CIARA Mageean might have put Portaferry on the map for athetics but, long before she was snapping up major international medals, Shane Conlan swapped the caman code for cross-country running far from the Ards peninsula.
It is over a decade since the 20-year-old Conlan ended up part of the Missouri Valley College cross-country team while on an academic scholarship midway through a law degree at Queen’s, with a natural aptitude for eating up the hard yards on a hurling field eventually serving him well on the track too.
He is quick to laugh off the lingering reputation that has followed him ever since but, as Portaferry prepare for Sunday’s Down championship final showdown against rivals Ballycran, Conlan’s relentless running remains part of the Ports’ armoury – whether from the start or off the bench.
That athleticism clearly runs in the family too, with younger brother Matt a key man in the middle for the club, as well as regularly showing his class in county colours.
The experience Stateside may feel like a lifetime ago but it provided Conlan – now 32 - with a challenge beyond his comfort zone, and a welcome window into another sporting world.
“When I went out there, the college was predominantly sports-based,” he said, “a lot of skill-based sports like American football, basketball, baseball and some soccer, but they were elite players.
“I was the only Irish guy there, and it was really a case of trying to find something to do rather than just studying. I got involved in the cross-country first, then once that season finished I joined the track team.
“It was fairly intense. You were training twice a day, a lot of inter-collegiate competition, travelling all over... for a lot of those guys, if they didn’t perform they would lose their funding.
“I enjoyed the challenge because it was new to me, a different experience. I can’t say I was ever challenging to win anything over there - I was probably more trying not to finish last - but I was able to hold my own with a lot of the guys at the college.
“Having never done athletics before I went out, it was a completely different atmosphere, but still the same underlying competitiveness as any sport – you don’t want to get beat by the guy beside you.
“That side of it wasn’t alien to me at all. That’s what I wanted.”
Conlan kept it up when he returned home, around training and games, and it remains more of a social pastime than anything too serious.
“I would do the Portaferry 10 mile run in gala week, I did the 10k Portaferry GAC run a few weeks ago, but I wouldn’t class myself as a runner - although other people seem to do that.
“But I don’t go out to beat times or compete really.”
The same cannot be said of the code which has always come most naturally.
Conlan was part of the county U21 and senior set-up before life got in the way as the next stop on the road brought him to the English midlands and a job with a solicitor’s firm in Birmingham.
There he remained for the next five years, resuming his county career with Warwickshire where a string of impressive performances earned Conlan a place in the 2015 Lory Meagher Champions 15.
However, a return to the Ards, and to St Patrick’s Park, was always on the agenda – though some of the faces had changed by the time he touched back down on home soil in March 2017.
“At times it was tough being away, and then the social side, you’re missing out on the craic at home. But I always did intend to come home… that was always the plan.
“When I came back it wasn’t that long since Portaferry won Ulster, so you still had Paul Braniff, Ciaran Coulter, John Convery still involved.
“Of the current squad I played with boys like Conor Mageean, Conor O’Prey, Patrick McNally, Aaron O’Prey, Brendan Coleman, Fergal Rogers… but a lot of the ones I would’ve looked to and who were older than me, when I came back I was on the older side of the team – moreso now.
“There has been a bit of a changing of the guard I suppose.”
And, with little between Portaferry and defending champions Ballycran in recent years, Sunday’s showdown at Pairc Esler looks unlikely to be any different. Occasions like this never get old, no matter how often they come around.
“The commitment and the intensity is the same as it always was.
“We’re trying to beat the best team in Down – that’s the way we’re looking at it. Ballycran have won three out of the last four championships, they’re a really good team, so we know we have a mountain to climb.”
