By Brendan Crossan
“Make the man beside you look like an Allstar”
IT was in the days after Armagh had suffered their sudden death penalty shoot-out fate to Donegal in the Ulster final – their fourth such defeat in three seasons – when Aidan Nugent was walking along the street in Armagh City.
‘You should get rid of that ‘Geezer’ man.’
Nugent was loosely acquainted with the man who recommended Armagh dispense with their manager.
Never predisposed to debating with people in the street – but this day Nugent did.
“I told him where to go,” Nugent recalls. “My missus said to me: ‘You can’t be saying that.’
“But that man sat beside me three weeks ago and said he hadn’t watched a game in about 15 years. People can be fickle. They jump on the bandwagon wanting to be seen to be saying something. I know Rome wasn’t built in a day and we took a long time to get there...”
Sitting in his upstairs gym in ‘R8 – Cardio and Coffee’ on Dobbin Street in Armagh City, Nugent adds: “It does annoy me when you hear stuff like that because we’re close to ‘Geezer’. He’d be in here every morning, not talking football, just about life in general.
“If you ever need help or advice, he’d come to you and help you and do whatever he can.
“So, you have a bond, and you find yourself getting into arguments when maybe you shouldn’t. If somebody is giving out about your friend or your team-mate, the natural thing is to stick up for them. I know I found myself getting thick at people, it’s hard not to. But when it’s one of your own you will have their back.”
AS far as calendar years go Aidan Nugent won’t experience better than 2024.
On a cool January afternoon in Croke Park, he was part of the St Patrick’s, Cullyhanna team that won the All-Ireland intermediate title – notching a game-winning 1-3 in the opening half from which Cill Na Martra of west Cork never recovered.
Spool forward to the last Sunday in July and he was back on the steps of Hogan with his Armagh team-mates tasting another All-Ireland victory.
The 30-year-old forward didn’t get on the field for Armagh’s one-point win over Galway in the final, but it didn’t matter.
Throughout Armagh’s unforgettable season, Nugent was one of Kieran McGeeney’s go-to men.
He never quite breached the manager’s starting XV, as anybody who knows anything about the Armagh squad, possession of the jersey is virtually 10-tenths of the law.
And because of their provincial and All-Ireland push with Cullyhanna, Nugent and his club-mates Jason Duffy and Ross McQuillan hooked up late with Armagh.
“Once boys are in, there’s a system in place and boys have their roles, it’s naturally hard to get into the team, especially when we were winning most of our games and playing well.
“The squad were training pre-Christmas and we came in the week before the league. Boys had the hard yards done. You just have to keep your shoulder to the wheel and your chance will come at some stage.”
In Armagh’s opening Championship win over Fermanagh, Nugent came on for Andrew Murnin on 57 minutes. Entering games in the final quarter was a role he’d become accustomed to.
He made a bigger impact from the bench in their tense Ulster semi-final encounter with Down in Clones by drawing Armagh level with three minutes remaining, and it was left to Jason Duffy – another Cullyhanna man – to finish the job off in stoppage-time.
He converted a ‘mark’ in their epic Ulster decider with Donegal and wasn’t found wanting in the nerve-shredding shoot-out either, thumping home his penalty.
He came on in consecutive games against Derry and Westmeath, on both occasions for Conor Turbitt.
He offered fresh impetus to the Armagh attack in the drawn match with Galway in Markievicz Park and took over from Rory Grugan in the All-Ireland quarter-final win over Roscommon.
Resourceful in possession and ruthless in front of the posts – those twin abilities deserted him in the semi-final against Kerry following his 57th minute introduction.
With his first possession, he was turned over by Diarmuid O’Connor along the Cusack stand side.
He was harshly blown up by referee David Gough with his second play.
Under fierce pressure, he was turned over again near the Kerry goal in stoppage-time and missed a ‘mark’ in the opening exchanges of extra-time.
Substituted earlier in the game, Turbitt re-entered for Nugent just before the first period of extra-time had elapsed and the Clann Eireann attacker helped seal the county’s first All-Ireland final place since 2003.
As he made his way to the line, Nugent wasn’t overcome by anger or frustration that he’d been hooked as he was more concerned with Armagh passing their latest stress test.
“I think when you come on boys want to give you the ball, especially if you’re a shooter because that’s what you’ve come on to do.
“But I lost about three or four possessions, and they just seemed to happen in the space of about 10 minutes.
“I can have no complaints. I came back off and ‘Turbo’ came on and scored two points and got the winning point. I was personally disappointed with my display but at the end of the day it was the right call.
“I was relieved in a sense afterwards because you come off and you’re thinking, ‘Did I blow this for us?’ It was pure elation, pure relief.”
Although he wasn’t summoned from the bench in the All-Ireland final against Galway a couple of weeks later, it didn’t faze him.
“Once you’re so invested in it that doesn’t really come into the equation. If you’re called on, you’re called on. If you’re not, you’re not.”
If ever an entire squad had contributed to the winning of an All-Ireland title, it was Armagh’s class of ‘24.
“That’s where we probably let ourselves down last year, that we weren’t as fully bought in if you were on the bench,” Nugent says.
“Training maybe took a slip because as soon as the team would be named, some players would throw their heads up. I did that once or twice too last season… [But] by you doing that is essentially letting the team down.
“It’s probably selfish too. Everybody thinks they should be playing… and you’d maybe huff a wee bit.
“At the end of the day, you’re taking time out of your life to go down to the pitch, do your gym sessions, go to meetings… if you’re going to be sitting there huffing, you’re wasting your time. If you’re there, you might as well put the head down and get the work done and if your chance comes, take it.
“That’s what we did this year for every game. It was the boys playing for, say, 50 minutes who’d the hard work done, and it looked like the subs were getting us over the line when it was everybody.”
