A big thanks has to go to Enda Mcginley for helping us out with our first Magazine in Nov 2008.  Not only did he agree to do an interview with us, but he agreed to go on the front cover as well.  It was a leap of faith, but thanks to Enda and that first edition, we have been interviewing all the big names in the GAA since. Thanks Enda, we wont forget it.

Have you any experience of the compromise game?

No, I have never played it competitively.

I attended a couple of the trials before but between cruciate ligament injuries and club commitments I never managed to get to final stages.

How have you found the process of adapting to the new game?

It is very strange.

It takes a long while to get used to the rules; they feel so unnatural.

You don’t realise how innate the skills of gaelic football become over the years.

Your natural instinct and the way you move and think about the game are nearly pre-programmed at this stage.

Suddenly you are now trying to do things against your nature in the middle of a competitive game. It requires a lot of thinking.

Hopefully when we get together as a squad in Australia the rules will be become fine tuned.

The tackle area seems to be the main difference between the two games. How have you found it?

Yeah the tackle is an issue but even things like what you do when you are on the ball is different. Certain runs are not useful because your opponent can grab a hold of you.

In gaelic you can receive a ball with a man tight behind you and still pass and move the ball.

You can afford to take that pass but in the compromise rules you can’t take a ball when a man is close to you because he can wrap his arms around you and prevent you doing anything.

The type of runs you make and when you make yourself available for the ball all have to change. Then the use of the kick pass and the mark and the steps and everything comes into the mix. It’s quite technical and it will take time to adjust.

There’s also a different type of fitness required. It’s a much more physical approach.

There’s hitting in gaelic football but there’s fewer big hits and fewer full body collisions.

You also don’t spend as much time picking yourself up off the floor in gaelic football!

What are looking forward to?

One of the best things will be getting away with this squad of players.

You spend so much time within your own club and your own county this will be a chance to meet with boys from all over Ireland.

Obviously I’m looking forward to seeing Austrlia but for me the biggest thing will be the moment when I pull on an Irish jersey for the first time.

I think that will be a big moment and I’m really looking forward to that and hoping that I can make and impact and help Ireland win.

The game does have its detractors but at the same time there’s a bit of Irish pride at stake here and I’d like to think we can put it up to these boys.

It wasn’t nice watching it the last time as Australia quite easily beat Ireland. You felt the hurt watching it on television even though you had no real link with the team at that stage.

Getting back to matters closer to home, was football a big part of family life growing up?

There are six boys and no girls in the family so there was always a lot of football being played out in the yard. That’s were it all started really.

My brothers have all done very well in their own right. They have all played senior championship club football with Errigal Ciaran and Tyrone Vocational Schools.

Cormac obviously played on the Tyrone senior team. He has one All-Ireland medal as well.

My father played for Ballygawley St Ciarans as a corner back. He never speaks too much about his football. And my mum’s brother was Frank Higgins. One of the great Tyrone players in 50’s and 60’s and I was always aware of him.

How important is club football to you?

I’m very lucky to come from an exceptionally strong club.

The pride that you have playing club football is something that is very hard to match.

My father did an awful lot of work with the club on the committee for a lot of years and all my brothers have been involved with the club from underage level.

We’ve played quite regularly with four of us on the field and it’s brilliant.

The five other boys were all defenders although Kevin played a bit in midfield.

I played along with Emmet, Cormac, Ronan and Aidan. They were mostly defenders and I was always away up the field.

There was always a great atmosphere in the house coming up to big championship games. We were lucky enough to win an Ulster Club Championship title 2002 with the four of us playing. Highlights like that are just massive.

Sadly that’s the one regret this year that we made an early exit from the club championship.

We were missing a few men and I don’t think we did ourselves justice against a Clonoe team that was too good for us on the day. They did very well to beat Carrickmore in the quarter-finals.

What is your best position?

I’ve nearly always played as a forward or in midfield.

I stepped back into defence a few times. A couple of managers played me at centre-half back or full back on occasions.

I think I played for Tyrone vocational schools at full-back in a final once but the majority of my time has been spent in attack.

When I started playing club football I was very young. I was playing in the U-14s as an 11-year-old and I suppose the tendency is to be put in at corner forward where you might not have to be as physically strong.

I managed to play well enough and that’s how I got a reputation for playing in attack. Then, what you find in underage teams is that the better players tend to end up in midfield so they can influence the game. As a result, you end up finding your feet in that position as well.

There would still be plenty of arguments about whether I am a forward or not.

If asked I think in and around the midfield area is my best position. I love played full forward but sadly I don’t think I have the feet to play there!

Is midfield a difficult position to play with Tyrone?

You always have a lot of men keeping you right.

I always get a warm ear from the likes of Ricey and Conor Gourley for not getting back to help them out in defence.

I’m back more often that they seem to think but its good old slagging.

They usually tell me that they don’t see from leaving the changing room until we got in for half time.

I think there’s video evidence somewhere that refutes any of those allegations.

You’ve had a couple of bad injuries (in 2003 he suffered a serious neck injury in the All-Ireland final and in 2005 he was ruled out with a cruciate knee injury) did you ever think you might not make it back?

I was always very confident that I could manage the knee absolutely fine.

The neck and head injury was a different kettle of fish because to a certain extent it’s out of your hands.

