PJ Patton broke the mould for the sport of badminton south of the Gap

The world of badminton in Donegal is dominated in the present day by the Magee family from Raphoe, but back in the late 1970s and 1980s, a new name emerged from south of the Gap, PJ Patton from Ballyshannon.

Patton came late to the sport at 16 but in a few short years had broken into the ranks of the Donegal team, raising the profile of the sport in the south of the county. Up until then the sport had been dominated in the Raphoe-Convoy area.

PJ was the Donegal Sports Star winner for his sport at the 1981 Awards, at just 24 years of age.

Born in 1957, PJ Patton was just a sports mad young fella, who just wanted to play anything. At De La Salle there was just football, but Patton was also into athletics.

It was only by chance that he stumbled upon badminton, helping two other lads, Paul McGuinness and his brother, Michael, prepare the Rock Hall for the badminton club.

“There used to be bingo in the hall and the boys had to put the chairs away and roll out the badminton mat. I went to help them and that’s where it started.”

With his fitness levels high from football and athletics, he quickly learned the ropes on the basketball court. “You needed to be light on your feet and I loved it. But it’s like any other game, it’s about reading the game.”

PJ Patton being presented with a memento to mark his Sports Star Award of 40 years ago

It wasn’t long before Patton rose through the ranks. “In the first year, in the grading system in Donegal, I was Minor B.  I missed a grade then and they threw me into a higher grade and I was there for two years before I was made senior.

“At the time I was still playing in the Rock Hall but I couldn’t play with them in the league because I was a higher grade.

“The only boys in the Rock at the time who would have been Junior would have been Michael Clancy of Bundoran and Michael Gallagher. Clancy and Michael Gallagher would have been my coaches in the beginning.

“I would have played for the county at U-18 level.  There used to be school leagues when I was 16 and I was at De La Salle and it was all football there. I asked if I could play with the Tech where Cathal Greene was Principal. Myself and my brother, Michael, were allowed to play with the Tech.

“The first year we had a team of eight, four fellas and four girls and we happened to win the league. The following year John Travers wanted to put in a team from De La Salle but I said no, I wanted to play with the Tech. We didn’t win it the second year.

“That was the start of the competitive stuff for me. There would be tournaments within the county for underage level and I was winning them, against the boys from Raphoe, which would have been the centre of badminton in the county.”

“I would have moved on then to play with the Laghey club boys like Roly Harron, who was working in the Democrat at the time. Laghey was a senior club and we had none in The Rock.

“We weren’t winning anything at the time. It was years after when Roly’s sons Roy and Graeme came through that we started to win things. It was then a good contest between this side of the gap and the other side. The main area of badminton was Raphoe, Carnone, Donoughmore, Convoy, just about a five mile radius. They were the big clubs.

“It took us years to make the breakthrough. I ended up on the tail end of the county team and I was the only one from this side of the gap in the beginning. 

“I remember the first time I played for the county, it was against Derry and I won my two matches. Most of the boys at the time were much older than me. I was only about 20 at that time,” says Patton, who adds that that would be old in badminton terms now.

“Every town in Donegal had a badminton team at that time. The club leagues would start at the end of September. Every town had one or two teams in different grades. 

“There were three clubs in Ballyshannon, one in Rossnowlagh, one in the Rock and one down the Mall where Rev. Dundas played in his all whites. He looked like a cricket player and his language was choice.

“Then it was all one-court halls and huge numbers of players while now there are multiple court halls with a lot fewer players. At that time we had such big numbers in the Rock we had to use the Mercy Hall. There were over 90 in the club.

“There is no club in Ballyshannon now but there are some that go down to Ballintra and Laghey.

“In our time there was just football and badminton,” said Patton, who said that the likes of Tommy McDermott, Gerry Curran and Brian Tuohy were among the well-known sportsmen who played badminton in the Rock.

While his badminton career kept on an upward plane, Patton continued to compete at athletics, running until he was well into his 40s. His track speciality was the 400m and 800m but he also competed in the likes of the Ballyshannon 10, which was a popular event in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

“The target was to get under an hour  for the 10 miles while the top runners were aiming to get under 50 minutes. I managed to get under an hour once, doing just over 57 minutes.

