Monaghan fan Tony Keenan pays tribute following the news that Conor McManus has hung up the boots

MY wife tells me I’m not much of a romantic. She’s right, but there is an exception: the Monaghan Gaelic football team.

My first memory of going to an Ulster Championship match was in Castleblayney in 1992. Three drunk Monaghan lads on the terrace beside me, my dad and granda, laughing their way through a first half where Derry led by 10 points to no score at one point. Them leaving at half-time and my dad saying you never know, them laughing their heads off walking out. It finished a draw, Monaghan scoring three goals in four minutes.

We got battered the next Sunday back in ‘Blayney but there was hope that first day, and there has always been since though there wasn’t much light for most of that decade and noughties. Just nostalgia for the 80s, Nudie and the likes.

In truth, I lost my love for the game in my late teens and early 20s. Played a fair bit underage, tried hard, wasn’t much good. Meh pair of hands, could score a goal if the chance presented itself, but too slow and, more importantly, ‘too cauld’ as they say around here.

My dad disagrees on this, thinks I didn’t get fair play my last few years underage. But whereas he thinks, I know. I have a minor championship medal from 1999 which is nice but I barely got a minute on the pitch and even with another year of eligibility in 2000, I was hardly playing and had quit by the end of the year.

My dad was a selector for the county minors during this time. Maybe it’s the same in every county but it’s remarkable how many of those players have been impactful since: Paul Finlay, Stephen Gollogly, Dessie Mone, Vinny Corey. They were unlucky not to win an Ulster minor in 2001. I know this because, 23 years later, my dad brings this up at least biannually, if not with greater regularity. Sean Cavanagh scored a vital goal. He’s like a bad penny, that lad. Tyrone Tribulations have been far too big a part of my life.

My brother, five years younger, played a bit too. Definitely not too cold, had lots of talent but not much interest. Once played well in an underage trial game for the county but had no interest in going back for the second round when asked. Might have broken my dad’s heart when he told him that. Picked up a fella called Conor McManus in some of his juvenile club games. Said he used to go down easy.

There wasn’t much to miss with Monaghan in the nineties and most of the noughties. We were always capable of a massive performance but there was no knowing what would happen the next day. Disappointment felt like a short price.

Then along came McManus. You can say it wasn’t only McManus, and we’ve had many brilliant players over the last 20 years or so but a lot of it was him. It didn’t matter that we were playing teams with bigger populations, more money, elite traditions. McManus always believed and he put that into others.

For most of the McManus years, we became boys of summer, not just late spring. It was rarely the beautiful game, but like Kavanagh’s Shancoduff hills, it was our own. Those teams captured the Monaghan spirit, doggedness, resilience and if I suffer from small country syndrome where every askew comment is a slight then so be it.

There have been some great days, some not so great days. The two Ulster wins against Donegal in 2013 and 2015 were brilliant for different reasons, one the end of a famine, the other proof we belonged. Finally beating Tyrone in a match that mattered in Clones in 2014, and repeating the dose in Omagh in 2018 when McManus scored that wonder point from the sideline. And yes, beating Cavan three times on the hop in Championship. Those things matter up here, a lot.

Last year’s quarter-final win against Armagh on penalties topped them though. They said Mansy went down easy for the equalising free in the 97th minute that day but I don’t believe a word of it. Of course, he slotted it over, relishing pressure situation as he always had.

My dad and I had parked in Smithfield that afternoon for the game, down the country the night before for a funeral the day of and we walked – or floated – the whole way across the city afterwards.

We couldn’t beat Dublin the following week but I drove up the N2 again the next day to Carrickmacross and back to look at the all the signs supporting the team. The All-Ireland semi-final defeat to Tyrone in 2018 brings back less pleasant memories of that road, I don’t think I spoke until we passed Ardee on the way home that evening.

Travelling home from Galway with my dad for McManus’s last game for Monaghan in June, I scrolled the various tributes to him on social media from players and supporters of every county. Many were attached to an image of an emotional ‘Mansy’ on that Salthill pitch.

That is absolutely not how I will remember him. Instead, it will be the steely stare of a stone-cold killer and the brief fist pump after another point. Perfection in the white and blue, thank you for everything Conor.