From sticking posters on ESB poles to Sam Maguire - Glenswilly's first 40 years

This Saturday night at the Mount Errigal Hotel, Glenswilly GAA will have a dinner dance to celebrate their 40 years in existence, as they pay tribute to their All-Ireland winning captain Michael Murphy, who retired from inter-county football last year.

Little did they think when they were sticking hand-written posters up around the parish that it would come to this. Before Glenswilly’s formation, there was plenty of consideration although no collaboration as locals played with either St Eunan’s, Glenfin or Termon — the three clubs whose influence splintered the parish.

“I went to Termon but spent more time watching as there were no underage teams,” one of the founder members Manus McFadden recalls. “Lots of lads were not getting their chance and I felt we had enough players to form our own club.”

“Glenswilly isn’t a big parish, with between 300 and 400 houses,” as former manager Gary McDaid once said: “It’s a tiny village, Churchill, with a couple of pubs and there’s a club right in the middle of the Glen. That’s it.”

Skipping Brazil’s opening match of the World Cup against the Soviet Union, McFadden was joined on June 14, 1982, at Foxhall by Roger McDaid, Peadar Toner, Eamon McDevitt, John McGinley, Jimmy Joe McGinley and Charlie McFadden, as the late Eddie McDevitt, who managed the Donegal Vocational Schools team, chaired the first meeting. Joe Kelly, a Glenswilly native who was assistant manager of reigning county senior champions St Eunan’s, was also present.

“There were no laptops or mobiles,” John McGinley says. “I made posters publicising the meeting and stuck them to trees, ESB poles and lampposts. I gave one to the local papers and to the parish priest to announce at mass.
“At the meeting, there were a couple of negative comments. One man said there was no point in setting up a club as nobody from the Glen could ever agree on anything.

“Another pointed out we hadn’t enough people for a committee and to reschedule the meeting. If that happened, Glenswilly wouldn’t have a club today. We had to sort it there and then. Luckily, someone insisted we could form a committee, so we did. We barely had enough money to buy a football, never mind start a club. But we managed it.”

Glenswilly's 1984 Junior B Championship winning team

Manus McFadden was player-manager in 1982 and the year afterwards, the club’s first full season, continued in the role.

Job opportunities were scarce in Glenswilly, so in 1984 McFadden moved to Boston. He would spend his next 23 years in Massachusetts — away from Glenswilly, who moved from the old sports field in Churchill to Breenagh. There was the occasional reason to scurry home, like when Glenswilly won the Junior B championship with a 2-7 to 3-3 win over Naomh Columba in 1984.

The team sometimes trained at Mulhern’s field in Breenagh, where the old Glen Rovers had been originally played. By 1985, Mick Murphy, a garda from just outside of Ballina, Mayo, who had been stationed in Burnfoot and then Buncrana, was transferred to Letterkenny. Murphy, who played full-back for Milford, and his wife Mary were building a house in Bomany.

A Glenswilly senior team from 1990

“Finbar Glackin from Glenswilly worked in Charles Kelly’s (Home Improvement and Building Centre) when I was building and he came to my house three times asking me to join the club,” Murphy says. “He wouldn’t take no for an answer. One evening Jimmy Joe McGinley and, Lord have mercy on him, Peadar Toner arrived and asked me too. Eventually I relented and joined.”
Garda Murphy just missed their Junior B triumph but with Shay Farrell, a Dubliner employed by the social welfare, trained all the club’s underage teams.

“From what I understand, the celebrations went on for a month and there wasn’t much work done,” Murphy says of the Junior B. “We didn’t win much at underage but gave youngsters an opportunity to play football.”

The first underage success was with the school team, in 1986, pictured above, with Gleann tSúilí Cumann na Cumann na mBunscol winners. Men like Phelim Molloy, Peter McFadden, Finbar Glackin, Mick Murphy, Shea Farrell, Hughie McDaid, Roger McDaid and John McGinley were just some of those who did so much.

One of those youngsters was Murphy’s son Michael, who was born in 1989 and, from an early age, showed incredible talent and work-ethic. At 16, Michael Murphy watched on for Glenswilly’s first IFC success in 2005 — a 1-13 to 1-7 win over Cloughaneely.

