Charlie McAteer honoured with Lifetime Achievement Award at St Eunan’s

Last Saturday night at O’Donnell Park in Letterkenny, Charlie McAteer became only the third person ever to win a Lifetime Achievement Award at St Eunan’s GAA club.

Even though he admits to being someone who prefers to avoid the limelight and “batter on working away in the background” it was a proud moment for Charlie, the club secretary, in a position he first stepped into back in 1983. In that timeframe, he’s held the position for all but five of the years.

Charlie did stress it's not something he managed to win alone. One novel way of putting it is that he’s “been secretary under 10 chairmen and lots of executives”.

“I had a bit of an inkling that they were up to something,” Charlie says of the lead-in to the presentation night, where he was delighted to catch up with some old friends. “It was lovely to pick up the award. I kind of see it as me just taking it on behalf of everyone because without them I would have won nothing.

“There’s been so many great people involved and there still are. The current chairman John Haran is doing so much for the club, like Vincent McGlynn and the groundspeople, because, if you’ve no pitch, then you’ve no game. On Saturday even, the likes of Ollie Harvey, Drew McGlynn, and Paul McGovern put in a lot of work for the presentation night. There are so many.”

Brought up in Rathmullan, which always had a leaning towards football more so than Gaelic football, Charlie lined out from his teens in the colours of Mulroy Gaels, an amalgamation at the time that brought Milford, Downings and even a bit of Fanad together. He was a pupil in Milford Vocational School at the time and in 1968, at the age of 20, was part of the Mulroy team that won the Donegal Junior Championship, defeating Four Masters 2-11 to 0-5.

It was around this time Charlie moved into Letterkenny, a joiner by trade who had met Madeline Doherty from Ard O’Donnell and the couple would be married in 1972. They have four children - Ciaran, Damien, Paul and Nicola - and 10 grandchildren.

Before all that, there was to be a change in career path too. Having trained up in Gorey, Co Wexford, Charlie was soon a schoolteacher of woordowrk, maths, technical drawing and business construction. He worked a year in Carndonagh Community School, then two in Abbey Vocational School in Donegal Town before settling at Raphoe’s Deele College, where he did 35 years before retiring in 2009.

Although Charlie jokes about Mulroy Gaels’ success of 1968 as “the only thing I ever won,” in his first year as St Eunan’s secretary, Peadar McGeehin’s team were Donegal SFC winners. Last Saturday, members of that team, who defeated Ardara 0-8 to 0-3, were remembered at the club’s presentation night, alongside Charlie, who followed in the footsteps of Connie Maguire and Barney McMonagle in winning the Lifetime Achievement Award.

It was Connie Maguire who first introduced Charlie to St Eunan’s GAA club, where he would attend meetings at the old clubhouse overlooking the single pitch in the late seventies. Then it was Dr James McDaid who first asked Charlie to consider going for the position of secretary in 1983 and last year St Eunan’s named the main stand at O’Donnell Park after McDaid, who did so much for the club in many ways, not least when Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation from 1997 to 2002.

“The role has certainly changed over the years,” Charlie, who lives in Lismonaghan, says of being secretary. “When I started St Eunan’s had a few teams at senior and underage and now it’s around the 40-mark. The old landline phone in those days, if you weren’t in or if someone was in, then you didn’t get it! There’s a lot more going on these days but I can’t complain. If I didn’t want to do it then I wouldn’t.

“Last year, it was fitting to have Dr McDaid front and centre and he was one of the main people who took St Eunan’s and O’Donnell Park to where it is today. It’s a facility that everyone is very proud of - one of the few full-size pitches in the county - and we were delighted to get the county status back in 2007 and enjoy playing host to games every year and also to giving something back to Letterkenny. The people of the town, the sponsors and those volunteers have been absolutely class and they have given so much. It’s for everyone.”