Donegal GAA Administrator Noreen Doherty’s legacy will stand the test of time

From being elected club secretary in her mid-20s to being at the heart of the GAA affairs of the county for the last 38 years, Noreen Doherty will move to one side at the end of this month but rest assured, the MacCumhaill’s woman will not be severing her ties with the Association.

She has served the county as Assistant Secretary, Secretary, Central Council delegate and full-time Administrator since being first elected at county level at the 1986 Co Convention in the Highlands Hotel, Glenties. Ironically, it was in the same building that she was elected secretary five years later in 1991. It was groundbreaking at the time to have a female involved in an administrative post in the GAA.

But her GAA roots ran deep. Born into the McGowan family of Patrick and Nora, she and her twin sister Mary, arrived after big brothers, PJ and Noel, while she also has a younger sister, Anne and younger brother, Patrick or Paddy as he is known.

“Ours was a very passionate GAA family. My father played for Erin’s Hope and was a great supporter of the MacCumhaill’s club, doing a lot of work with machinery, voluntary work getting pitches ready.

“You couldn’t have avoided the GAA. We were  taken to matches from when we were a young age. 

“I remember going to a club game in Glenties, there were steps down. I remember falling down the steps and getting a bad cut on my leg. I wasn’t very old.

“My first county game was in 1973,  in MacCumhaill Park. It was the old seats in MacCumhaill Park, the concrete seats with the hedge behind it. A massive, massive crowd. I remember Neilly Gallagher getting a bad injury that day. I think from memory there was a man who died in the grounds as well.

“We walked up the old entry through Brogan’s archway. I remember it being jam packed with everybody going out at the one time and on to the Main Street. Tyrone beat  us that day. We were the reigning Ulster champions but that was us gone, there was no back door.

“And the whole town was full of Tyrone people. Where we were sitting in the seats I saw Neilly Gallagher going down and you thought, ‘that man’s dead’. There was such a hostile environment on the day.”

In what was a very male-orientated, there were few outlets in the GAA for females at that time.

“There was nothing at all for females. My own game was handball and that’s how I got involved in the club. My father owned the building where there was an old ballcourt. That’s where we played. There was myself and Mary, my cousin Bernadette and another girl Geraldine. We were the only four girls in that area and we were mixing with the boys all the time playing handball.

“We spent days in it until dark at night. My mother would be coming looking for us and we would be finishing handball games in the dark.

“How I got involved in the club was when the Social Centre opened, I think it was 1974. They had a handball alley in it. That brought us in. It took us a while to get used to having a back wall as we were used to the open air and three walls.

“We tried to get handball going for ladies in the club and Eamon Farrell was the man who tried his very, very best, but we had no competition and no females.

“And then we committed the cardinal sin in the GAA at that time, we turned the handball alley into a squash court and there was uproar. It was a handball but it wasn’t being used and the men’s game had taken a back seat as well.

“But that’s how I got involved in the club, by being in the club. Then it was by going to an AGM it all started.

“The late Eugene Boyle was secretary in 1979, 1980 and he wasn’t going forward. At that time there was no such thing as nominations. Helen Gallagher, Eugene Gallagher’s wife, and myself were nominated as joint secretaries and we took the job.

“To be fair the workload at that time was anything near what you have today. You had one adult team, maybe a second team, an U-21 team and minor and maybe 14, 16. The level of administration was nothing like today.

“The good part of social centres at that time,  MacCumhaill’s was the first from my memory, it did bring in other people. You had a social outlet and that was positive. Then you had functions in the club and it brought more people in. It afforded opportunities to females where they had no other outlet. And ultimately it brought more females into the club.”

Of course there was the added bonus of having her older brothers, PJ and Noel, playing for the club.

“When you have older brothers playing, that’s what gets you involved. Both of them played for a long time for the club, long past from when they shouldn't have been playing,” laughs Noreen.

Noreen Doherty pictured outside the Donegal GAA Centre in Convoy. Picture: Thomas Gallagher

The step from club secretary to administration at county level came out of the blue, says Noreen. She was nominated for Assistant Secretary for the Convention in Glenties in 1986.

“I had no more interest than the man in the moon. The next thing there was a vote called and I was elected. I hadn’t a clue what I was taking on, to be honest about it. And as it is now, at that stage, assistant secretary was fixtures secretary. What a baptism of fire.

“When you consider you didn’t have a mobile phone, there was no email. A lot of club secretaries didn’t have a landline. We used to print a small fixtures booklet with contact numbers on it and against a lot of names you had an ‘M’, which was a message.

“It was unreal. The referees were the same and you were never sure if the message you sent reached the secretary or the referee,” said Noreen, who said that sometimes the only way of relaying the fixtures was through the local newspapers.

“You were handwriting the fixtures and then making sure they reached the newspaper. And then if somebody mis-typed the club name, you could have further confusion. At that stage the only form of communication was the papers. I remember the Derry Journal was the one that covered Inishowen but they weren’t out to Friday and there’s a famous man up in Urris, Colm Toland, who used to ring me from a coin box in Clonmany every Thursday night to get the fixtures so that they could make sure to get word to their  players away from home about the weekend fixtures as finding out on Friday would be too late. 

“It was an absolute nightmare.”

But she managed to get through it and then in 1991 she was elevated to the position of county secretary, a post she held until 2005. It was another baptism of fire because in the first few years Donegal won the All-Ireland and there were some very contentious issues being dealt with at Co Board level.

“The first few years were the most difficult of the term.”

While winning the All-Ireland was a major milestone, Noreen says that because it was so new it was not enjoyable.

