“Nearly 20 All-Ireland titles, over 50 major Ulster wins, our £8m Garvaghey project scoped, delivered and paid for, and 35 years of the best guidance, administration and friendship you could wish for.”
“Life, and particularly GAA life, is never just all about numbers. But those few alone give some sense of what Dominic McCaughey has helped deliver for Tyrone GAA in his time as our County Secretary.”
Tyrone County Chair Michael Kerr was speaking as part of the announcement that Dominic McCaughey will step down as his County’s GAA Secretary before the year’s end.
Dominic has been in post in Tyrone since 1987 and in that time has helped oversee what have been easily the greatest changes in the GAA’s history. That’s not just been in his own County, but also Provincially and nationally.
In a County with a tradition of unearthing remarkable County Secretaries, ranging from Mick Coney in the hard 1920s and 1930s, through Paddy O’Neill in the post-war decades, to Dermot Conway and Brendan Harkin coming into the modern era, Dominic stands tall with any GAA official in any place at any time.
“What Dominic has done in and for Tyrone simply can’t be measured” Michael Kerr continued.
“But just as important as the What has been How he has done it.”
“The GAA can be a place of crisis, huge pressures, stresses, strains and even panic. And too often the short-term can be allowed to dominate.”
“We’ve all been there.”
“But when Dominic’s about, there always just an air of calm, of focus, of the bigger picture. Above all he’s always about doing the right thing. And about doing it decently and honourably, and with style and class. Just a very special person in every way.”
Tyrone will now move to find a replacement for a man who has worked with nine different County Chairs and who has been so central to what has been the greatest era in Tyrone’s history – and probably the greatest era of any County in Ulster.
In the meantime, it truly is the end of an era.
By Gerard Wed 5th Oct
