‘What good would anger do?’: The sudden death and lasting influence of Cormac McAnallen

Cormac McAnallen: by the time of his untimely death at just 24, he had won All-Ireland medals at minor, U21 and senior level, plus Ulster championship and National League medals. Photograph: Andrew Paton/Inpho

It was Dónal who found Cormac in his bedroom on the night he died. In an instant, everything changed for the family. Bridget and Brendan lost a son, Dónal lost a younger brother, Fergus lost an older one. Then, in August 2022, they lost Brendan too. Cormac, though young, was Tyrone’s leader. Seán recalls a futile effort to dodge a recovery session one evening in 2002, having spent the previous night overindulging after a Tyrone game. When Cormac arrived to pick him up, Seán huddled under the duvet.

In 2008, Seán captained Ireland in the International Rules Series in Australia. Ireland won and he got to lift the Cormac McAnallen Cup.“It was my friend’s cup I was lifting, Cormac’s cup, it was quite emotional. I still classify that as one of the greatest things I managed to do in the game.”“I would still go to his grave,” he says. “Particularly throughout my Tyrone career before a game, I would have gone.

Dónal McAnallen and his mother Bridget at Páirc Chormaic in Eglish. Photograph: Oliver McVeigh for The Irish Times He was also a fiercely passionate historian, a committee member of the O’Neill Country Historical Society since the 1980s, and in 2011 he published The Book of Eglish, Where the Oona Flows.“Everything he was interested in was hewn out of rock, old buildings, stone walls, he had a deep sense of tradition, you only come to appreciate it all the more now he’s gone, but he was a rock to us too.”Seán Kelly was the GAA president when Cormac died.

His 2003 All-Ireland SFC final jersey has been framed and now hangs inside the pavilion entrance at Páirc Chormaic. On the opposite wall is a cabinet in which sits, among other things, the football he clasped as if his life depended upon it after captaining Tyrone to victory in the 1998 All-Ireland minor final.

“On the theme of thinking why this has happened to us, there are a number of things I would say,” suggests Bridget. “It would have occurred to me at different times that it did seem a bitter irony that Cormac, having been so careful and meticulous, that this fate should happen him,” says Dónal.

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