THE new bulkhead lamp flooded the garden with gentle and meant enjoying soccer was now probable all-yr-spherical for young John Rafferty.
With summertime extensive absent, he performed out one more All-Eire closing in the frosty darkness. As his prized O’Neills ball bounced down off the barn roof, he leapt to catch it and then took off on a solo run down the lawn, leaving imaginary opponents on their backsides.
Micheal O’Hehir commentated in his head: ‘A moment still left in the All-Eire final, a moment to go and here’s John Rafferty on the assault for Aaarrrr-magh… He beats one male, he beats another… Even now Rafferty… He shoots…’
SMACK!! The ball hammered off the byre door and Croke Park erupted… Victory for Armagh!
Then he went in for his tea.
That story will not surprise any individual, from group-mates to neighbours, colleagues, club gamers, county gamers and generations of schoolboys at La Salle, the Abbey and St Paul’s, who has been fortunate ample to expend time with John Rafferty. His passion for football is insatiable, his energy is outstanding, his profession as a participant and a manager has been amazing and the seeds for it all were being sown in that yard powering his household household on Church Avenue, Poyntzpass.
And they were sown just before John’s time. He traces his enthusiasm for soccer back to the sad day when his grandmother “took a turn” in that lawn. She was taken indoors by his late father Benedict (affectionately acknowledged as ‘Bim’) but passed absent soon afterwards.
“Daddy carried her in and laid her on the sofa and as she was dying she instructed him: ‘You continue to keep next the soccer son, it’s great for you’,” he explains.
“When I glance back now, I consider: ‘Lord God, I’m so blessed to have satisfied the persons I did via football’ and the luck that was brought to me all boiled down to the reality that daddy hung on to his mother’s dying words and stored adhering to the football.
“And when he adopted Armagh, he definitely adopted them. When no one adopted them, when hardly anyone even preferred to engage in for them, he would have been there.”
It are not able to be around-emphasised just how truly devoted Bim Rafferty was to Armagh. The team’s fortunes were being at these a reduced ebb at one stage that he was known as out of the stand to perform in a National League video game at the time – he agreed and was using his place on the discipline when some delayed players arrived and bailed him out.
He drove his Morris Marina select-up van up and down the nation with John’s uncle Ownie (the late Eugene Murchan) in the passenger seat of and John slotted in involving them, just delighted to be there.
“I had one knee at the back again of daddy’s seat and the other just one throughout where the handbrake would have been,” John describes.
“That’s exactly where I was perched on a cushion and we went to matches in all places – I’ve been to county finals in Kildare, straddling the handbrake, in advance of there was an M1!”
A natural ball of enthusiasm and strength, looking at Television just was not for him. Gaelic Football was his passion and his loved ones nurtured his love for it. His sister Roisin’s spouse Dennis (a PE teacher in Claremorris, Mayo) arrived a single day with a exclusive reward – an O’Neills All-Ireland soccer. That treasured ball not often remaining John’s arms and after kickabouts with his close friends he would consider the O’Neills dwelling and clean it.
“All summer season we played and then daddy put up the bulkhead mild up at the bottom of our garden which meant that soccer was an all-calendar year-spherical occurrence,” he says with a chortle.
Technically there had been couple much better but at St Colman’s College, Newry he states he was “too wee and way too skinny” to get significantly match-time. Having said that, as an eager squad member he absorbed every word that came out of the mouths of coaches Ray Morgan and Pete McGrath.
In the meantime, at property he played slight football for his local club, Redmond O’Hanlon’s, aged 11 and was in the senior staff at 15 and his tender age and slender frame were being no security from the ‘agricultural’ huge battlers who plied their trade in Division 4.
“It was a great grounding,” suggests John.
“You had to learn rapidly. Possibly you made a side-action or a fantastic partnership with a dentist. A person or the other. I in no way appreciated going to the dentist, so I made the decision to work on my sidestep!”
That sidestep came in handy at residence way too for the reason that John had to appear up with devious strategies for fooling his dad who wasn’t eager on his teenage son mixing it with burly opponents from all-around the county.
“I was that skinny, I believe daddy was trying to guard me and he utilized to say: ‘Would you wash the van for me?’ on a Sunday. I would say: ‘I’m heading to go to the ’Pass (Poyntzpass) match’ and he’d say: ‘Yes, you can go if you have the van washed’.
“I keep in mind washing 1 50 % of it, the fifty percent daddy could see from the kitchen window. I reported: ‘Is that ok?’ ‘That’s a great work,’ he explained.
