DECLAN McCusker has just entered his 15th year with the Fermanagh senior footballers. There’s a slight awkwardness when you ask where he ranks among the pantheon of longest serving footballers on the inter-county circuit.
“I’m the longest serving in Fermanagh anyway,” he says, “but there’s a few ahead of me, the likes of Paul Conroy of Galway…”
It’s kudos of the unwanted kind – in the same way a veteran actor blurts out their age on a chat show and is applauded by the audience for doing so.
McCusker is 34. He’s feeling fit and fresh and when he casts an eye back over last season, there was compelling evidence that beseeched him to keep on trucking with his county in 2025.
The 30-club, though, is dwindling in Kieran Donnelly’s squad. After over 100 appearances in the pale green jersey, Aidan Breen announced his retirement at the end of last season.
Che Cullen has upped sticks and moved to Cork and won’t be part of the Erne set-up this season. That probably leaves McCusker, Lee Cullen and Ryan Lyons as the ‘senior’ citizens of the Fermanagh squad as they prepare for the rigours of Division Three football.
So, what’s the equation that keeps his shoulder to the wheel in 2025?
“Being a schoolteacher helps,” he says.
“I suppose I’d a good enough year and I do enjoy it, I love it otherwise I wouldn’t do it. It’s just down to being injury-free and I feel I’ve still something to offer. People say to me, if you’re fit to do it, keep going.”
To observe the changing face of Gaelic football over the last decade-and-a-half, there feels no better prism than through the eyes of McCusker.
“There have been gradual changes over that time. When I started for the county, putting on weight was a massive thing. I remember walking around Belfast with tubs of weight gainer, the gym had taken over and everyone wanted to be big and strong.
“That went on for quite a while. Over the last four or five years it has turned from being big and strong to being quick and mobile.
“Especially the way the game is going now – big and strong is less important and more about mobility and avoiding tackles rather than breaking them. Obviously, you still need a certain level of strength.”
McCusker adds: “When the young boys used to come onto the panel about six or seven years ago, and as I did when I came in, they had a lot of work to do. Now, young boys are coming in and they’re already at a decent physical level because the information and science are out there for them.
“Before I came into the county set-up, I’d never done a speed session in my life while the boys are into all of that now. You must do you speed work, strength and conditioning and all the recovery stuff. Boys are at it all the time, but it just wasn’t like that when I started.”
Rather than lamenting the absence of some of his friends who have since retired, McCusker prefers to embrace the younger generation that are giving the inter-county challenge a crack.
The St Joseph’s Ederney clubman laughs at just how different the changing room as a place has become over the last number of years.
“We’ve one child, another one on the way, we’re building a house, mortgage – whereas the younger lads in the squad are just at a completely different stage in their lives to where I am.”
But he loves the age gap all the same.
“When you’re thrown in with each other and you spend so much time together you enjoy it and you get on so well.”
For the last decade, Fermanagh have bobbed between Division Three and Division Two.
Since 2015, the same season Peter McGrath guided them to the All-Ireland quarter-finals only to lose to Dublin, the Ernemen have promoted to Division Two almost as much as they’ve been relegated back down again.
Four of the last 10 seasons were spent in Division Two. The only years they managed to stay in the higher division longer than a season was in 2016 and 2019.
Last year, they couldn’t get a foothold in Division Two and suffered losses to Donegal, Cork, Armagh and Louth and landed back down in the lower division along with Kildare.
They successfully regrouped for their Tailteann Cup campaign, breezing through the group stages and straight into the quarter-finals before inexplicably exiting to Antrim at Brewster Park when a semi-final berth appeared within touching distance.
Fermanagh were coasting 0-8 to 0-2 and should have been further ahead at the break but the hosts didn’t see Antrim’s remarkable fight-back coming.
Cathal Hynds’s 68th minute goal put the visitors ahead for the first time and Eoin Hynds sealed victory for Andy McEntee’s men in dramatic fashion.
It was a scarring defeat for McCusker.
“It was absolutely brutal,” says last year’s Fermanagh captain.
“It was one of the worst defeats I’ve had in a Fermanagh jersey to tell you the truth. It was a game we were in complete control of.
“We were playing as good a football as we’ve played. In the second half, Antrim got momentum. When momentum is with you, it’s a massive thing. When it’s against you, we just couldn’t get it turned. It was one of the worst defeats I’ve ever had.”
Spool forward to the deep, dark nights of January and frozen pitches and McCusker sees plenty to be optimistic about for the year ahead.
Kieran Donnelly may be without Che Cullen while Callum Jones and Conor McShea are both Australia-bound, but the inspirational Ultan Kelm is back following a proposed AFL move falling through late last year.
Paul Breen (Kinawley), Shaun McCarron (Ederney), Kealan Fitzpatrick (Newtownbutler), Conall Quinn (Enniskillen Gaels) and Diarmuid Owens (Derrylin) are all making strong impressions while the 2019 Hogan Cup winning contingent from St Michael’s are well down the inter-county tracks at this stage.
Throw in Declan McCusker’s incessant running and canny football brain and Fermanagh may be looking up at Division Two come the end of March.
Allianz NFL Division Three fixtures
Sat Jan 25th: Kildare (a) Newbridge, 5pm
Sun Feb 2nd: Antrim (H) Ederney, 2.30pm
Sun Feb 16th: Clare (a), Cusack Park, 1.30pm
Sun Feb 23rd: Offaly (H) Enniskillen, 2pm
Sat March 1st: Sligo (H) Enniskillen, 6pm
Sun March 16th: Leitrim (a) TBC, 2pm
Sun March 23rd: Laois (H) Enniskillen, 2pm
Ulster SFC quarter-final: Down (a)
2024 League results (Division Two)
Meath 0-12 Fermanagh 1-9
Fermanagh 2-10 Kildare 0-12
Donegal 2-16 Fermanagh 0-8
Fermanagh 0-16 Cork 1-14
Fermanagh 0-11 Armagh 0-15
Louth 6-17 Fermanagh 0-11
Cavan 1-13 Fermanagh 2-14
2024 Championship results
Ulster SFC quarter-final: Fermanagh 0-9 Armagh 3-11
Tailteann Cup, Group 3:
Fermanagh 3-16 Wicklow 0-9
Carlow 0-13 Fermanagh 1-13
Fermanagh 3-11 Laois 2-13
Tailteann Cup quarter-final: Fermanagh 0-11 Antrim 1-11
Five-year league record
2024: Division: Two; Points: 5; Position: 7th, relegated
2023: Division: Three; Points: 12; Position: 1st, promoted
2022: Division: Three; Points: 6; Position: 5th
2021: Division: Three North; Points: 3; Position: 2nd of 4, lost promotion semi-final to Offaly
2020: Division: Two; Points: 2; Position: 8th, relegated