With the knee it’s very much a case of the more work you put in the better chance you have of coming back.

I knew that because of the profession I was in (he’s a physiotherapist) and because I had a colleague called Lou O’Connor who was at the top of his trade with regards to rehabilitation that everything was in place for me to make a strong comeback.

The problem with the head and neck injury is that it is almost taken out of your hands. There’s not so much work you can do to improve or cure it.

I had to wait for nature to sort it out and it’s reared its head from time to time but as of now it seems fairly quiet and long may it continue.

I’m supposed to avoid taking strong chops around the head and neck when I’m playing but I tend to forget that on the field and throw myself about anyway leaving it up to the hands of fate.

I’d have to be very unlucky for it to come back.

Have you been unlucky with injuries?

I don’t feel I’ve had a big problem with them.

I’ve had the two serious injuries but if you look around the Tyrone squad this year I think something like nine of them alone have had orthopaedic surgery.

It’s part of the game these days and the number of injections that are given out to the team is absolutely massive as well.

I’ve had two bad injuries but aside from that I’ve had great injury free years which thankfully have coincided with Tyrone’s prolonged run.

I’m happy with my lot.

It makes you a better physio. I know what the players who come to me are going through and sometimes it’s easier for them to accept what you are telling them to do.

Sports injuries and rehab is certainly what I’m interested in work wise and I hope to push on and get more specialised in that area.

Getting on to the All-Ireland success this year, was there a moment when the team realised they had a genuine chance of winning the title?

I think there was a gradual feeling after the first qualifying game that the energy and work rate was returning to the team. They were the two most important things. Whenever Tyrone play well those two aspects are taken care of.

During the qualifying matches we didn’t play that well but those two ingredients were more and more to the fore.

I recently watched the Mayo game and although we were poor for long periods, in the last 15-20 minutes you suddenly saw a different energy level than we had produced all year. There was a change to our speed and intensity.

When I was watching it I thought that was the moment when we suddenly looked like a Tyrone team that could do serious damage.

Luckily for us it went unnoticed and we were roundly written off going into the Dublin game. After that game the public at large realised that we would have a real say in the championship.

We were capable of putting in that display against Dublin because it had already clicked with us. We took great confidence from that performance and kicked on from there.

It was a gradual build up in the key ingredients. The belief was there and then the performance against Dublin proved it to us.

When did you know you had won the final?

It was very late on.

I think whenever the clock was running down I had scored my point to put us two points up.

You knew the 70^th minute was coming up and you were saying ‘right, two points ahead we can hold on from there’, but straight from that kick-out Kevin Hughes scored a point and suddenly we were three up which was soon four.

At that stage you were thinking ‘this is great’ but I was concerned because it had been a championship of late goals and late fight backs.

At the same time, out of the corner of your eye you could see all the panel lined up on the sideline and the Tyrone fans in the stands were all on their feet in those final seconds.

Can you rate your All-Irelands?

Not really, they all come first in my eyes. I wouldn’t and couldn’t rate them.

The fact that I have three All-Ireland medals – well you have to pinch yourself at times to realise that you have three.

This latest one feels very, very special but it’s hard to say.

In 2005 to become the first team to win it after 10 matches. It was such an amazing run that year. And obviously it was the first one after Cormac (McAnallan) passed away and that had a very personal meaning.

2003 will never be surpassed because it was the first one. That will always be very special.

How much of a role did Mickey Harte play this year? He took a lot of flak after the Down defeat.

Unfortunately I think he just told Fergal McCann to run us into the ground and even worse still he’s likely to do it even more next year!

He never lost belief in us even when he was under fire. It never wavered and as we began to put in the work and picked up a couple of results that rubbed off on us as a group and we started to realise there was a foundation to his belief.

There’s nothing magical to Mickey Harte. He has supreme belief in this bunch of players and he has an incredible will to win.

It is scary. Between him and Brian Dooher they are the two most competitive and driven men you will ever meet.

And I suppose when you have one man managing and one man captaining that means there is a unified sense of purpose coming through that we will win and that we are the best.

That obviously took some time to sink in with the rest of the players?

Yeah, we had a poor National League and a poor Ulster Championship.

Things were at a low ebb and at that stage, the boys who had been there for a while realised that our era could well finish in a whimper.

Whilst we had done so much to put the Tyrone jersey right up there we were going to leave it without that same respect that we had put in to it.

There was a determination within every man on an individual basis to get the team back to the big days in Croke Park.

And the more you chatted to the players the more you realised every man was singing from the same hymn sheet.

The captain and manager fully believed that not only could we get back to our best but we could go on to win the thing.

As the season progressed that all gelled into a pretty ferocious unit.

Finally, what is it like to be nominated for an All-Star?

I’ve been very privileged to be nominated twice before and I remember when I was nominated the first time I couldn’t believe it.

It’s a lovely feeling.

Whenever you attend the night and see the All-Stars up on the stage, some of your friends included, you do have a desire to join them so it’s great to be back in with a shout of winning.

It’s a nice honour. Thankfully the other two times I have been nominated has been when Tyrone have won an All-Ireland. I’m sure it’s different for those players who have been nominated but haven’t won the title.

First and foremost the team has to win. Winning an All-Star having lost in a final would only be a consolation.

The thing that makes it better than anything is going down as a winner.