“I applied to fall the bag out of the bed room window at the entrance of the home and head for the backdoor and say: ’I’m away to the match here’.
“He didn’t see a kitbag so he thought then I was not enjoying. I went spherical the entrance of the dwelling, grabbed my bag and ran about the road.”
But John was shortly a sufferer of his personal success. Stories of a excellent goal towards Forkhill produced the report in the regional paper.
“That’s a tarra,” mentioned Bim, with a contact of sarcasm, following examining it. “That could not have been you, positive you remaining the residence with no boots!”
He was rumbled but his dad permit him enjoy just after that.
By the time he remaining St Colman’s and enrolled as a trainee instructor at St Mary’s, Belfast he had numerous seasons of senior soccer behind him and some meat on his bones to go alongside with his tempo and seemingly bottomless health ranges.
Together with former St Colman’s crew-mates Benny Tierney, Ollie Reel, Cathal Murray and Jarlath Burns, he won the Sigerson Cup with ‘the Ranch’ in 1989. He was named Player of the Tournament and Bim was there to cheer him on in the closing from UCC.
With tears not far away, he describes: “One of the loveliest factors I have is a photograph of me and daddy immediately after we gained the Sigerson.
“Things went properly for me that working day. I was marking Maurice Fitzgerald and Maurice and me experienced a ‘getting to know you’ session and I felt I had a very good sport.
“Daddy arrived around and gave me a massive hug following the match. I was so happy that he was there because he died later on that calendar year.
“It was some working day, a terrific working day. It’s a memory I’ll take to my grave and it doesn’t get any considerably less significant to me as time creeps on by.”
Tragically, Bim Rafferty died instantly of a heart-assault just after Christmas in 1989. The St Mary’s Sigerson group, lifelong good friends to this working day, shaped a guard of honour outdoors the chapel in Poyntzpass at his funeral on New Year’s Day, 1990.
By then John was on the fringes of the Armagh side. He experienced been an unused substitute for the ‘Battle of Omagh’ against Tyrone in the 1989 Ulster Championship and of course Bim – his inspiration, mentor and most fervent supporter – was there, but sadly he hardly ever got to see his son dress in the orange jersey in a League or Championship match. How proud he would have been if he experienced!
“If he’d received another pair of yrs he would have noticed me participate in in opposition to Down in ’92 and I did not miss any Championship soccer until I was dropped for the All-Eire semi-closing in ’99 (much more about that later),” says John.
“I would enjoy for him to have observed me perform for Armagh, but it wasn’t to be.”
John was invited back again into the Armagh panel for the Nationwide League in advance of Xmas in 1990 and the adhering to summer the Orchardmen have been drawn versus Tyrone in the Championship as soon as again. This time, on dwelling soil and encouraged by Kieran McGurk, they received but without his dad there, John felt not able to be a part of in the celebrations. Soon right after that he dropped out of the panel and it seemed the younger person desired time to grieve.
“I try to remember sitting in the changingroom and despite the simple fact that Armagh experienced received the recreation, I felt this emptiness for the reason that daddy was not there,” he states.
“I couldn’t cope with it. The middle experienced been pulled out of my soccer world. In this article I was on the Armagh panel but with no daddy there to enjoy it, I just didn’t get pleasure from it so I pulled out.
“Armagh went to the Ulster ultimate that yr but I don’t have just one regret, my heart wasn’t it. He was the reason I was sitting down in that changingroom but he wasn’t there.”
So he took the time out he necessary and returned to the fold the next time. He experienced to bide his time and sitting down on the bench became program but the breakthrough came versus Roscommon at Lurgan’s Davitt Park.
“Joe Kernan told me to warm-up and after a handful of minutes he mentioned: ‘Get that tracksuit off you, you are coming on’.
“I was that applied to sitting down freezing in the dugout that, underneath the Armagh tracksuit, I experienced my very own tracksuit on. I acquired the 1st just one off and started pulling at the next one and some wit from Lurgan shouted around the wire: ‘This activity will be around by the time you get all them clothing off!’
“Anyway, I arrived on and I experienced a right fantastic sport. I bear in mind likely for a ball against this massive mountain of a man. I didn’t pull out, I really do not feel he envisioned me to retain coming but I arrived out with the ball.”
