No airs and graces about that man.
Seamus Coleman is just a Donegal boy when all is said and done.
Sure, he might have a few talents that meant he eventually had to leave to fulfill his potential and talent that proved that he wasn’t just good enough to survive away from the hills, but excel. He might have a footballing drive and ability that makes him one of the best right backs in the world. He might have the attitude and the leadership qualities to captain his country. But he’s a homebird, he’s Donegal through and through and, one day, he’ll return there.
”I’m definitely going home,” Coleman once said when asked about life after football.
“I’ll go back to Killybegs when I finish but I think it’ll be a case of playing for Killybegs GAA and St Catherine’s, the local [soccer] club. I don’t know about the League of Ireland.”
That’s home for him. That’s Donegal.
Bhí Seamus Coleman, imreoir @Everton & @FAIreland i láthair tráthnóna inniu ag cluiche leath 1/2 cheannais @KilcarGAA v @NaomhConaillGAA pic.twitter.com/guSHEmFkon
— Damien Ó Dónaill (@RNF36) October 2, 2016
He’s steeped in that way of life in the north west. Hailing from Killybegs, he’s like so many other people from Donegal – just someone who throws himself into the community and, a lot of times, that means representing the soccer and the GAA clubs with distinction.
He has experience of marking Michael Murphy in finals and doing it well.
He’s had the lessons of growing up as one of the smallest kids around and, despite never being picked for any development squads or schoolboy select teams, he kept ploughing on and waited for his break.
Eventually, it came. And Seamus Coleman isn’t the sort of character to let an opportunity slide by.
Seamus Coleman: The making of the best right back in the world https://t.co/oAglvSUuxh
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) June 11, 2016
Still, as big as he gets, as popular as he gets, as renowned as he becomes, the Everton star is always and will always be a Donegal man who has nothing but time and love for his home.
John Conwell, his old coach at St. Catherine’s told SportsJOE the story of Seamus Coleman returning to Killybegs one summer and, as usually happens, the local young ones knocked on his door and asked if he was coming out to play.
“They’d ask if Seamie was coming out to play ball – this is a man who’s only home from Everton.
“So they’d set up the goalposts with a jumper or a rock or something and play away. The kids would be as young as six and seven through to teenagers and the odd few adults would come in as well.
“He’d play with them until late in the evening.
“One day in particular, he was out playing with them but he said to them he was heading away, he’d be back in a wee while. So Seamie disappeared and the kids played on. He landed back – he had gone to the shop and brought back with him a box of bottles of Lucozade and bars of chocolate.
“The kids all sat down in the green with him and he gave them all their juice and chocolates and sat with them for their half time break. Then he got up and played another half with them.
“That’s one that sticks in my mind because they’ll tell their kids and grandkids when they get older about that day.”