“Until 2005, we were an up and down sort of club,” recalls former manager Roger McDaid. “But we had a really good crop of players coming through.”

In that year’s Ulster IFC final, with more innocence than experience, Glenswilly led by two points against Inniskeen. But the Monaghan champions pinched the sloppiest of injury time goals from Pearse McSkane. Inniskeen, 2-5 to 0-10 winners, went on to capture the All-Ireland Intermediate Championship.

“We were cruising on a bad, wet and slippery day,” former player Ciaran Bonner says. “We got caught with a high ball at the very end. It went into the net and we were beaten.”

Bonner was soon part of the Donegal seniors, along with Neil Gallagher and Colin Kelly. Michael Murphy made his inter-county debut in 2007 and Gary McFadden a year afterwards. In 2007, with Glenswilly rapidly progressing, they made a first ever senior final but lost 0-12 to 1-3 against St Eunan’s. Manus McFadden moved home from Boston that very day.

“It was much too soon for us,” Michael Murphy says. “And it took us a while to get over it.” By 2011, John McGinley was joint-manager with Gary McDaid, an intuitive young man in his early 30s who had managed teams at St Eunan’s College in Letterkenny. They installed the most thorough of approaches and reached a second senior final.

St Michael's entered as favourites with established county players like Christy Toye and Colm McFadden. However, Murphy was unplayable, scoring all but a point in Glenswilly’s 1-8 to 0-9 victory. His goal on the turn on 41 minutes almost ripped the net at MacCumhaill Park’s Town End.

Murphy’s last-minute penalty saw off Cavan Gaels in the AIB Ulster Club Championship preliminary round but with the Donegal captain having only returned following the International Rules Series in Australia, a flat Glenswilly lost 0-10 to 0-9 against Monaghan champions Latton in the quarter-finals.

“None of us played well,” 2011 skipper Gary McFadden said at the time. “We really could’ve got something from that.”
In 2012 as Sam headed for the hills and Glenswilly - with Murphy, McFadden and Gallagher on the stage the following Thursday night - the last of its 39 stops, Manus McFadden had returned as manager for the first time in a generation. But constantly minus the services of All-Stars Murphy and Gallagher for much of that season, Glenswilly crashed out in the quarter-finals against Dungloe and in the Division One relegation play-off, Glenswilly were battered 4-9 to 1-8 by Gaoth Dobhair in Letterkenny.

Glenswilly’s players trundled across the road to the nearest bar they could find — the Tír na nÓg, which overlooks O’Donnell Park. They sipped pints and watched the Ulster club final on television, as Crossmaglen beat Kilcoo.

McDaid returned as manager the following January. He could see desire. Glenswilly won Division Two at a canter and hammered Killybegs 3-19 to 2-6 in the county final.

Afterwards, McDaid told his players to enjoy the celebrations but to remember Ulster lay ahead. Glenswilly defeated 2010 All-Ireland champions St Gall’s from Antrim 1-10 to 0-10, then overcame Fermanagh’s Roslea Shamrocks 3-9 to 2-8 in Enniskillen.
Glenswilly would lose the provincial final to Ballinderry Shamrocks 1-13 to 2-6 although their journey over the course of their first 30 years can still be pinned down to participation that day at Healy Park. There was disappointment, yet pride, missing out to a club who were Ulster champions in 1981 and 2001 and All-Ireland winners in 2002.

A third Donegal SFC crown was clinched in 2016, upsetting the odds to lift the Dr Maguire again on a smudgy October afternoon, 1-10 to 0-12 against Kilcar. That success from its Golden Generation planted the seeds with Donal Gallagher captaining Donegal’s minors and his brother Jack and Kealan Dunleavy smoothly progressing through the ranks.

Glenswilly have been back-to-back Division 1 Minor County finalists - with the recently retired from inter-county football Michael Murphy in charge having taken over from Marty Glackin - in the last two years and just before Christmas, Adrian Glackin’s U-21B side took home a championship to Churchill.

There's been successes for ladies in championship football and Scór is a huge part of Glenswilly GAA club, having won the All-Ireland Scór in 2008.

With Glenswilly building from the bottom up, the journey to 40 years has had numerous ups and the occasional down but in many ways, it has been a fairytale - and there remains plenty of chapters to be written.