“It was a big event at the time with a trip to Boston for the winner. I remember Neil Cusack winning it one year.”

He was quite sure that his fitness was a big factor in his badminton success, especially if he could make the contests into a third game. “Fitness was my big thing. I wasn’t skilled, but I could keep going.

PJ Patton pictured with his Mixed Doubles partner Audrey Macbeth, with whom he won many tournaments
including the Hamilton Cup on nine occasions.

“I was still good enough in my 40s to still play, maybe not singles, but doubles, but I always thought, let the young boys through. Eventually, the Magees came through. I played in a team with Sam Magee and Chloe Magee.

“I remember playing Sam when he was 16, 17 coming through. I could beat him in the mixed that time, but within one year, it just completely changed. He became much stronger and powerful.”

Patton recalls playing county matches against the likes of Kilkenny and Tipperary, hurling counties, and they were very strong. “You had boys that played county hurling and played badminton as well, very good with their wrists. They would put you to the pin of your collar.”

Patton says when he broke through on to the county team at the start names like Uel Blair and Bobby Finlay were to the fore. “They were from Carnone, which would have been the strongest club in the county when I started. They had six senior men. The whole county team would have been from Raphoe and Carnone, before I broke through.”

Later Patton would have seen the Harrons break through and he was partners with Roy Harron at county level. “David Duncan from Doorin would have also been there and he is still playing.

“They all have sons now playing. My boys were more into the surfing,” says PJ.

Patton says his progress in the beginning was due to the fact that he played nearly every day of the week. “We would go in after school. There was a junior club in the Rock also at the time and they would start at six with the seniors at eight. We would have the hall for an hour or two after school,” said Patton, who said he would play against Paul McGuinness and his brother, Michael.

He played Gaelic football at De La Salle but can’t remember having any great success.

His success was not just as a singles player but also at doubles and mixed doubles.

“My mixed partner was Audrey Macbeth. She would have been a few years older than me but she was good. She was very good at the net.”

SQUASH

Around the same time Ballyshannon also had a squash court located in the Mercy Hall and Patton took to this sport just as easily as he did to badminton. He says it was a different skill, using the wrists for badminton but they had to be locked playing squash.

“There were just two clubs in Donegal, Ballyshannon and Letterkenny and we would have played in Ulster leagues.”

Patton would end up playing interpros for Connacht, and he also represented Connacht in badminton, having won the Connacht Close Championships on a couple of occasions.

This would have paired him against players he knew and had played against in Ulster at the time.

“I would have been put out No 1 for Connacht against the Ulster No 1. He beat me more times than I beat him but I did come out on top a couple of times, mostly in doubles.”

He said when in his prime he would finish work in the bakery at 2.30 or 3 o’clock, go for a five mile run out the Knather and then come back to the squash court and play the Bear McDermott for 40 minutes and then go and play badminton that night.

He was playing up until the Covid-19 struck and has been asked to return again this year. “I;m back to Minor A now. David Duncan asked me if I would interested and I said ‘put my name down if you are stuck’,”

He is really pleased to see what the Magees have done for badminton in the county and the profile they have.

“You have to give the Magees credit. I would have played with their father. They had their kids in there from seven or eight. One of them was playing senior at 12 years of age.

“When Chloe Magee got to the Olympics, it ballooned again in that area. Chloe is coaching now and that is great to see. The one-court hall is nearly gone. I used to coach youngsters up in the Rock Hall, but they didn’t want to sit around,” said Patton, who also feels that the need to have so many coaches and supervision has been a factor in the downturn of the sport.

Patton remembers when there was a tournament in some club every month from September, some of them lasting two weeks. “Now we have just two tournaments.”

Asked who was the best player he had seen in Donegal, he says: “The best player I played with was Ian Macbeth, a big strong man, a farmer. He would have told me that he was sorry that he didn’t put everything into it,” said Patton.

And you have to wonder what PJ Patton would have achieved in the sport of badminton if he had been involved in the sport from a younger age and in a more competitive environment.