the making. Long before they became two of the finest footballers in the country, McHugh and McBrearty were a pair of kids with a dream.
They hail from Kilcar, a Gaeltacht village located on Donegal’s wild south west coast. For a place with less than 1500 inhabitants, Kilcar punches well above its weight on the inter-county scene with four senior All-Ireland winners hailing from the parish – Martin McHugh, James McHugh, Mark McHugh and McBrearty.
Coláiste na Carraig secondary school teacher Noel Ward first became aware of the McHugh-McBrearty double-act while they were 11-year-olds still plying their trade in primary school.
“I was told we had a crop of talented fellas due to come into Coláiste na Carraig that September,” Ward tells The42. “So I went down to the Aislann primary school where there was a national schools competition on to have a look at them.”
He was suitably impressed.
“Physically Paddy way bigger than everyone else when he was young. When the scores were needed he just upped the gear at will. He could carry the ball through numerous tackles and take the scores so handy as well. From day one his left foot was just unreal. The majority of the scores were coming from his left foot.
“Ryan would have played with Paddy the whole way through the ranks but he was incredibly small at the start.
“He used to get himself into the very best positions so when Paddy would run into a road-block, you could be guaranteed that Ryan would turn up in the right spot to get the ball. The minute Paddy would give it off he’d be looking for it back again! It was entertaining to watch that kind of thing. They’re still at it today.”
There’s virtually no hurling in Kilcar. It’s all Gaelic football with a bit of basketball thrown in for good measure to keep busy during the winter months. But curiously it was in hurling where McBrearty and McHugh won one of their first medals on the field of play together.
“It’s funny thinking back,” says Ward. “Their drive and competitiveness was serious. The only bit of hurling in Kilcar would be the bit they’d do in a Cúl Camp, but their hurling team in the national school won a county title that year.”
Ward had good reason to be excited. A native of the Four Masters club in Donegal town, he started teaching at Coláiste na Carraig in 2000. Success was slow to arrive.
“It was short straws in the school taking football teams for a while. We went down to B competitions in U14, U16 and even senior at one stage. I was thinking, now this would be some legacy!” he laughs.
“We had two of the strongholds of football in the county and it going down the swanny, there’d have been a big focus on me!”
The arrival of Mark McHugh and his classmates into the school sparked something of a revival. By the time Ryan and Paddy came on the scene a couple of years later, the school was experiencing a renaissance.
Not since the 1980s did they enjoy such success, when future All-Ireland winners James McHugh, Martin McHugh, Noel Hegarty and John Joe Doherty attended. For a school with just over 110 boys enrolled in total, it was quite the achievement.
“Paddy and Ryan’s group of players coming into the school kind of raised the bar for a lot of our young fellas. We only have small numbers but it was the rising tide that brought everything up in the school.
“They were still U16 when I had him on the team that won our first senior county title. Neilly Byrne and Paddy Boyle would have had a lot of time working with that group.
“In 2010 we won the county U14s, U16s and U18s. I don’t know if any other school has ever done that. They laid down the marker for the commitment and dedication that were required to win finals. You could never doubt their commitment. It was 100% the whole time.”
McBrearty and McHugh continued to blossom as footballers.
“We would play Ulster matches and they always had to commit two players to Paddy. There was no way they’d get away with leaving one man on him. Or they would soon find out that they needed the second man. At times that suited us because we played a sweeper system and we would go with a two-man full-forward line and leave them to work inside.
“In my time in the school, Ryan’s probably the best reader of the game I’ve ever seen. He could read a game phenomenal. He was so clever with how he’d position himself and get into the right spots.
“Paddy was always 14 on his back. It was always about scoring with Paddy. He’d never see himself anywhere else. Sometimes it took a bit of convincing to take him out the field to take the pressure off himself where there wouldn’t be two men on him. He could field with the best of them.”
Both players had their heads turned by other sports on different occasions. Carl McHugh, a close friend of the boys, signed for Reading in 2009. Ryan spent time on trial at the same club, while McBrearty had a short spell with Scottish giants Celtic.
McBrearty was heavily scouted by Aussie Rules agent Ricky Nixon around the same time, but the lure of playing for Donegal ultimately kept him at home.
