Edendork clubman Declan Cullen was a tireless servant until brain tumour took him far too soon

IT’S what this GAA of ours is all about.

Classic championship football.

The final play of the final game…

“Can you do anything for us here Decky?” whispers Edendork manager Brian McGuckin, sending a prayer to the heavens.

His team was a point behind in the dying seconds of injury-time in the Tyrone senior championship final replay.

Niall Morgan set the ball down with the posts within his range. Boot struck leather and the ball soared high into the night sky.

The Edendork fans were cheering as the orange flag waved signalling a two-pointer. Moments later the final whistle blew and Edendork were champions of mighty Tyrone.

What a night.

“Decky answered our prayers,” says McGuckin of his friend and clubmate Declan Cullen who so sadly passed away on September 17, just five weeks before Edendork’s greatest triumph.

That glory night at Healy Park was the result of years of dedication from people who regarded the club as a living, breathing part of them. They nurtured it and it nurtured them, their lives revolved around it and season after season, player after player and layer upon layer they took it to the pinnacle of their county.

Declan Cullen was one of them.

“We miss him dearly,” adds McGuckin.

“It’s still very raw for us all and he was to the forefront of our minds throughout the championship campaign.

“He was an amazing man, he did everything in our club, everything that was asked of him and it hit us really hard when he got sick and then when he passed away. He was a mighty man, a very good friend to everybody and always very jovial and happy.

“If ever you needed advice I always found he was a man to give you good, sound advice.

“He’s just a massive loss to us all, especially to Veronica and the Cullen family.”

VERONICA and the family were in the stand on Friday night watching the drama unfold as Errigal Ciaran made their break for the line only to have their hearts broken by Morgan’s free.

But it was only a game of football.

The Cullens know what real heartbreak is.

“I know a lot of people were thinking about Declan and his cousin ‘Rusty’ (Martin Currie) who died two weeks before he did,” Veronica explained.

“Brian McGuckin and Declan were work colleagues for 20 years and good friends. They would have managed teams at school (St Patrick’s, Dungannon) together so they were very close and it has been tough on Brian as well.

“I hope he takes the team all the way this year, I think they can. Ulster is very open.”

Veronica and Declan came from opposite sides of the River Blackwater. Veronica, from Blackwatertown, was a staunch Armagh supporter while Declan followed the Red Hands with equal enthusiasm.

“I remember Armagh playing Tyrone and I had the Armagh flag out,” recalls Veronica with a chuckle.

“I came home and my Armagh flag was on fire, burning in the front garden! I wouldn’t have had to go too far to find out who burnt it.”

No harm done! She took the borderline prank in the spirit it was intended and quickly became part of the community.

She followed the football but camogie was her game and it wasn’t long before Veronica’s talents and knowhow were put to good use in the club.

“They were very welcoming when I came here, I never felt like an outsider,” she says.

“Declan was very much involved in the formation of ladies’ football. He would have managed the first senior ladies’ team and I would have managed the first U14 ladies’ team.

“Then I got very much involved in the camogie so he would be out on the main pitch and I would have been on the training pitch with the camogs. The two of us were very much involved all our years, we’re here 27 years and I’d say for 25 of them we were up at the club in one way or other.

“It’s quite a small club. There’s not much in Edendork, as Niall Morgan was saying after the final there’s the chapel and the school and that’s it. That is it.

“But the club has been like an extended family for us. What they did here when Declan passed away from moving furniture to parking cars… You didn’t have to ask for anything, they did all they could for us.

“It’s a brilliant club.”

DECLAN could never say ‘no’ to the club and there was no job too big, or too small.

As a player his career lasted well into his 40s and he signed off with three points in his final outing for Edendork reserves against Urney wearing his trusty knee support.

“He was famous for that blue knee bandage,” Veronica explains.

“He did his ACL playing soccer for the University of Ulster at Coleraine so that knee bandage had been about since his university days.

“He didn’t do anything without it on. He would have run and cycled and every year we did the sea-to-summit (a multi-sport adventure race) down in Westport with a group from Edendork, Justin Corr and Declan’s brothers Darragh (currently the club chairman) and Mark. The blue knee bandage was there, it was everywhere! It covered a lot of miles.”

When the knee bandage was put in the drawer for safe keeping, Declan became vice-chairman of the club, he served as the club registrar and PRO and was in the thick of fundraising events as a wise-cracking, debonair MC for the white-collar boxing night and Strictly Come Dancing.

