Lights out for the last time in 15 years for Eddie Walsh at MacCumhaill Park

It will be lights out for Eddie Walsh this weekend when he flicks the switch to turn off the Sean MacCumhaill Park floodlights for the last time.

Eddie was due to finish up last weekend before the Donegal SFC final between Naomh Conaill and St Eunan’s was postponed due to the tragic events in Creeslough on Friday afternoon. 

The final has been re-fixed for this Saturday at 2:15pm throw-in and as a result the floodlights are unlikely to be required. So Eddie’s final switch off could well be on Friday night  following an underage club game between Sean MacCumhaill’s and Urris.
Eddie is a lifelong Sean MacCumhail’s clubman and a devoted follower of Donegal football and is the man entrusted with managing the county’s number one ground’s floodlights.

He is the man who flicks the switch to turn the lights on and the man who puts up the switch to turn them off.
“I didn’t think when I took on the job 15 years ago after the lights were installed that I would still be doing it 15 years later, “ said Eddie. “I feel I  have done my bit over all that time and it is time for someone else to take on the job.

“It has become very demanding in recent years and there are weeks when the lights are needed four to five times a week.” 
It has been a busy time for Eddie and MacCumhaill Park with up to 30 games a year over the period under the lights  from Allianz League and Dr McKenna Cup games to Ulster underage championship games and club championship games at all levels. And there have been umpteen county teams training sessions again at all levels.

Eddie has worked with five different Donegal managers including Brian McIver, John Joe Doherty, Jim McGuinness, Rory Gallagher and Declan Bonner.

“I have worked well with all of them and I found them all very easy to work with,” Eddie said. “They always gave me plenty of notice when they wanted the lights and the times they wanted them for. For the training sessions I would turn them on and go back out home. I live in Cappry, it is only 10 or 15 minutes out the road and I would return to turn them off when I expected they would be finished. I would never do that for games in case anything went wrong.

“Jim McGuinness holds the record for the longest time I remember, I think it was when he was U-21 manager [in 2010]. It was 11 o’clock before the lights were turned off.

“I made up my mind at the start of the year that I would call it a day at the end of this season. I informed the county board that the county final would be my last game. And when that didn’t happen due to the awful tragedy in Creeslough and given the final has been re-fixed for 2.15 pm on Saturday, the lights won’t be needed. 

“The club were onto me earlier in the week to inform me there was a game on Friday evening and they will need the lights so that is going to be my final game”.

In charge of the lights in Sean MacCumhaill Park is not a matter of turning up on match day or just ahead of a training session. There is much more to it as Eddie explained.

”The lights run off two generators which are housed in two separate buildings behind the MacCumhaill Park stand,” he said. “One of the generators is to run the lights and the other is on standby in case a problem arises with the one powering the lights so it would kick in straight away and there would be no break in the lights.”

In all there are 12 different switches, three for each of the four towers that carry the lights.   “In the case of televised games the two have to be on otherwise it is okay to have just one on,” Eddie added.

This means Eddie has to make sure the generators are working and there is enough diesel in the oil tank to keep them going. That entails checking them out early in the week of a game.

“Then on the morning of a game I would check them once again to turn on the heaters in the generator store to to turn on the heat and so they would be ready to go come game time,” he added.

“There is a lot of work to do. When the lights were installed first myself and Barney Gallagher, from the club and Terence McGinley from Dunkineely attended a one day training course in Healy Park on how to operate the lights.

“Terence was the county development officer at the time and Barney was like myself from the club and is the only other man from the club trained in how to operate them. Barney has been a great help to me down the years.

“The biggest worry is that the lights will go out in the course of the game and I’m always on tender hooks until the game is over.  I can never really enjoy a game because of the fear of the lights failing.

“Thank God we have been lucky down the years we never had a blackout. The nearest we came to it was for a club championship game a few years ago. St Michael’s were playing, not sure who the other team was. That night one of the towers went on fire but thankfully we were able to turn it off and a blackout was avoided.”

So this Friday night Eddie will flick the 12 switches on the control panels and lock the door behind him in the control room for the last time and return to his seat in the stand. And there from now he will do what he likes doing most, watching  games.