Jody Gormley was a 'father figure' says Tyrone and Trillick star Mattie Donnelly as tributes continue for GAA legend
Mattie Donnelly says Jody Gormley’s was a life well lived.
“He treated us all like sons,” he says. “We looked on him as a father figure. He wasn’t just a coach and mentor to boys. He was a very, very good friend to players.”
Trillick and Tyrone stalwart Donnelly says the club’s players would trade all their football memories and medals for their late manager to still be around, but he knows life doesn’t work like that.
Read more: Jody Gormley: Tributes paid following death of 'inspirational' GAA legend and schoolteacher
All they can do is cling to the great memories they shared, with Tyrone All-Ireland winner Donnelly’s thoughts very much on Jody Gormley’s wife Deirdre and their three children.
Tyrone 1995 All-Ireland finalist and double Ulster Championship winning player Gormley passed away on Monday evening, aged 53, after being diagnosed with liver cancer a few months ago.
His funeral will take place in Belfast on Thursday, with the burial in Trillick later on in the day.
Last year, Gormley led his native Trillick to a Tyrone League and Championship double, while they lost this year’s County final to Errigal Ciaran.
Gormley delivered the news that he was terminally ill to the players after the Errigal Ciaran game and later spoke publicly about it, insisting he was not afraid to die.
“You obviously knew it was coming but you always live in hope that some miracle can happen, that his life is still going to be prolonged somehow,” said Donnelly.
“It still doesn’t prepare you for the reality of it. I suppose the only nice thought is that it wasn’t drawn out for him. It wasn’t prolonged suffering.
“The way Jody presented on the podcast (BBC Social) is exactly the person we have come to know over the last few years from managing us.
“The way he has faced what was ahead of him is exactly the way he has presented to us over the last few years as well - how he has encouraged us to face setbacks and adversity.
“Obviously what he was facing was as big a challenge as you will ever face, and everything he stood for and wants us to stand for, he exemplified in the last few weeks.
“I wasn’t surprised in that regard. Even the day after he broke it to us, he was on the phone telling me that he had absolutely no regrets with the life he had lived. He was grateful for everything he had done.
“To be able to have that outlook is something everyone would love to have and love to strive for. He was at peace with that.
“But obviously it is tough, particularly for his family over the next few weeks, months and years ahead.”
After Trillick lost that County Final back in late October, Gormley took Mattie, his brother Richard, Rory Brennan and Lee Brennan aside to tell them the news.
“Obviously it was a fair blow for us to hear, but the boys soon clocked that it wasn’t just the heartache of losing a County Final that was hanging over us,” says Mattie Donnelly.
“We felt we had to tell the whole team and Jody agreed.”
They met in the club gym where Gormley told the team the news: “It’s not a room you ever imagined you would be in, or want to be in again,” says All-Ireland winner Donnelly.
“For him to have to stand in front of us and say that, I can’t imagine how hard that would have been but he delivered it in the courageous manner that the whole country has seen now.
“It was devastating news and to see someone you admired so much have to deliver that news, it was devastating.
“I know how close a bond we as players and a club have to him. I can only imagine how acute that is for his own family, children, wife, brothers, sister, parents.
“They are the people at the front of all of our thoughts now. We were extremely close to him, but no-one is closer than his family. They will be feeling it more than any of us.”
Football was a huge part of Gormley’s life from a young age, right through until he passed away.
“Football is definitely an escape for people to lean on,” continued Donnelly. “We would have had a lot of conversations over the last few years and weeks.
“I was always conscious of not taking up his head space by talking about football and things like that.
“But he was very much of the opinion that he needed to talk about football, that it was intrinsic to his life since he was young and he would be foolish not to keep it that way.
“That was very much his outlook. Football was a way for him to express his own character, which everyone came to know, and a way for him to influence a lot of people in the way he has as well.
“He has done that in an unbelievable manner. It’s a life well lived through family, football and music. We’d all bin all our medals and all our football memories to obviously prolong his life and have him here a lot longer.
“But that is life and the memories through football and his impact through football is something we can always look back on and take lessons from.”
Gormley got involved with Trillick as a coach in 2022 and then took over as manager in 2023.
“He always kept in touch from afar,” explains Donnelly. “He would have helped us Trillick boys in Belfast.
“If we ever needed footballs to go down to Cherryvale to kick around, he would always facilitate that stuff. He would always keep tabs on us. He would text me before every Tyrone game.
“From ‘22 onwards he became a really prominent and influential person in all our lives. That bond was there through difficult and turbulent times in the life of a lot of men, he was a great source of strength for all of us.
“We are just so grateful we got that time with him and we are better people because of it."
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