Damien Gavin: ‘Captain Fantastic’ of history-making 1995 minor side
For some counties accustomed to success at senior level, the winning of an All-Ireland minor football title may not register as a hugely significant achievement.
But in success-starved Westmeath the moment when Damien Gavin held aloft the Tom Markham Cup on September 17, 1995 will be a memory which they will bring with them to their graves.
A native of Rochfortbridge, Damien, who turns 44 next month, is now back living in his home village for almost a year (“we moved in the day that the first lockdown started”) with his wife Claire (a native of County Clare) and their three children, daughter Liadán and twin sons, Cillian and Conor, and he is well and truly immersed in promoting Gaelic football in his homeland, both male and female, with his three children now reliving his underage footsteps with the St Mary’s club.
A son of Westmeath parents, Colm (from Dalystown, a former Westmeath hurler and a key member of the all-powerful St Brigid’s team in the late 1960s/early 1970s, he was a St Mary’s footballer of note to boot) and the late Miriam (a member of the well-known Bagnall family from Rochfortbridge, she sadly died a little over seven years ago).
His parents came from what Damien correctly describes as “two great GAA families”. The youngest of three – he has a sister Deirdre and a brother Alan (a fine footballer himself in his day and now installed as St Mary’s, Rochfortbridge manager for 2021) – Damien was immersed in football even as a young boy, as he explains: “Our teachers in Rochfortbridge National School, Rita Clarke and Michelle Dardis, both had a great interest and we never seemed to stop playing. My dad and JJ O’Connor RIP (“he was a gentleman”) also helped out. We got to a Cumann na mBunscol final but lost to Mount Temple when Kenneth Buckley scored three goals. It was one of those milestones that you never forget.”
Damien then made the short trip to St Joseph’s for his secondary education. He takes over again: “Danny Reddin, Luke Dempsey and Adrian Lee ran the football, and Adrian ran the basketball too and I ended up winning an All-Ireland under him. We always had good enough footballers locally and from the likes of Rhode. We had been relatively strong at ‘B’ level and made the big step-up to ‘A’ in my Leaving Cert year.
“We lost to Marist by a point in a knockout championship match in Ballinagore and Joe Fallon kicked the winning point. Tom Stuart Trainor was on that side also and Gary Connaughton was in goals. I attended last year’s Leinster ‘A’ final when St Joseph’s won and I was delighted for Luke, as we are still in regular touch. They had a very talented squad of players.”
His first year as a Westmeath minor in 1994 saw him as a wing back on what many people felt (this scribe very much included) was a more talented side than the following year’s history-makers. However, after a first round win against Louth, a shock loss to Carlow in Dr Cullen Park ensued for a star-studded side in maroon and white.
“The team of 94 had won all round us as U16s. We took our eye off the ball that day. We had any amount of possession but lost by a point. It was one of my most disappointing defeats as we had a very talented panel,” Damien reflects.
Of course, 1995 was to prove to be an entirely different proposition, as Damien (installed as Westmeath captain by his secondary school coach) recalls: “Luke took over and he never put huge pressure on us. He would make an average player feel ten foot tall. He created a club atmosphere in a county team. There was an environment where we all gave everything for the guy beside us. That’s the way it worked between myself and Joe Casey at midfield. If a guy had a bad day, you could be sure he’d have a good one the next day. If you held one of our forwards, somebody else would do the scoring.”
Any Westmeath Gael in their mid-30s or older will recall the never-to-be-forgotten eight-match campaign with great clarity. Victories against a strong Wexford side in Portlaoise (the curtain-raiser to a very disappointing Leinster U21 final debut loss to Offaly), a power-packed win against Wicklow in Athlone (a day that yours truly was in the small crowd and could see enormous potential in the home team), a return to Portlaoise (for a hard-earned semi-final win against a good Longford side) meant that all roads led to Croke Park for a rare provincial final appearance on July 30.