“You just thought if you won one later, you could have really enjoyed it. 

“It was brutal leading up to it. It wore you down. You didn’t know what day it was. There were no mobiles and you were a prisoner in your own home.

“Only for the backup and support I got from Aidan and Mary and Imelda Collum, she was only young at the time. She kept the fort at home because I was  going here and there meeting people, organising the Gardai for the homecoming, a million different things.

“Yet the only thing the ordinary people were worried about was getting tickets. Only for the support I got at home I couldn’t have done it.”

There was an appearance on ‘Up For The Match’ the night before the All-Ireland and the presenter Liam Ó Murchú was pretty condescending towards the Donegal secretary.

“Because I was female I didn’t feel isolated, some people would have had a different impression of a female, maybe thinking ‘what does she know’ and maybe undermine you or make you feel small, but I would have stood up to that.

“There was a feeling that if a man has a strong personality he’s a strong person but if a female has a strong personality, she’s something else. They look  at you totally differently.”

She recalled an incident the following day on her way to the match with Aidan and Noel. “We were walking down to Croke Park and Paddy Mulligan, the former Irish soccer international, approached us. He had recognised me from being on the programme and he was critical of the presenter on the night. He said it was you we wanted to hear, your accent and all about Donegal.

But for the most part Noreen’s memories of the GAA are pleasant ones. But also one that presented many challenges.

“It’s an organisation where people think there are no rules. The only way you can manage anything is with rules. It’s like the rules of the road, if you didn’t have rules you would have crashes all the time.

“I would be a stickler but also if there was a way around a problem without breaking the rules, you would use common sense. But sometimes you just have to apply the rules and they are there to protect everybody.

“When you do that everybody gets the same treatment when you do that and there’s no favouritism.

“I figured it was my duty to be up to date with the rules. It was a major part of the job to be able to qualify a rule because if you did give them wrong information you would find yourself in trouble,” said Noreen, who  bemoaned the fact that advice was verbal whereas now you can send in an email and if the individual or clubs choose not to accept the advice, then it is there in black and white.

Among her other highlights during the 38 years was her work with clubs, helping them with their structures and facilities and also the arrival of Ladies football, even though it was not affiliated to the GAA.

“Aidan was the first chairperson of the Ladies Co Board in the early 1990s and I remember going to the inaugural meeting in Jacksons Hotel. Aidan always had a great interest but more as a coach but after they went round the room a couple of times he took the chair.”

With the full integration of the Ladies and Camogie Associations with the GAA due for 2027, Noreen feels it should have happened a lot earlier. She was part of the first integration committee set up by Joe McDonagh when he was President from 1997-2000.

 When the first administration manager posts were set up by the Ulster Council in 2005, Noreen Doherty applied and was successful and so ended her role as Donegal Co Secretary. The post was for three years and after that there was a period of around 18 months when she had no  role but that ended when she was elected Central Council delegate at the 2009 Convention in Ballyshannon.

But there was to be another twist within six months as the position of Administrator became vacant and she again applied and was successful and she had to relinquish her Central Council role to take up the Administrator position in May 2010. And that role comes to a close on August 31st next.

What will be really missed will be Noreen’s wealth of knowledge of the clubs and their problems. She says she received great support from many people, especially the late Micheal Gillespie, when she first came onto the Co Board; Brian McEniff, Danny McNamee and Naul McCole and Aodh Mairtin O Fearraigh when she returned as Administrator. She also singled out the late Danny Murphy on the Ulster Council and Liam O Muilvihill in Croke Park for their advice and loyalty.

“You need that loyalty in those positions.  And the other thing that is needed in these roles is respect, to be received and to be given.”

She also mentioned the completion of the GAA Centre in Convoy completed under the guidance of Mick McGrath as being a major milestone in her time involved. “And in that regard the success of the House Draw and the work of Joanne Dawson and Elizabeth McIntyre in driving that fund-raising effort was important.”

But she kept returning to the great satisfaction of being involved with the clubs of the county.

“It’s all about helping each other to get along. The problem is when people don’t want to ask for help.

“There is no such thing as a stupid question; there are stupid answers. I’ve always tried to be helpful with clubs.

“90 per cent of things can be solved but there are some things that can’t be solved. There is one thing lacking in the GAA, and I’ve said it umpteen times, it’s communication. If there is an issue in a club, and I’m talking about football, but structures, then it is usually caused by a lack of communication.”

Noreen Doherty has no intention of cutting her GAA ties and is not making plans of any kind. But she will remain at the end of the ‘phone if anyone thinks her advice would be of help.

Over the years she says she has visited most county grounds in the country although Limerick, Waterford and Wexford are on her to-do list.

She is thankful for all the help she has received but especially that close to  home.

“I was lucky that Aidan was so involved in the GAA and he was there to bounce things off. Aidan would have a different temperament to me and a very balanced and practical approach and he could give me great advice.

“My parting shot while I appreciate all the help I got from everybody, I have to single out my own family, Aidan. When there were no mobiles, Aidan had long chats with many club people, and he loved that as well. And obviously my twin sister Mary and my two nieces, Lynn McGowan (Noel’s girl) and Imelda (Mary’s girl). Imelda was brought up in the GAA as she lived next door and took all the messages. She really caught the bug early and was a mad GAA person.

“All my friends are in the GAA. I don’t have another hobby, I don’t play golf, I’m not involved in other organisations. I have a few very, very close friends. I have no enemies in the GAA. You might talk to other people who have a different view, but I don’t have any enemies in the GAA.”

There is no doubt that Noreen (McGowan) Doherty has left her mark.