Ahead in his field

How did a man from Kerry come to be the vice-chairman of playing at the club?

Well, I came to the City in 1974. I was working in England before that, and my wife is from here. So that is the only reason I ended up here, because when you marry a Derry woman you have very little say in where you live. But, I had never played rugby before I came here.

Right!

Yeah. So, I met a guy who actually worked here in the College, Evlin Love, and he was captain of Derry IIIBs, which would have been the third or fourth team in the City at the time and he said 'Do you fancy playing rugby? You are a big lad and you have big muscles' - and all this kind of stuff.

I can see I'm going to have fun interviewing you...

(Laughs) Anyway, he said 'Would you like to play rugby?' and I said 'I'd love to play' and he said 'Would you like to come out to play on Saturday?' and I said 'But I don't know the rules or anything'. He said 'Look it's OK'.

Well, would you not have been a big GAA player?

I was yeah. That's why I went to school in Dublin - rugby and soccer would have been foreign sports, so there was a GAA ban on at the time and if you were caught playing rugby or soccer you would have been expelled from the school.

That was harsh.

Yeah. Anyway, I started playing rugby with Evlin in the IIIBs and they showed me the rules and all that and I played for about three or four months until the end of the season. The following season I started playing with the senior team at the club. That was in 1975.

So you have been associated ever since. So you were a hurler when you were younger?

Yeah, hurling and football.

And you went to boarding school, you told me?

Yeah, I went to boarding school in Dublin, I was there from 1962 to 1967.

Was it a conscious choice by you or was it your parents?

I was sent away probably to be kept out of trouble, I would have thought, you know?

So your parents shipped all their problems from Kerry to Dublin, then?

Yeah, and then I went to work in Brimingham, and played basketball over there and a bit of hurling and football. And then, when I came to Derry I started playing rugby.

The City of Derry Juniors' clash with Armagh in the final - is that the highest status game you can remember in your time at the club?

Yeah. I would say it is probably the biggest game ever in the club, to play in an All-Ireland final. The Club has never been in an All-Ireland final before at any level. Last year we won the Towns Cup the Junior Cup and the qualifying League but we were narrowly beaten in the play-off to get back to Senior status, which we lost two years ago. Prior to that it would have been 1999 which would have been the biggest year in the Club, when we won League and Cup double in Ulster. Definitely the Armagh match is the biggest weekend for a long time for the club.

Win, lose or draw, it is a massive thing for the club, then.

Massive.

What is the temperature like in the club at the minute?

It is all good. It is all positive. We have good structures in the club: From the Minis, which is the six to 12-year-olds, right up to the Senior team, we have a good youth section which encompasses the Under-13s, 15s, 17s and 19s. There is wall-to-wall advertising on television all the time with the Six Nations, with the Heineken Cup, so rugby is THE game at the minute, and we have all the structures in place. All the advertising is done for us and all we have to do is capitalise on that and get the young people to come and play for us.

Do you think there is anyone in particular in the management structure who has proved an inspiration to the young players or seen the direction the club should be going in?

Our current coach Bevin Lynch, who is a New Zealander, who came to the club. This is his second year with us. He is rugby-thinking and has a rugby brain and the attitude he has brought to training, conditioning, at all levels within the club. I think he is a good technician and he also has good support from the other coaches around him, Mark Nicholl and Terry McMaster at senior level. Within the club itself, right down from the Under 19s to the Minis there are a lot of good coaches there who are being up-skilled by him, so the input he gives to the club, the community and in the schools is phenomenal.

Going back to your own youth, what was your attraction to sport - because hurling is not a bit gentle either?

Yeah, it is quite skilful as well. Although I did have all the ball-playing skills of an elephant, so hurling would be the most skilful and fastest skill game in the world and it can be quite violent as well.

Aye, I was going to ask you if you liked blood sports...

What attracted me to rugby, do you mean?

Aye.

I suppose the challenge...The thing that struck me when I came to Derry and I told my wife I was going to play rugby she told her mother and she said 'What is Moss doing playing rugby, it is only Protestants that play rugby'. I said 'I come from Kerry and I don't give two s****'. I not only fancied playing the game. Who I am probably helped me to a certain extent. With the game as well, I thought the physicality of the game, it seemed like manual labour to me, which I liked doing. When I played the first game I was so physically knackered and exhausted I thought 'What a way to work up a thirst!'

How many pints did you have after that game?

I had four pints straight away and I thought 'This is like going to the bog cutting turf'. It was like it's 6pm and you can see the rain coming, but you still have three loads to draw out, so you have to roll your sleeve up and work like mad. That's kind of what it was like, plus the fact when you do play rugby, it activates almost every human emotion: you've got the fear of battle, the going to war with your friends, the comraderie, the joy and elation of scoring, of the physical challenge one-on-one and the challenge of a set of forwards against a set of forwards. You have the combined team challenge.

What position did you play in?

I was in the second row so I was one of the forwards. Normally you push in the scrum and jump in the line-out, but the joke was that I used to jump in the scrum and push in the line-outs...

Were you a dirty player?

I was a bit!

If you were putting together a 'dream team' who would you choose?

They would be alll Derry players except for a few southerners because if you were going to war and were in the trenches these are the men you want with you and afterwards if you wanted to celebrate the craic with this crew could last forever. The team is: Mark McFeely, Ian Crowe, Charlie Chada, Gerald McCarter, Ivan Lapsley, Charlie McCartney, George Fleming, Martin Gleeson, Mike Poole, Adrian Leddy, Stan Huey, Monty Allen, Alan McClure, John McDonnell, Tommy Diver, John Lynch, James Doherty, Keith Graham, Seam O'Kane, Eddie O'Connor, John McBride, Will Funston, Kenny Ferris, Ian Stone, Shay McGuinness from Skerries, Paul Murray from UL Bohs and Paul O'Halloran from Corinthians and a cast of thousands who would be there or thereabouts.