That game proved to be the first of a trilogy which generated untold drama and three and-a-half hours of quality football, at the end of which Damien bridged a 32-year gap when, in front of delirious maroon and white-clad throngs, he received the Leinster minor cup in O’Connor Park from Albert Fallon, Leinster Council chairman and, ironically, himself a former St Mary’s footballer.
Both replays took place in Tullamore and, naturally, they generate great memories for Damien, who opines: “The first replay was especially good. Underage football is lovely to watch, as lads don’t have the same inhibitions and worries as in adult football. We were probably lucky enough in the second of the three games, but there was great fight in our team. In the third game, we were always on top.
“It was a great relief to finally win something. Looking back on it, the big crowds and the weather, everything was brilliant. When you finish a game and you see grown men crying – well it just gave the whole county a lift.”
Damien laughs when recalling his routine at the time of getting his hair cut the day before each match, leading Mullingar barber Mickey Daly to ask, ‘what can I do with this?’, when Tipperary beckoned in the All-Ireland semi-final on what was a fourth successive weekend’s action for the young men in maroon and white!
Declan Browne (“one of the most natural footballers you’d ever see”) and later to become a two-time All Star, was one of a couple of threats whom Damien and his colleagues had been warned about. However, “Shane Deering marked him out of it and kept him scoreless, and Declan spent more time chasing after Shane than the other way round!” Ironically, Tipp’s top scorer on the day, Brian Maguire now resides in Westmeath and was a teammate of Damien in recent years in masters’ football.
Deering was also the headline-maker on All-Ireland final day, but this time in a more demonstrative way with his last-ditch rugby-style tackle on Derry captain Johnny McBride saving Westmeath’s precarious two-point advantage. Damien opines: “Shane’s timing was exceptional, even at training – and he wasn’t that fond of training! – but he was a great athlete, and you don’t want to be sitting down after a final wondering ‘if only’.
“The game was a blur and was not one of my best performances, but Joe Casey starred beside me.”
Damien has a clear pre-match recollection of the scheduled garda escort not showing up at the West County Hotel. “We were relaxed but Luke and the management team were clearly nervous as we were driving along the quays up against the clock,” he adds.
The following day at the meal in the Burlington Hotel, Damien sat beside senior captains John O’Leary (Dublin) and Ciaran Corr (Tyrone), and the aforementioned McBride continuously said to the winning minor skipper, ‘I can’t believe ye beat us’, and Damien consistently replied, with more than a hint of satisfaction, “I can’t believe it myself!”
Joyous scenes ensued that Monday evening, as Damien recalls: “The crowd in Mullingar Town Park – it was surreal for an 18-year-old. It goes over your head a bit, and then the tour around the county with the cup over the following days.”
Damien went on to play for three years on the county U21 team, with very good Meath teams proving to be the spoilsports in both 1996 (provincial semi-final) and 1997 (final). Yours truly still raves about Trevor Giles’ display in the 1996 encounter and Damien also recalls it vividly, when unhesitatingly naming the Skryne legend as his toughest opponent.
“I was told not to let him out of my sight, and we were marking each other at midfield. He was a very intelligent footballer who had everything – a great engine and he could read a game. He had all the skills and was a really nice fellow as well. He ghosted away from me for a few seconds to score the decisive goal. His timing was brilliant,” Damien states.
The 1998 first round loss to Dublin in Cusack Park, with almost the entire 1995 minor side on board, was as heart-breaking as it was unexpected, long before the Metropolitans began to dominate Leinster. “To lose at underage is slightly worse than at adult level. We had no fear of any county then and that day was me finished with underage. I was bitterly disappointed,” he reflects.
Damien graduated to the inter-county senior set-up as expected and he had one year under Barney Rock (“a very good coach”). His successor, Brendan Lowry (“very professional – he was all about the players”) lasted three years before the inevitable handing over of the bainisteoir’s bib to Luke Dempsey. The Kildare man’s first year brought Division 2 success with Damien at wing back when a fine Cork team was overturned in the Croke Park decider.
There followed an eight-match championship adventure which still brings smiles to the faces of diehard Lake County fans two decades later – except when the name Ollie Murphy is mentioned!