“I would hazard a guess Paddy would be more of a home bird. At that stage when he was so young he was maybe not a street wise as other kids at that age, we were happy enough to see that he would stay and not head off to Australia.
“Sport was always going to play a huge role in Paddy McBrearty’s future anyway. You were wondering if it did get picked it would leave him with a bit of a dilemma. The general feeling was he’d stick around for club and county.
“Gaelic football is like religion around Kilcar, it’s everything. There’s no soccer club and I don’t think there ever will be. The only other sport that might put Gaelic football out a bit is basketball, but it’s the perfect off-season sport.
“Everybody is very much into Gaelic football in the area. It has a very strong tradition with past players.”
McBrearty joined illustrious company when he became the first Ulster footballer since Benny Coulter to play both minor and senior on the same day back in 2011.
Half an hour after Donegal’s interest in the Ulster U21 championship was ended by Cavan in March that year, a 17-year-old McBrearty left the Brewster Park dressing rooms and made his way into the car park.
Cavan had five points to spare over Donegal and would go on to lift their third provincial title at that grade in-a-row, but it was a stylish kid with a wand of a left foot that caught people’s attention.
Jim McGuinness was manager of both the U21s and seniors that year, and both squads had been training together in the spring. Now the U21 campaign was over, McBrearty’s focus would return to the county minors for the summer – or so he thought.
“It’s a pity you’re so young,” said McGuinness’s assistant Rory Gallagher told McBrearty as he packed his gear away. “You could play for the seniors.”
McBrearty didn’t pay much attention that night to what he thought was a throwaway comment from Gallagher. By the start of May he was a fully fledged senior inter-county footballer. And all during his Leaving Cert year.
“We were well aware of the demands on Paddy in school,” says Ward. “He was playing U16 and senior at the same time and then he was involved with county squads – that’s a tremendous commitment. You look at where he’s placed in Kilcar, if you go off to the county training it’s 11pm before you get home.
“Football a big thing for us in the school, but it was part a concerted effort not to be taking away from their time in school. Paddy McBrearty got a very good Leaving Cert. Without giving you his exact result he got over 400 points. He was a clear example of what can be achieved. You can have a demanding schedule playing sport and still manage to achieve a good Leaving Cert. It’s about good organising and time management.
“He wouldn’t have had any distractions outside of football. He doesn’t drink, there was never a case of a social thing going out on weekends. It was complete commitment to football.”
McBrearty shares the same birthday as Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. Under the careful guidance of McGuinness, it wasn’t long before McBrearty’s career rocketed into orbit.
When McGuinness led the county to All-Ireland glory in 2012, the school was one of McBrearty and Mark McHugh’s first stops with Gaelic football’s holy grail.
“It’s something we’re very proud of. In 2012 Paddy came in with Mark and they brought in the Sam Maguire to the school. Everyone in the school came out, staff, pupils, the whole lot. We went into the gym and we had one big photograph. That’s one of the first pictures you’ll see coming in the door of the school.
“Paddy’s solid proof good academic achievement can still be managed when he’s pursuing sport. That’s a very strong and positive signal to send out about it.”
McHugh took a few years longer to make the breakthrough, but his talent was always going to prevail. He made his debut in 2013 and his two goals in the 2014 All-Ireland semi-final against Dublin catapulted him to stardom.
Both runs and finishes were emblematic of the intelligence Ward spotted all those years ago when McHugh was still in primary school.
McHugh and McBrearty are now undoubtedly in the elite bracket of footballers in the country, but they remain humble characters off the field.
“Ryan and Paddy are very good role models. They’re totally grounded but they’d be treated like celebrities here as well because of the fact they’ve achieved so much.
“They’re very good with youngsters when they come back in, speaking to them and that sort of thing. Very level-headed, very sensible.”
Donegal head into battle with Galway today in a do-or-die clash at Markievicz Park. Win or lose, you can be sure the dynamic duo of McHugh and McBrearty will spearhead the Donegal challenge, joining forces to prize open the opposition defence.
Just like they’ve been doing since they were boys in Kilcar.
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Some loss to cork football but best of luck to him.
And hurling
He has bulked up!
Great if he comes home in the near future not sure if he is going to make it out there at the highest level.