Niall Gartland speaks to former Derry goalkeeper Thomas Mallon about his new role at Conor Laverty’s Down.

THOMAS Mallon has come a long way. Second-choice goalkeeper when the Loup won their last Derry Senior Championship title back in 2009, Mallon stood at a crossroads: he could either stay in the shadows or put in the hard work and reap the rewards.

Opting for the latter, he moved up in the world, lining out for Derry for a number of years and more recently serving as goalkeeping coach under both Rory Gallagher and Mickey Harte.

Mallon, a well-travelled stonemason by profession, even made a brief return to a playing role at inter-county level in Derry’s 2023 season which climaxed in a narrow defeat to Kerry with a place in the All-Ireland final on the line.

And that’s where Ciarán Meenagh comes in. Mallon has enjoyed a productive working relationship with the Loughmacrory native for a number of years. It was Meenagh who first reached out to Mallon about the possibility of coming on board as Derry’s goalkeeping coach back in 2020. One thing led to another and Mallon has also coached Loughmacrory for a prolonged spell. It was also Meenagh, by the way, who asked Mallon to dust down the boots for his brief return to the field of play at inter-county level in 2023.

So it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the connection with Mallon’s new role with the Down senior footballers. Their previous goalkeeper coach John Devine has linked in with Malachy O’Rourke at Tyrone, that left an obvious vacancy to be filled and Mallon has stepped into the breach, joining a high-powered managerial set-up that includes manager Conor Laverty, the aforementioned Meenagh, Marty Clarke, Mickey Donnelly and Declan Morgan.

Expressing his excitement at his new role, Mallon said: “I’m delighted to be involved. Ciarán had obviously worked with me before and spoke highly of me to Conor Laverty. I met them around November time and right away thought that Conor is the type of person I love to be involved with in terms of his passion and enthusiasm. It’s the same with Ciarán, we bonded right from the start because of our passion for sport and GAA and life in general.

“I think both men are actually very similar in terms of their coaching ability and traits, and they’re both absolutely obsessed with football, and that’s the type of environment I love to be involved in.”

Still lining out between the sticks with the Loup – and playing great stuff by all accounts – Mallon is 36 years old but subscribes to the age-is-just-a-number philosophy.

“Thankfully I’m still able to commit to the Loup. You might assume that county involvement would jeopardise that but I find that the two are able to balance themselves out. I’m still able to get to Loup training about once a week.

“Look, playing is still everything. Coaching is brilliant and it’s great to be part of county set-ups, but I’ve chatted to boys in bars down the years who have said to keep on playing as long as you can because you’re a long time retired. My birth certificate says I’m 36 but I still feel 26 to be honest.”

Mallon will coach John O’Hare, promising youngster Ronan Burns and Fintan Canavan in his new role at Down. O’Hare is the main man at present but they’ll all play an important role in a hugely significant season with the advent of the new rules.

“Knowing the player from a performance perspective is one thing, but it’s just as important to know them on a personal level and I found that at Derry as well.

“It’s really important to be friends off the pitch, but on it we’ve a job to do. It’s about bringing the best version of ourselves every single night we go out.

“The demands have gone up a lot, particularly in terms of video work. I never did any video work back in the day in terms of developing my own goalkeeping, and now I’m going home at night after work and doing significant video work on our own ‘keepers and ‘opposition keepers and bringing that to the squad.

“And that’s another big change, in the past it was almost like goalkeepers were in the corner by themselves at training but now it’s all very much a collective approach.”

Mallon also emphasises the importance of strong communication on match day. All the strategising in the world won’t be much use if the message gets lost in the heat of battle.

“First and foremost, a goalkeeper has to be unbelievably fit these days and a good footballer. Being a good kicker of the ball is obviously massive as well – you can scare the opposition if you’ve a good long kick-out and that has a knock-on effect where short kick-outs become a bit easier as the opposition are trying to cover all the bases.

“For me, communication is a big focus. ‘Keepers must be able to talk clearly but concisely in terms of delivering instructions. Some times I hear goalkeepers in opposition teams shouting to be heard shouting,

“With great communication you can rectify problems before they actually happen – be it telling someone to move five yards to the right or to the left for example.”

Goalkeeping has undergone a revolution of sorts in the last 15 years and renowned exponents of the craft like Niall Morgan and Rory Beggan regularly join in with their teams’ attacking moves, even scoring from play on occasion. The new rules are a potential game-changer as well, as fly-keepers can create a 12 v 11 situation in attack. The trick is actually being involved though.

“Goalkeepers have been coming out and being a plus-one for years now but with the new rules in particular, if you’re coming out and not getting involved, you’re not being effective. If you’re coming up the pitch, you have to create space for somebody else or get into the play or you’re almost getting in the way.

“If you look at Niall Morgan in the trial matches, and that’s nearly all we have to go by at this stage, he didn’t always come out, but when he did, his timing was spot on and he gave the opposition a massive headache as they knew how good he is in possession.”

Last year Mallon worked under Mickey Harte in a forgettable year for Derry. There were plenty of arrows fired from the outside, but he found the vibe within the camp to be positive.

He also says that Harte was more than happy for the backroom team to have their say, dispelling a stereotype that’s oft-directed at the Errigal Ciaran veteran.

“Personally I found last year very refreshing. It was an open forum and I was asked regularly for my opinion on kick-outs.

“I found with Mickey and Gavin Devlin, and equally with Rory Gallagher and Ciarán Meenagh, that they basically trusted me with my training and the way it was working.

“Then with the collective approach last year, it was simplistic in terms of getting the ball out long from kick-outs in terms of having the advantage on opposition on height and numbers around the middle third.

“That’s the way we operated. It was a good environment to work out and to be that’s what management is all about, about bouncing ideas off each other and it being a collective ethos.”