“Under Luke, we had belief that we could compete against anybody. We had a fantastic team in 2001. Ger Heavin was still playing, he was brilliant with young players, and that year was a breakthrough despite the Meath defeats. Maybe we were a bit naïve, but we learned from that year. Our confidence was building and building. With Luke, it was evolution rather than revolution as he kept introducing players,” Damien states about a campaign where he is fondly remembered for coming on as a sub and fisting the winning point in a packed Dr Hyde Park in an epic fourth round Qualifier win against Mayo.
Of course, 2001 was the first year of the ‘back door’ in Gaelic football. Damien feels the system has gone stale, opining: “It needs freshening up. It gave a team a chance to get back in and regain momentum, but the days of big shocks in the ‘back door’ are gone now.”
Luke Dempsey’s second and third years at the helm failed to generate the same buzz for players and fans alike. “Some lads, including myself, wanted Luke to stay on. The feeling was that we had a great chance to win something at senior level, but there were different factions. Luke saw this and knew he wouldn’t win the battle,” Damien reflects.
Accordingly, enter one Páidí Ó Sé, complete with eight Celtic Crosses as a player, and two Sams garnered as a manager with his beloved Kingdom. And the buzz certainly returned to Westmeath football! After a disjointed National League campaign (‘OBE’ talk and all that), “when the championship arrived, it was like a switch was tripped out in Shandonagh. Páidí was the first man togged out kicking balls. He was such a strong character, because of who he was he could call people out and they couldn’t answer him back.
“If anyone else took over that group, I’m not sure that we would have gone on to win the Leinster. He was the right man at the right time. He gave us a kick up the backside and he brought great organisation. I wouldn’t say he was a fantastic coach or trainer, but he surrounded himself with good people.”
None more so than his right-hand man and physical trainer, Tomás Ó Flatharta, of whom Damien recalls: “Tomás held the whole thing together. The players had put a focus on Division 1, but the intensity at training for championship was colossal. You were literally fighting for your place. There was a lot of talent for him to work with and he was a really ruthless trainer.
“Our training matches were ferocious with lads knocking lumps out of each other, but that’s what you need to be at. We thought he was a psychopath at the start, but he was an absolute gentleman! He was exactly what we needed. ‘If you’re not in fully, there’s the gate’ – that was his attitude.”
The rest of the summer of 2004 is well-documented history. Remarkably, despite being in their athletic prime, only four of the 1995 minors featured in the 2004 senior success, including Damien (“Donal O’Donoghue came in and had a great year at full back where I was contending for a place”). All four were unused subs throughout a six-match campaign, the fifth of which saw David O’Shaughnessy famously become the first Westmeath man to lift the Delaney Cup after reigning champions Laois had been dethroned.
The sixth was a galling loss to Derry in the All-Ireland quarter-final. “It was very disappointing as we were good enough to get to a final. We were brutal that day up to the last 10/15 minutes. After the Leinster success, there was a hangover in more ways than one,” Damien states with refreshing honesty.
The ‘hangovers’ carried on into a largely forgettable 2005, with a second round Qualifier exit at the hands of Clare in the ‘other’ Cusack Park prompting Paidí’s return to Ventry (“he was not the same man in 2005”) and the end of Damien’s Westmeath career at the relatively young age of 28. “From 2001 to 2004, we were as good as anybody in the country.
Indeed, for a ten-year period from the mid-90s to the mid-‘noughties’ there was a huge amount of talent in the county. At club games, people would be asking, ‘how is so-and-so not on the county panel?’ We probably didn’t realise how good we had it and, in some ways, we under-achieved a bit. But looking back is not going to benefit any of us,” Damien suggests.
Unsurprisingly, Damien’s career with St Mary’s, Rochfortbridge lasted much longer. Indeed, he laughs when questioned on the topic, instantly replying: “I still haven’t retired! I played in goals for our junior ‘B’ team a few years ago for a few games, in my early 40s. It all started as a kid when we got to a Division 1 Féile final and lost to St Loman’s, with Kenny McKinley and Keith Glennon on board. We were managed by my father.
