When all the hard work pays off.
Eoin McCloskey was Derry’s number one goalkeeper before during and after the turn of the century, and the Dungiven club man enjoyed plenty of success during his time on the panel.
McCloskey was brought into the Oak Leaf county squad during Brian Mullins’ reign, and was part of their Ulster Championship winning campaign of 1998, and their National Football League win in 2000.
The former net-minder wasn’t prepared to say goodbye to the GAA when his Derry career came to an end though, however.
He recently travelled across the Atlantic ocean, where he and a couple of colleagues got together with the aim of helping a long line of good Gaels with the promotion of the GAA in North America.
In 2014, Eoin became one of the founding members of the Fraser Valley Gaels team in Vancouver and soon became the trainer of the team which is composed of home-based Canadian players, some Americans and plenty of Irish players abroad.
The USGAA finals took place last weekend in San Francisco and Fraser Valley made it to the intermediate grade finals of the competition.
This year was one of the first years that the Derry man wasn’t alongside the club every step of the way, as he moved back home to Ireland from his base in Vancouver.
Eoin had been following their progress all the time time, however, and as soon as he found out that his club had made it to the finals weekend, there wasn’t a chance he was going to miss out on it.
The Gaels played out a thrilling decider with Padraig Pearses of Chicago and eventually triumphed by three points after extra time on a scoreline of 0-14 to 0-11.
There were scenes of pure and utter jubilation amongst the Valley players upon reaching the promised land, but nobody appeared to have enjoyed it more than Eoin himself.
He can be seen in the red cap in the video below, as he is overcome by emotion to the extent that it brings his pitch invasion to a halt as he just had to drop to his knees.
Credit to Jerome Quinn for the video.
Valley player Kevin Whelan was effusive in his praise of the Ulster man, when talking to SportsJOE recently.
“The passion that this man shows is incredible. The Fraser Valley players and management team can’t thank him enough,” said Whelan.
“Eoin flew back on the Friday before the championship weekend in San Francisco to support his team and returned to Ireland after a great weekend of celebrations on the Tuesday,” added the St Anne’s GAA club, Wexford man.
You can’t beat it.
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