January joy awaits Derry kingpins Glen this afternoon if they overcome Kilmacud Crokes in the All-Ireland final, and it's a month that has been very kind to them in the past, and of the utmost importance.
When it comes to circling important dates on the Ulster GAA calendar, the first of them all, 1 January, requires heavy ink as new provincial minor club champions are traditionally crowned in Belfast.
Enda Gormley, perhaps the Glen club's most famous name, knows that more than most.
The Ulster Minor Football Championship has become one of the jewels up north as big crowds flock to the St Paul’s club in the lead up to Christmas with a New Year’s Day final providing a reassuringly accurate barometer for senior success ever since the tournament's inception in 1982.
Of the 26 clubs to lift the Jimmy McConville Cup, 19 have won a senior county title within the next decade. Derry outfit Lavey have a number of years left to stretch that to 20 after their 2019 success.
With that in mind, Glen’s first-ever Derry senior title in 2021 was a case of 'when, not if' given their incredible four-year domination of the tournament between 2011 and 2014. Senior title two and a first-ever Ulster Senior crown in 2022 only added weight to the ruggedness of the foundation blocks provided at St Paul’s.
Four consecutive titles at underage level is a pretty special achievement given the ever-changing nature of teams due to age restrictions, but they came again and again with a trio of Armagh clubs - Armagh Harps, Silverbridge and Killeavy - and Southern Gaels, a Cavan amalgamation of Gowna and Lacken, defeated in the finals.
The Player of the Match awards in those games went to Danny Tallon and Emmett Bradley, their two stars in the All-Ireland semi-final win over Maigh Cuilinn, Ryan Dougan, one of their best players on this season's journey to Croke Park, and Paul Gunning, who already knows what it’s like to taste All-Ireland glory having helped the Watty Graham’s to the rince foirne crown at Scór Sinsir.
Of the team that started that 2011 final against Armagh Harps – played on New Year’s Day 2012 – Tallon, Bradley, Dougan, Cathal Mulholland, Connor Carville, Michael Warnock and Conor Convery all started against Maigh Cuilinn earlier this month. Cahir McCabe and Stevie O’Hara came off the bench.
The majority of their team-mates also picked up winning medals over the next three seasons.
Gormley, who starred in Derry’s only All-Ireland triumph in 1993 and ended his playing days with two All-Stars to his name, was part of the minor management for the first two of those four provincial titles before he moved to the senior ranks.
He'd witnessed the future first hand, and with it came the optimism that the club could atone for his own playing days when Glen were known as the nearly men.
When Gormley’s career ceased after a late stint with Belfast and Down club Bredagh, he sat down with former Glen players to look at the coaching structures and how they could avoid the mistakes of the past.
"Really easy conversations" is how he described them. No hard truths needing spilling, every last bit of honesty had been uttered as disappointment followed disappointment in the years prior.
Gormley’s first involvement with this special group came in 2008 as part of the under-14 management team, travelling up and down from his Belfast base to link up with former Derry team-mate Fergal P McCusker.
That U14 team battled with the best in the All-Ireland Féile to set them on their path that, they hope, will this weekend lead to the greatest honour in the club football game.
At the time, the Irish Independent carried a pic from the weekend of the Glen Féile team receiving a stirring half-time team-talk from their unnamed coach [it was Gormley]. Sitting on the bench receiving instruction was a group including O'Hara, Convery, Tallon, Carville, Mulholland and Dougan - all set for roles this Sunday.
A bit like Romania at the 1998 World Cup, many of the squad had bleached their hair blond, some with red streaks running down the middle. A week before the competition in Cavan, McCusker arrived at training and his jaw nearly hit the floor upon seeing the colourful tapestry on display in the changing room.
But they could play. And they could win.
After that, McCusker stayed at U14 level, Stephen Murtagh looked after the U16 grade and Gormley stepped up to the minor team as the production line was cranked into action – and its efficiency saw some of the club’s labels start to soften.
"We would have been known as a club of underachievers," Gormley told RTÉ Sport.
"Maybe some of the things said about us were unfair, but we definitely couldn’t deny that the group we had when I was playing were very disappointed not to win a championship, albeit there were a lot of very strong teams around Derry at the time.
"A group of lads from my era, we sat down [as coaches] and knew that we’d made a lot of mistakes, we knew that we didn’t have a lot of leaders ahead of us highlighting the mistakes we made.
"Experience with the county taught us a lot about those mistakes and we decided that if we were going to do it, we were going to do it right and try and rectify those mistakes."
The 2011 Ulster minor win provided emphatic evidence that the steep learning curve was being navigated.
St Eunan’s of Donegal, Truagh Gaels of Monaghan and Orchard champions Armagh Harps managed a combined tally of 0-14. Watty Graham’s plundered 8-35 in those three games.
"I have been about long enough to know that just because you have one good team one year does not mean you do the next," Gormley said minutes after the full-time whistle of the final against the Harps.
They did though, despite losing six players for the following season’s competition. And they did in 2013 too, and in 2014 as well as they became the most dominant minor team to ever play in Ulster.
Senior success was inevitable, and after shocking Oakleaf kingpins Slaughtneil in the 2019 semi-final, their time had arrived – or so it seemed.
Despite a euphoric build up in Maghera, their first-ever senior final appearance was ended by an Emmett McGuckin inspired Magherafelt.
The players were devastated, especially as the referee blew the full-time whistle just as they were sending over an equalising score, but the coaching staff had a more mature reaction.
"We’ve had too many false dawns around Glen to get carried away but we knew we were on a better path than we would have been for a long, long time," Gormley said.
"There was a theory out there in Derry that we had won a lot at underage. We actually hadn’t. Prior to this group, we had only won one minor in Derry, one U14 and one Féile.
"Like our seniors we didn’t get over the line as much as we should have and that’s why we were so adamant that there had to be changes.
"There would have been cynics until we won last year. People were saying that we were going to miss the boat.
"We knew they were still very young. The problem was when they came through, we didn’t have a strong established senior team, our two or three strong players were ageing.
"We've had too many false dawns around Glen to get carried away but we knew we were on a better path than we would have been for a long, long time."
"Slaughtneil had a very good senior team when their players were coming through and they were able to nurse them in whereas we didn’t.
"When we played Magherafelt in that 2020 final our oldest player was 26 so we knew we had the age profile, none of them had hit full maturity yet of 27, 28. None of them."
A timely fillip arrived ahead of the 2021 campaign as Conor Glass called time on his AFL career with Hawthorn, and in the two seasons since his return that first county title did arrive with a second coming 12 months later.
Late 2022 also brought a first Ulster senior title, having lost to holders Kilcoo in a 2021 semi-final after extra-time, and now after their All-Ireland semi-final triumph, they are on the verge of completing club football.
Thirty years ago, Gormley experienced that joy at Croke Park with his county. On Sunday, he’ll be hoping to see his club achieve the equivalent. He may not have the boots on for this one, but his role has been equally vital.
The under-achievers' tag has long been jettisoned. This weekend they have the chance to really rubber-stamp the fact that Glen is no longer a club that can’t get the job done.