“Over the years, the club has come on in leaps and bounds. I started on the intermediate team aged 18 as my parents didn’t want me to play any younger than that. That year (1995) we won the final by beating Kilbeggan. I was sent off in that game, funnily enough! David Mitchell and Damien Healy helped to power that team.
“St Mary’s were very good at feeding underage players into Westmeath teams. I played for the club for 20 years, and there is nothing like playing. We won the intermediate again in 2004, but a changing of the guard with players saw us drop down to junior. We won that out in 2008 and got to the Leinster junior final.
“That was one of my most enjoyable years. The pressure was off, and we won in Westmeath relatively easily. We played four games in Leinster, all of them at home, but we lost the final to Moynalvey. The whole village was at those games. Everyone rowed in behind things after that and a big effort went into underage. There is something special about winning with your club and celebrating with people whom you know all your life,” Damien adds.
St Mary’s have been a traditional powerhouse in ladies’ football and Damien was honoured to be joint manager with David Mitchell and Ken Berry of the 2019 side which won the Westmeath senior championship. Berry and himself guided the side to a two in-a-row last year and they remain in charge for an assault on a hat-trick of titles when Covid restrictions permit.
“Initially, I just agreed to give a dig out, but it became so enjoyable I got more and more involved. The ladies and gents are in together in our club. It is very honest football, as the girls just go for it,” he states, before jovially adding, “I got promoted from coaching the boys U7s to the U9s – ‘crowd control’ as Tom Stuart Trainor calls it!”
Now entering his fourth year as Westmeath U20 manager – the second and third ended with unlucky defeats to Laois – Damien cut his teeth as a selector with neighbours Tyrrellspass under the management of Alan Mangan, leading to “a lot of slagging over our local rivalry. Unfortunately, we came up against St Loman’s at their best. Coaching is the next best thing to playing, but the most important group of people in any club or county is the players.”
His first year as U20 manager will be remembered for ‘the Finbar Coyne saga’ when Damien was also a senior selector under Colin Kelly (“one of the best coaches I ever worked with, but the atmosphere in the camp wasn’t always right”). Indeed, Damien points out that he has “always tried to emulate Luke by creating a good atmosphere” wherever he has managed.
He feels privileged to have played with a plethora of outstanding Westmeath footballers. “At the start, you had the likes of Ollie Keating, John Murray, Ger Heavin and Jack Cooney, followed by Dessie (Dolan), Paul Conway, John Keane, Rory (O’Connell), Damien Healy, Michael Ennis, Alan Mangan and ‘Flan’ (Martin Flanagan) from that five/six year period in the ‘noughties’,” he states.
After leaving secondary school, Damien attended Maynooth University but left his science degree course to join An Garda Síochána, spending almost eight years in Dublin stations. He played Sigerson Cup football for three-year periods with both Maynooth and the Garda College.
“It was a very enjoyable competition, and the problem now is getting a slot for it, the same as the U20 grade. It is not an easy task to sort out fixtures”, he says, before jovially adding, “when you lose a game the first one that you blame is the ref, the second is the manager, and the third is the county board! It is totally unfair as they are all volunteers.”
Damien changed careers in August 2007. Having obtained a BA in Public Management and a BSc in Environmental Health and Safety Management he has had a number of jobs in related fields, and he will shortly be taking up a position as Health and Safety officer in the Midland Regional Hospital in Mullingar.
Last September marked the Silver Jubilee of Westmeath minor footballers’ All-Ireland victory. Covid-19 put paid to tentative plans to celebrate the event. In this regard, he concludes: “We might try and organise something when ‘normality’ returns. Minor Board secretary, Adrian Murray, as well as one of the selectors, JJ O’Connor, are sadly no longer with us, and as time goes on it’s hard to get lads together. But we’d still be in touch. That group will always be close.”
And it’s safe to say that they will always be very fondly remembered, individually and collectively, by Westmeath Gaels.
– Gerry Buckley