Ultan Coogan's journey from darkness into light

"When I had nothing I had Parkvilla and Manchester United. It was a very dark time." The words belong to Navan man Ultan Coogan.

It's a Saturday afternoon and this well-known figure in local soccer circles is talking to the Meath Chronicle, down the phone from his home in Bohermeen, about the huge role the beautiful game in general and Parkvilla in particular has played in his life.

He wasn't involved in the setting up of Parkvilla 55 years ago, but the Navan club is inextriciably linked with his life - and over the years he has certainly done his bit for the good of the cause.

He played in the famous claret and blue, he was coach to many of the under-age teams and in that way helped the club prepare for the future. He has also served as PRO. "I have been so long as PRO I can't remember when I started," he says with a laugh.

The "dark time" he refers to is when he drank more than was good for him. Far more.

His tendency to consume too much alcohol was particularly acute in the 1970s and '80 and it came to the stage when he was compelled to do something about it.

He received treatment in the Rutland Centre in Dublin before eventually becoming a counsellor there, helping others make the painful journey back to sobriety; from darkness into light.

It was during those dark years he says when the support of family, friends and colleagues - allied to his love of football - kept him on the straight and narrow.

Football offered a welcoming fraternity and a kind of brotherhood that was a refuge.

The story of how he became a "United man" relates back to one of the darkest chapters in the club's history.

"I was very sick as a child and my grandmother, who lived next door, took me in," he said.

"I was the first grandson and I had two uncles, Billy and Tommy Goonan. Billy was very involved with the musicials. One morning I was in the kitchen and there was a newspaper on the table.

"There was a picture of a plane crash and I asked them what was all that about.

They said it was the Munch air crash and Manchester United players were in it, so it was all United, United.

"A few years later I saw United play in the 1963 FA Cup final on television, Noel Cantwell was captain, Tony Dunne and Johnny Giles were in the team. After that I was hooked."

One of Ultan Coogan's abiding memories of growing up in Emmet Terrace in Navan was going to see Parkvilla play - although it was far from a straightforward exercise.

He laughs at the good of it all now.

"It was the time of the Ban and if you were caught playing soccer or even watching it you could be banned from the GAA.

"Martin Rogers and myself were in the De La Salle Brothers (a local school) and it was a big honour to play for the Salles, but we also wanted to see Parkvilla play.

"They were in the Cavan & District League and they used to play their home games in Claremont estate at the time, there were dressingrooms and a pitch there, they called it Claremont Park.

"Martin and myself would go innocently walking up the Commons Road. We'd get to the laneway and stop for a minute.

"We'd look around, make sure nobody was looking and belt up the lane and in through the nettles to watch the game.

"We had to make sure nobody saw us. It was crazy, we were genuinely terrifed we'd be caught but we just wanted to play football."

One day a team arrived in Navan to play the 'Villa - and it left a huge impression on young Coogan. It's one of the outstanding, indelible memories he has from all his time involved with the Navan club.

"Parkvilla decided to go into the Leinster Senior League and Shamrock Rovers came down to play a challenge as we called it then, it would be a friendly now.

"I'll always remember them running onto the pitch, in their green and white hoops.

"To a youngster they were like superstars, players like Mick Leech, Johnny Fullam, internationals. I just stood there with my mouth open."

Like many of his contemporaries Coogan went to England to escape a recession-hit Ireland. He worked in the tunnels preparing a new route for London Underground.

It was hard graft in hot, dusty, noisy, stifling conditions. He got stuck in and made his way.

With money in his pocket he enjoyed life. Another bonus was the plentiful supply of top-class football.

"I lived in the east end for a time about 150 yards from Upton Park and I'd go to see West Ham play.

"When I moved to Shepherd's Bush I was just a 10-minute walk from Loftus Road and I'd go to see Queens Park Rangers play.

"They had Rodney Marsh, they had a fantastic team at the time that played all-out attacking football."

Yet Parkvilla was rarely far from his thoughts and he'd regularly ring home to find out how they were doing.

"I was in London when Parkvilla got to the Metropolitan Cup final. It was played in St Pat's ground in Inchicore.

"It was the longest afternoon of my life, waiting and waiting until I could phone Dessie Brady's pub and find out how they did. Then to hear they won 1-0 well, I was so happy."

One night having a pint in a bar in London Coogan thought about his life and decided to return home.

"I said to myself I could be doing this in Navan. Tara Mines was taking off at the time so I decided to return."

A job was duly landed in Tara Mines and Coogan resumed his connection with Parkvilla.

While he built a career in the Mines he sustained his great passion for football. There were plenty of laughs, but there were those "dark times" too.

"The two men who helped me most were Derry Fitzgerald from Navan who was the personnel manager at Tara and Christy McQuillan, a school mate of mine who was a top SIPTU man.

“They took me aside one day and said 'Ultan you're losing too much time, you're not coming in when we want you. When you are here you're top notch but you're going to have to do something with your drinking.' They were right. I'll always be grateful to them for that."

By the mid-1980s he started to turn it all around. He went into the Rutland Centre to be treated. The life of a miner also eventually took its toll.

"I left Tara Mines in 1999 because physically I wasn't able for it anymore. I knew how to do two things, getting drunk and blowing up stuff. Underground I was working with explosives all the time.

"I had been there 22 years, I had injuries on the base of my spine, I had a prolapse disc in my neck. I was drilling one day and a bit of steel came flying off and hit me on the side of my jaw. I've little or no feeling on the right side of my mouth."

There were other episodes from his life as a miner that hit home.

During one shift a colleague was badly injured by falling rock. Without any time to think Coogan delved into the dust and darkness and helped to rescue the man. He didn't feel any fear at the time but later that evening he started to shake uncontrollably.

After his own course of treatment for alcoholism Coogan - a married man with two children - studied to become a counsellor himself, fully aware of how someone's life could be changed when pointed in the right direction. He trained in the Rutland and was eventually offered a job there in 2001.

"I worked with alcoholics, drug addicts, compulsive gamblers," he said.

"There would be some very successful business people and they'd be mingling with drug dealers.

"You would get every different type of person under the sun yet they would get on.

"Normally they'd never mix with each other."

All the time he stayed loyal to Parkvilla. One of the players he had in one of the under-age teams he coached along with Alan Hosie was a impish, red-headed youngster who had a great sense of fun.

It was only afterwards he discovered it was a certain Hector O hEochagain. "I just knew him as Shane Keogan," he adds.

Coogan worries about young people today and the pressures they face.

He recalls his own youth and how carefree and joy-filled it was, going finishing with friends along the Boyne or simply playing football from morning to night on a patch of ground in Emmet Terrace they called 'The Field.' Halcyon days when the world was young and God was in His heaven.

Football was important to Ultan Coogan then. It still is now and always will be - the Red Devils, Parkvilla and all the rest of it.