In these days of shortening inter-county careers, there remains a few outliers who buck all prevailing trends, writes Peter Sweeney.
An outlier is defined as ‘a person or thing differing from all other members of a particular group or set’.
Stephen Cluxton and Sean Cavanagh would both certainly fall into this category, having made their Senior Football Championship debuts for Dublin and Tyrone in 2001 and 2002 respectively.
But it could be argued that success has sustained these 30-somethings - between them they have seven All-Ireland titles and shelves full of personal awards with the threat of more silverware never too far away.
True outliers however, are Fermanagh’s Ryan McCluskey and Mark Breheny of Sligo. They play for less successful counties, have one provincial title and one All-Ireland semi-final appearance between them, yet they have have more than 30 years of active service combined.
Breheny played his first game for the Yeats County pre-Christmas in the 2000/’01 National Football League, though through a combination of injury and inexperience he had to wait until 2002 to make his first summer appearance.
McCluskey pulled on the Fermanagh jersey for the first time in the Ulster Championship on May 13, 2001 in a quarter-final draw with Donegal. That was a full month before Cluxton’s debut, making him the longest serving Championship footballer in the game.
The 35-year-old Enniskillen Gaels man said: “I was lucky and I worked hard to get into that green jersey. I think about Brian Óg Maguire who is no longer with us (the Fermanagh player died in a workplace accident in 2012) and I still have the chance to pull on the green jersey.
“I love it and now I have my daughter Eva Rose and my nephew, Mark Dixon, who come along and support me, which makes it even better.”
RTÉ analyst Joe Brolly claims that being an inter-county player now is similar to indentured slavery such is the demands placed on them, but McCluskey and Breheny couldn’t feel more differently.
“It’s definitely not a chore, in fact it’s a privilege in a lot of ways,” said the 36-year-old Sligo forward.“I was very privileged to be called into the Sligo panel for the first time and I’m still very privileged to play for Sligo now.
“There are huge positives to come from playing for your county or playing Gaelic football at a high level. It has added a huge amount to my life and I have been very fortunate to have been allowed to play football at a high level.”
The pair are similar in a lot of ways - they have always looked after themselves, eating healthy and staying in shape would have been a way of life with or without football, and they have managed to strike a balance between sport, work and home life thanks to the backing or supportive families.
Mark, a teacher at Summerhill College, is married to Caroline and they have three-year-old Noah while Ryan, a health coordinator at Devenish Partnership, and his partner Donna are kept busy with four-year-old Eva Rose.
They differ too. Breheny has been lucky to avoid serious injury and can tell you in forensic detail about nearly every game he played while McCluskey - and it is McCluskey, not McCloskey as his mother Noreen pointed out when she rang around several national media outlets early in his career to correct any misspellings - has been under the knife twice and during this interview couldn’t pinpoint what year he made his debut. “John Maughan was in charge,” was as close as he got.
McCluskey’s most serious injury came in 2012 when an accidental clash in training left him with a cracked sinus and 70 staples in his skull. He explained: “We were hoping that they could go in through the eyebrow, but it turned out to be bad enough so they basically had to split my head open. That was a tough time.”
He missed last year’s Ulster Championship due to torn cartilage in his hip which came to a head after a League game against Galway, a match for which he togged out only with the help of painkillers. The week after that game was the time he pinpoints as the worst in his career.
I want to be the best player I can be and when I do finish up I want to do so with no regrets - Mark Breheny
“I had a week booked off around that game and I planned to spend it with my partner and daughter,” said McCluskey. “But then I got home and I was struggling to walk - that was tough. I should have been enjoying time with my family and I was in and out of ice baths and looking at an operation. That wasn’t fair on them.”
Another thing that these two have in common is that they realise their time pulling on the county jersey they respect and cherish so much is coming to a close. It mightn’t be this season, but it will be some season soon.
Breheny says he’s like an 18-year-old now, enthusiastic and trying as hard as he ever did to improve his skills and working on his weaker right side.
“I want to be the best player I can be and when I do finish up I want to do so with no regrets,” said the St Mary’s man, who scored 1-3 on his debut against New York 15 years ago.
“I’m excited by it and I still have targets - I want to win another Connacht title and I have never won an All Star. These are personal targets that I have myself.”
McCluskey, a stylish defender, has to take it ‘session by session’ because of his bad hip, which requires constant management, though he too is driven by the dream of success.
“We haven’t got the silverware; we have nothing in the trophy cabinet to polish,” he said. “That’s something I strive for and I love the lifestyle too. People give off about the commitment and the intensity level but it’s something I enjoy.
“That professionalism, in some sense, is something I enjoy and I feel lucky to be part of an era when the game has transformed in many ways. As a player you have to evolve or you get left behind.”
Breheny’s best day came in 2007 when he was part of a team that won just Sligo’s third Connacht title with his big brother Tommy as manager (the low, by the way was losing the 2010 provincial final to Roscommon having gone in as raging hot favourites).
People give off about the commitment and the intensity level but it’s something I enjoy - Ryan McCluskey
His other favourite day is more personal - a nondescript and routine Connacht quarter-final win over New York in the Big Apple.
“My parents met in Gaelic Park - my mother Mary is from Kerry and my father Tommy is from Sligo. My four brothers and two sisters were born in the Bronx - I was born in Sligo General [Hospital] so I’m the only 100 per cent guaranteed Irish one in the family!” he joked.
“To go back there in ’07 when my brother was manager with them in the crowd was special.”
For McCluskey, his best days on the field have been closely followed by his worst. He was part of the Fermanagh side that lost to Mayo in an All-Ireland semi-final replay in 2004 and Armagh in an Ulster final replay in ’08, bearing in mind the Erne County has never won Ulster. Both were ties they could have won.
“You think that they’ll be learning experiences, that you’ll be back there again, and it doesn't work like that,” he sighed.
“They should have been better days, but the comedown after them was tough and I went through a period as a recluse, almost, after 2008 and it was a long time before I could even bring myself to watch it; it killed me.”
Whatever has gone before and whatever happens over the rest of this season, these two players will be able to walk away proud of what they have accomplished. And whenever that day comes, inter-county football will leave a huge hole that won’t be easy to fill.
McCluskey joked: “Mam makes the tea up in the club and she’s a fanatic; a great woman and a legend. I’ll have to find something for her to do as well when I do retire!”
Live commentary of Mayo v Monaghan in the Allianz Football League (throw-in 7pm) on Saturday Sport Extra on RTE Radio 1. Reports and reaction on the day's league games on Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1 from 2pm. Highlights of the weekend's action on League Sunday on RTÉ Two television (7.30pm).
