McBrearty toes the line as Letterkenny Gaels make maiden voyage into Ulster

There was always a sense of unfinished business for Letterkenny Gaels in the Donegal Junior A football championship.

That was until last month’s Junior A final win over Carndonagh. It was the same for Darren McBrearty when he stepped away from lining out with the club in 2009.

McBrearty was just 18 then and playing minor football in the maroon and white. A talented footballer he had played county U-16 and was on a number of Donegal development squads right through his underage years.

He was also a gifted 800m and 1500m athlete and by the time he played his last minor game he already had a year completed in Actuarial Mathematics studies in Dublin City University.

Darren McBrearty leads the field into the bell on is way to finishing fifth, in a time of 1:49.78sec, in his semi-final of the Men's 800m. European Indoor Athletics Championship

“I was on an athletics’ scholarship in DCU so I decided to give up football and concentrate on athletics and see where it took me,” McBrearty explains. McBrearty was the Irish under-23 800m gold medalist in 2011 and 2013 having won junior gold in 2009. In 2008, McBrearty won gold in the under-18 indoor 800m in 2008.

At international level, McBrearty represented Ireland at the World Junior Championships in 2010, the European Indoors in 2011, the European Under-23s in 2011, European U-23s in 2011 and 2013 and the European Cross Country Championships in 2010.

“I came close on a couple occasions on Olympic qualification which was disappointing at the time,” McBrearty said of missing out. "But the reality is between work and studying I didn’t have the time to go that extra mile to achieve to break into the real big time. To achieve that I would have to give up everything and just become a full-time athlete. I have no regrets that I didn’t because to set myself up career wise and I had to earn money to live.

“I enjoyed my years in athletics and look back on those years with great fondness and I’m also proud that every day I went to train or to compete I gave it 100% and nothing less.”

In 2019, 10 years after he played his last game of football, a minor championship game against St Eunan’s, McBrearty had his head turned.

“I had never closed the door on football,” he said. “It is in my DNA and I always had an itching to get back playing. My brother Conor was playing with the club and my father Sean was involved and managing the team. There were a number of lads still playing that I played up along the underage with and I also felt we had underachieved as a team and that the club seniors had also not fulfilled their potential.

“I was 28 at the time and felt I still had something to offer and so I decided to go back playing. But it wasn’t as simple as that. I had an old shoulder injury that needed to be sorted and that took time and between that and covid it was last season before I regained full fitness and got back playing.”

Four games into his return McBrearty turned in a man of the match performance in the middle of the field for Letterkenny Gaels’ as they won the Junior B championship last year following a win over Naomh Padraig Lifford

Roll on 12 months and McBrearty and Letterkenny Gaels are heading into the Ulster Junior Championship and a first round meeting with Armagh champions, Derrynoose, in Crossmaglen on Sunday.

Letterkenny Gaels make the first step into the province following their maiden Junior A success last month. McBrearty did not start that game but was sprung from the bench after just 28 minutes to turn the tide around the middle of the park. His introduction had the desired effect and Letterkenny Gaels went on to win a tight game 0-12 to 0-10 much to the delight of the large support of the ‘Gael’s followers from the far side of town.

Winner of the men's 800m final Mark English and Darren McBrearty, who finished second, at the Woodie’s DIY AAI Senior Indoor Championships in 2013

“I didn’t start the final,” McBrearty said. “I had a niggly injury and management thought I might not last the game if I started. It was great to get on and it was brilliant to be on the field at the final whistle. The final was the only championship game I did not start. I had played in all the other games and except for a few games at the start of the year I played in most of the league games.

“It was great to play in Division 2 and against a number of teams that are senior championship teams and Dungloe, the intermediate champions are one of the team’s we beat in the league. We beat Dungloe in the last game of the league to retain our status and we are looking forward to playing in Division 2 and the intermediate championship next year.”

Beforehand, Gaels, McBrearty and their joint-management ticket of Paul Melaugh and Dougie Corbett have a quarter-final meeting with Armagh junior champions Derrynoose.

“There is a great buzz about the team and the club at the moment,” McBrearty added. “Paul and Dougie have brought in a number of the reserve players into the squad and training and preparations are going really well and there is a competitive edge to training games.

“Players like Ronan Frain, Niall Diver, Cormac Cannon and my own brother Conor are hungry for more success and everybody else has bought in. We are heading into the unknown really. We know very little about Derrynoose. It's really hard to know how good a team is in another county because you don’t know how strong or weak the other teams in the championship are. We only find out how good they are on Sunday. But we're raring to go.”