Daire Ó Baoill: The Ireland captain who was never going to stay with soccer

Gaoth Dobhair has gone football mad.

The only talk in Gaoth Dobair these days is football talk and Daire Ó Baoill hears every word of it. The midfielder has been a driving force in his club winning their first Donegal championship since 2006 and he works in the pub where the whole parish goes to talk about the team. He can't get away from the football but he doesn't want to. The pub is Micís and it's owned by Ó Baoill's teammate Kevin Cassidy. Why would anybody there want to talk about something else?

“It's the talk around the town, I work in Cassidy’s bar myself, so all the auld men in there would be my number one critics,” says Ó Baoill at an AIB club event. “So I’d know all about it then. What I did right and wrong, but it’s all football chat going around, even at mass in the shops, it’s football, football, football."

"It’s all a bit of craic with them. They (the Gaoth Dobhair people) just want the inside gossip. You’d tell one lad one thing and the next something else. Next thing they’re fighting about what’s right and what’s wrong. It’s funny how it works.

“They’d be at all the games, we’d have our buses up and they’d all watch the games, they’d know all of the players for years – most of them would be down watching training. It’s a bit of craic, they know it’s a bit of craic too."

Gaoth Dobhair is some craic at the moment. Every single soul in the north west is baying for the next game of this magical journey and to pass the meantime quicker they go down to training and they talk more football.

The next game is Scotstown, the next game is an Ulster final and it's the biggest game of this club's history. That's this Sunday in Omagh and if Ó Baoill and Gaoth Dobhair do nothing else, they'll bring the flair and the verve that's got them this far.

"We’re more concerned with our own game - maybe that’s why we’re doing so well this year, we’re not playing the jerseys against us - it’s just 15 on 15 in our eyes and if we win our own battle, it’ll carry on through."

“There was enough pressure put on us in the last 10 or 12 years to get out of the county so once we won the county the burden was lifted off the chest. We’re taking it game by game now and enjoying it as we go on.”

It wasn't always like this. Just last year, the team lost by 13 points to Naomh Conaill, a result so bad that it prompted Kevin Cassidy to hang up his boots.

"I think Kevin Cassidy even hung up the boots after that game it was that bad. We kind of forgot about it...Last year even, things didn’t start off that well in the league. I remember coming into the championship, we lost six or seven games on the trot, it just wasn’t clicking…"

That's how it had been for years before that too. But lads like Ó Baoill, Cian Mulligan, Michael Carroll, Eamonn Colm, Odhran Ferry and Naoise Ó Baoill were on the cusp of it and they're coming of age right about now.

Kevin Cassidy came back, Mervyn O'Donnell came in as manager and Gaoth Dobhair took off.

“Mervyn O’Donnell came in, he came in and he took a job that was very hard to take with Gaoth Dobhair the way they were. He told us starting off, it was going to be a team of honesty, there was going to be no bullshit, between anyone."

Holding on to Ó Baoill himself was a huge thing for the club. Three years a Finn Harps player and once an Irish under 18s captain, he could easily have kept up the soccer and left the GAA behind. Listening to Ó Baoill, it's clear that was never going to be the case though for a man who only really played soccer to improve his football.

"I knew at the end of the day it would be GAA, that’s why I played as much soccer as I could. Two years ago I remember going from one game playing from Harps, I think we beat Bohemians 3-1, and then I had to line out in championship for Gaoth Dobhair against Termon. “We lost to Termon in the last group stage game. You’re going from game to game and I just knew the legs wouldn’t be able to do that for much longer. “The manager I had at Finn Harps, Joe Boyle, he was a Gaelic man too at heart and he understood the decision at the end of the day. He’d still be getting onto me and things like that.”

Things couldn't have gone much better in the meantime with his hat trick against Crossmaglen the highlight.

“It kind of opened up and I was laughing when it was laid out in front of me, nothing but green grass to eat up," he says of that.

Give him green grass and he'll make hay. https://twitter.com/officialgaa/status/1064182953352355840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1064182953352355840&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.the42.ie%2Fdaire-o-baoill-gweedore-donegal-4366573-Nov2018%2F Now Ó Baoill is just hoping that the fairytale keeps on going. Micí's will be hopping over the Christmas then.

“It’ll be mad now alright (if we win), but sure otherwise it would be a depression session. But we’re looking forward to it, it would be mad too, Cassidy’s place will be hopping too, half the barmen are footballers."

Gaoth Dobhair and Donegal's Daire Ó Baoill is pictured at Clanna Gael Fontenoy GAA in Dublin ahead of the AIB GAA Ulster Football Senior Club Championship Final where they face Scotstown on Sunday, December 2nd at Healy Park. AIB is in its 28th season sponsoring the GAA Club Championship and will celebrate their 6th season sponsoring the Camogie Association. AIB is delighted to continue to support Senior, Junior and Intermediate Championships across football, hurling, and camogie.