“He loved to get the tux on and get out there,” says Veronica.

“He was never short of a word or two!”

He wasn’t short of a word or two of advice and encouragement on the sidelines for the crop of players he brought through for his club.

He took a team up through the ranks from underage to minor level that included his son Luke and several of the players who made history in last Friday’s final including Finn Devlin, James Fearon and Conor Mallon.

When Brian McGuckin had his first stint as senior team player-manager he asked Declan to join him as the statsman. Statistics were in the infancy then and Declan was a trailblazer, unearthing previously undiscovered data about Edendork and their opponents with a clipboard and a pen.

He was part of McGuckin’s management team when Edendork won the 2015 intermediate championship for the first time in 30 years and then took the opportunity to wear the bainisteoir vest himself with successful seasons as manager of Veronica’s native An Port Mor before taking the Derrylaughan camogs to a senior championship final.

IN May last year the trademark blue knee bandage was strapped back on as Declan completed a 10k run and went into training with the target of getting himself in shape for son Conor’s wedding in June.

After all the hurly-burly of the wedding going on holiday to Spain in July was a change of pace and a couple of days into it Declan and Veronica were up early and went to the gym together.

They were back at their apartment having breakfast when life changed suddenly and utterly. Declan suffered a seizure caused by a brain tumour.

“It was just completely out of nowhere,” says Veronica.

“It was unbelievable. He was in peak fitness and it just came out of nowhere.”

He battled the illness with typical bravery.

In August Declan had surgery to remove the tumour. After the operation he was taken out of theatre to a recovery ward where doctors were amazed to find him sitting up in bed reading a novel.

“The surgeon said it was the first time in all his career doing brain surgery that anyone was sitting up in bed reading,” says Veronica.

“He took the book in with him, he was a massive reader, he would have read maybe three books a week so he was reading away after the surgery.”

The surgery was successful, it removed 95 per cent of the tumour but sadly that was not the end of it.

The tumour was the malignant variety called glioblastoma and it would not go away.

“We knew from the start that he was never getting better,” says Veronica.

“It was terminal from the very beginning, the treatment was just buying him time and we knew from the outset there was no cure for it.

“He was still out and about and he would have went up to the matches but sat in the car. In the past year he didn’t get to a lot of the games, maybe it was being out and about and meeting people that put him off?

“He lost a bit of interest in sport and I think the brain tumour affected him that way.

“For somebody who’s whole life had revolved around sport and Tyrone and Edendork and Ireland football and rugby and Liverpool in the past year he nearly lost interest in it. “Whether that was the way the brain tumour was affecting him we don’t know but there definitely was a wee bit of a personality shift.”

April brought terrible news. The tumour had returned aggressively and the doctors reluctantly decided that Declan’s treatment would come to an end.

“He didn’t have a big bucket list,” says Veronica.

“We managed to get to Spain, he loved Spain and we’d gone there on our holidays every year for the past 17 years to the same place.

“We went back last November and the whole family went again in May. He wanted to go to an Ireland rugby match and spend time in Rossnowlagh, he loved Donegal, and we went up and down a few times.

“We had a good year. Apart from the last couple of weeks, well the last week really, he was never really sick or in pain. He was never sick during the radiation treatment or the chemo, if you’d have met him you’d have said: ‘There’s nothing wrong with that man…’ That’s just the way he was.

“There’s more people said: ‘I thought Declan Cullen was sick?’ Because he didn’t look it, you’d never have thought it. That made it hard to accept because he didn’t look sick but unfortunately he was.

“He was a man who dedicated 25 years of his life to Edendork so it would have been great if he had been there on Friday night but it wasn’t to be.

“It was something they always wanted to win. They won the intermediate a couple of times when Declan was involved and I saw how happy he was, so I don’t know… You can only imagine what he’d have been like on Friday night. He would have been ecstatic. It was such a nail-biter and the way it ended, with that two-pointer… It made it even sweeter.

“Declan would have been in his element.

“He loved a pint of Guinness and there would have been some Guinness drunk over the weekend. He would have been in the thick of it.”

Tonight Edendork break new ground when they run out at Pairc Elser, Newry to play Down champions Clonduff. It’s the club’s first ever game in the Ulster senior football championship.

A proud night, a new summit and they’ll say another prayer for a man who helped them reach it.

They’ll always remember Declan Cullen.

That’s what this GAA of ours is all about.