From then on he was a sure-starter and profitable that ball towards Roscommon summed up John Rafferty’s footballing mind-set. He is iron painted as wood, with a authentic smile and a term for all people but an unshakeable will. At his peak he was about 11 and-a-50 % stone and just shy of 5’10” but his absolute fearless commitment intended he was not uncovered seeking in the physical stakes. With the ball in his palms he was brief and technically great and as a defender he was (to say the minimum) dogged – he was provided a male-marking career in opposition to Down’s James McCartan and used 50 %-time waiting outdoors the Down dressingroom for McCartan prior to walking back again onto the area with him!
“I was no wrecking equipment,” he states.
“But I never hit the brakes heading for a ball. I knew that I experienced to go for it as tough as I could or not go for it at all. When you’re wired to go for it, which is what you do and it is as straightforward as that and if I was questioned to mark you, I marked you.
“If you wished to participate in football I could do that and if you preferred to give terrible manners and the other have-on, I could accommodate that too.”
By the get started of the 1992/93 season, Jim McCorry and John Morrison had taken more than the Armagh reins and they appointed John county captain: “Leading Armagh out at Irvinestown in 1993 was a higher, it was beautiful,” he claims.
Armagh played 6 Ulster Championship matches that summer time and by no means received further than the semi-closing (Derry gained the All-Ireland that 12 months taking part in five matches) but they arrived at the Countrywide League final the following yr and step by step began to build. By 1999, with Brian Canavan and Brian McAlinden now in the dugout, the Orchardmen finished a 17-12 months wait for the Ulster title by beating Down in a one-sided final.
The county was Armagh-mad as the squad well prepared for an All-Ireland semi-last from Meath and the scene seemed established for John to star in a true-lifestyle Croke Park repeat of the yard games of his youth. Only, it did not happen…
The administration decided to go a further way for the remaining and John was left out of what would have been the largest activity of his job. Activity can be cruel and possibly the Armagh management said more than: “You’re not significant plenty of, or powerful enough” when they advised him he’d been dropped on the Thursday night prior to the activity. But that’s all John remembers from the conversation.
“It was disappointing to hear that provided that I’d played in the Countrywide League semi-closing and semi-closing replay in opposition to Dublin in the spring and I’d completed alright,” he suggests.
“So to be still left out and told I was not significant ample, my fast response was: ‘Well there’s no level in heading on Sunday’.”
His spouse Catherine convinced him to pack his gear and board the bus for Dublin but it was a soulless expertise for a gentleman who experienced put in close to a 10 years in the group but realized he would not element in the match.
“I disagreed with the selection at the time and I however do due to the fact I was taken off the team and replaced by folks who hadn’t been there at the start out of the Countrywide League simply because Armagh was not important sufficient for them at that time,” he claims.
“Is it a bitter notice? No, due to the fact it was not my oversight. It didn’t destroy me, so it created me more robust and I did not drop-out with possibly Brian above it.”
Armagh missing the sport and John in no way performed for his county once again. It was a drab way to shut the chapter but it wasn’t the stop, not by a prolonged shot. By that 1999 period he was again actively playing with his native club in Poyntzpass but right before then he’d put in 10 fruitful seasons with Antrim’s St Gall’s in which he gained Antrim titles in 1990 and 1993 is however regarded as a club legend as participant and supervisor (much more about that on Monday).
“I was so blessed to go there,” he suggests.
“The very first fella I fulfilled from St Gall’s was Sean McGourty – he was my head of division when I begun instructing in La Salle in Belfast. As human beings go, they never get any improved than him.
“The fellas I performed with were these types of very good gentlemen – Seamus McGoran, Peter Stewart, Lenny Harbinson… all excellent fellas. I had 10 years playing there but it obtained to the phase the place I had kids and I could not be tramping up the street to Belfast all the time but I was a incredibly fortunate person to get to play for St Gall’s and win two championships (1990 and 1993).”
As transfers tend to do, his change from O’Hanlon’s to St Gall’s had caused consternation but he was welcomed again to the Poyntzpass club with open arms and performed until eventually he was 45. By the time he’d lastly hung up his boots his son Joseph was a group-mate in the O’Hanlon’s jersey.
“I definitely relished participating in for the ’Pass when I went back,” he states.
“I would have liked to have performed in a remaining for the club (he did get to a semi-ultimate) but I did acquire two Division 4 medals and they indicate as significantly to me as the two championship medals I gained with St Gall’s and the Ulster Championship medal I bought with Armagh.”
His very last match was for O’Hanlon’s Masters as opposed to Ballyvarley Masters late in 2018 to mark 120 years’ of GAA in Poyntzpass and the pleasure he has for the recreation shone via that night time like it generally had. He’ll normally be that boy, taking part in underneath Bim’s bulkhead light…