Fanad man Willie McAteer set to lead St Pat's Maghera into MacRory Cup battle

For the past 24 years, Willie McAteer has walked through the doors of St Pat’s College Maghera, where education and Gaelic Games have always stared him in the face.  

The wheels never stop turning in GAA terms for the Derry college. The facts speak for themselves – 16 MacRory Cups between 1977 and 2020, the second most successful team in Ulster after St Colman’s Newry; five Hogan Cups between 1989 and 2013 which ranks them as the third most successful college football team in Ireland.  

GAA heroes and All-Star winners like Henry Downey, Dermot McNicholl, Anthony Tohill, Johnny McGurk, and more recently Conor Glass could not go unrecognised if they walked through the halls of their old Alma Mater. In fact, many would argue it was a key ingredient that shaped their sporting careers.  

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None of this was ever lost on McAteer, he’s seen how much GAA is encoded in the school’s scripture, but only this season has the man from Fanad decided to take a plunge into the deep end as the senior school’s team manager.  

His formative years in the noughties saw the Donegal native trek back to his home of Fanad twice a week for club training at a time when the club on the peninsula was challenging for championship trophies, with McAteer playing a leading role in the half-back line and midfield in three Intermediate finals in 2006, ‘07, and ‘09, with Fanad winning the latter two.  

“I would’ve been working in Maghera for 10 years and during that period I would’ve been going home to train and play maybe two or three days a week, but I suppose when you start to hit your mid-30s you quickly realise that you can’t face that run any longer,” he told Donegal Live.  

He later moved to Castledawson where he managed St Malachy’s between 2013 and 2017, winning two Derry Intermediate titles in that time, before primarily focusing on the younger age groups in St Pat’s College.  

He’s been running a first-year tournament every year for over a decade now as a way to instill early GAA interest into the new students – not that much motivation is needed.  

“In the early days I was just helping out with the teams here and there, but I was never really that involved, but for the last 15 years I would’ve been fairly flat out with teams,” he said.  

“I would’ve been asked for a number of years to step up and take the role as manager of the MacRory team but never did, but this year I decided I better put the big-boy pants on.  

“We have two sites in the school and I’m usually always in the junior site so it suited me better to always take the junior teams in the school.  

“Interestingly, the boys I’m with now, I would’ve been with them when we won a first-year competition called the Oisin McGrath Cup back in 2019, so they’re a talented bunch but we have a lot of lower-sixth-form students playing.”  

And the St Pat’s boss does not exaggerate or play down the talent present in his ranks with the college having six players who have All-Ireland minor medals stored away with Derry – Turlough McHugh, Jack McCloy, Pádraig Haran, Pádraig O’Kane, Dara McGuckin and Rian Collins.   

The talk has always been around culture when discussing the success of certain schools across Ulster in comparison to Donegal who have never won a MacRory Cup and last appeared in one in 1961, but McAteer adds that GAA culture element with simple geography.  

“I think the reason school football is so successful in Derry is mainly due to geography. We’re in south Derry here and we could be the main school for about 20 clubs where many students come here primarily for the football and of course because we’re a very good school on the academic side,” he said.  

“Now we don’t get all the footballers from those clubs but we get a certain amount from each who wants to come here for football, and camogie for the girls too, who are also very successful.  

“Like when people ask what is the difference in Donegal, the difference is, if you’re from Fanad, you won’t go to any other school apart from Milford, whereas in Derry you will travel to be here in St Pat’s and play football.”  

Throughout this season’s campaign which has seen the Derry college go unbeaten, Maghera also had a couple of points to spare in ties against St Ronan’s, Lurgan and St Patrick’s, Cavan, neither of whom made it past Christmas in the competition.    

But it wasn’t all plane sailing after that with St Pat’s almost staring elimination in the face in the quarter-final against St Mary’s, Magherafelt when they were 0-8 to 0-5 down going into injury time until McHugh grabbed a late goal after a shot for a point had dropped short into his hands before Cormac Óg McCloskey kicked the winner.  

That was followed by a desperately low-scoring semi-final against St Pat’s of Armagh, where again McAteer’s side prevailed on a 0-5 to 1-0 scoreline to see them through to the final this Sunday in Celtic Park where they face the challenge of the Abbey Vocational School.  

“The one thing that impresses me about this Abbey team is that I’ve never seen a team get to a MacRory final where they have only three clubs represented, that doesn’t happen. What Abbey are doing is just incredible,” McAteer said.  

“I saw the Four Masters over the winter in their Ulster minor campaign and I know they are a good side, but we can only focus on ourselves. Chrissy McKaigue and Sean Marty Lockhart are in with me and you can bet that you learn a lot from those lads.  

“Because of Covid in 2020 we didn’t get to play the final, so this is really our first final since 2016 which for us is a long time. MacRory football is different now, there’s schools putting in a greater shift every year which is good to see but this weekend, it’s still going to be a hard game.  

“I think without a doubt, this is the biggest schools’ competition there is, and in a football-mad part of the world like Maghera is, there’s that extra buzz and I expect that the place will empty into Celtic Park on Sunday.”