Kerry v Derry: Shane McGuigan can earn himself place among ...

Coming from Ardboe, right on the Tyrone border with Derry, Gavin Devlin first heard about Shane McGuigan when he was in his early teens. Devlin was aware of McGuigan’s potential with Slaughtneil under-age teams but the clamour began getting louder when McGuigan started burning it up with St Pat’s Maghera in the MacRory Cup.

When Devlin first went along for a look, he fully understood what the noise was all about. “Shane was every bit as good as what I’d heard about him,” says Devlin, Mickey Harte’s coach with Louth, and formerly Tyrone, and who also worked with McGuigan at Slaughtneil. “Even back then, you knew he had the ability to go to the very top.”

Paul Bradley had seen it from an even earlier