Nugent adds: “I think the greatest thing ‘Geezer’ has done is make us realise that it’s not about you.
“It’s about what you do that helps someone else. He’s brought that into everybody’s life. For the first few years when he was trying to bring that culture - ‘If you want to win you need to be friends. Go for coffee, go to the gym together, go to the pitch together, do recovery together’.
“At the time we thought it was a bit much, that you needed a life outside of it, but that’s the culture he brought. The closer you are to someone, the more you’ll do for him, and the more that will translate on the pitch. His mantra is: ‘Make the man beside you look like an Allstar’.
“It’s the unselfish things he talks about, the unseen stuff: picking a man off the ground, or making a block, or making a run off the man’s shoulder to make sure they’ve space to kick the point.
“He always says: ‘Everyone on the county panel is a good footballer but that doesn’t make you a county footballer. It’s the stuff you do off the ball, the small things that matter. That’s one of the biggest things he’s taught us as a group, that you’re not the most important thing.”
Cullyhanna’s fingerprints were all over Armagh’s famous All-Ireland win.
Nugent pinching points all the way through the Championship. Jason Duffy’s scorching winner against Down. Ross McQuillan’s goal against Derry and his awesome display in the semi-final win over Kerry.
Indeed, each member of the Armagh panel did the same number of training sessions and gym sessions while some of the in-house training matches were integral to the Orchard men lifting Sam for only the second time in their history.
There were many nights the so-called ‘B’ team beat the ‘A’ team with the Armagh management team knowing they’d so many like-for-like changes available to them.
Some of the in-house games were “hot and heavy”, Nugent says, but they needed to be that way to “get boys ready for the weekend”.
If Nugent wasn’t starting at the weekend, he felt it was his role to make sure Paddy Burns, Barry McCambridge or Peter McGrane were ready.
“If I was marking Paddy [Burns], I’m telling him, ‘Don’t be doing this, don’t be doing that’ and he’d be telling me, ‘Keep doing that because that’s testing me.’
“Paddy’s really constructive on the pitch and I try to be the same with him. And then there are other lads that are tearing lumps out of each other and that’s just their way.
“Then you’ve Barry McCambridge. Barry is so frustrating to mark because he doesn’t touch you, he doesn’t say anything, he rarely even tackles you. He just gets a safe distance that you can’t take him on, you can’t take a shot.
“He’s not overly aggressive. He’s not in your face and you’ve to watch him because he can shoot, kick and loves getting forward. It’s different dynamics every night depending on who you’re marking.”
IT’S Monday afternoon at ‘R8: Cardio and Coffee’ on Dobbin Street in Armagh City – a business Nugent has worked 24/7 at to create a successful commercial space in the area.
The café and recovery suites are situated downstairs and the spacious gym upstairs where this interview takes place.
A former St Paul’s Bessbrook pupil, Nugent went on to study at St Mary’s University and is a qualified schoolteacher.
He spent a year in his local Cullyhanna Primary School and enjoyed a couple of years teaching in Dundalk.
But it was a profession he never felt passionate enough about.
“I just like doing things on my own terms. There’s nothing wrong with teaching. It just wasn’t for me.
“In this business, there’s no such thing as turning the phone off or going on holidays, you’re constantly checking stuff, but the main thing is enjoying it.
“I don’t like structured routine. I like different challenges.
“Looking back, I was probably half-arsed about the teaching, didn’t have a passion for it, really.”
For Nugent, the best thing about studying to be a teacher was playing Sigerson football for the ‘Ranch.
Despite fracturing his leg in a Dr McKenna Cup game in early January 2017, he just about made it back in time to play a role in Paddy Tally’s all-conquering St Mary’s team that claimed Sigerson five months later.
Nugent says the St Mary’s players didn’t get to experience Tally’s coaching skills depth until he had more support around him at the university.
“As a coach, Paddy was unreal,” says Nugent.
“When he was our lecturer, he explained things best and I found that on the pitch too. He just put things in simpler terms. He just had a way of getting everyone on side and that it was us against the world.”
He never played for his county at minor level but enjoyed two years at U21 level under Stevie McDonnell. He made a winning Ulster Championship debut against Down in 2019 and has flourished ever since at both club and county level.
Through all the Championship hardship he’s experienced, he doesn’t regret a single minute with Armagh.
“You’re taking seven or eight months out of your life for umpteen years and if you don’t believe you can win… Yes, it’s a privilege to wear the Armagh jersey but you want to win.
“We’re not investing that amount of time to be nearly men or for pats on the back.”
After Armagh’s All-Ireland win, he melted among the holidaymakers of Sorrento, southern Italy where he and his partner took in the sights of the Amalfi Coast and Capri.
“It was just good to decompress.”
As with all high achievers, the next challenge is never far away. St Patrick’s, Cullyhanna are back where they belong – in the Armagh Senior Football Championship – and Aidan Nugent is leading the way.
He scored two late beauties in their drawn match with Silverbridge, topping their group and going straight through to the quarter-finals.
Sunday’s clash with neighbours Crossmaglen Rangers at the BOX-IT Athletic Grounds is a fixture that jumps off the page.
Cullyhanna have never won a senior county title.
“We’ve the belief that we can,” Nugent says.
“I’m not saying we’re going to win it. We knew last year we were a senior team and we’d feel we’ve one of the best management teams around. We’re well set up and I think that’s half the battle.
“I think it’s silly to play everything down and saying ‘see how we go’… It’s not arrogance. Like, if you’re in the championship, you want to win the championship.
“And if you’re not in that mindset you’re wasting your time. If you can’t sit down and say that you want to win a championship and you think you’re good enough, just pick a different sport.”
