2ZO1LO CLCG Fochumann An Phaire BROTHERS IN ARMS . by Frank ‘Alf MeLoughlin 10/10/10, a date we won't forget in a hurry, it's the date of our latest County Final win, Vm making my way down the steps of MctHale Park after chatting to Mike Finnerty on Midwest. “How do you feel?" he asks ~ “ecstatic Mike, ecstatic isn’t the word. I'm on a high that | won't come down from tll next year”. As | make my way down the steps I see all of the boys posing in front of the stand for the cameras. | hurdle the wall behind them in ‘one leap and pile into the front row, no way V'm missing this. A feeling of absolute pride is etched all over my face. | look around me at the rest of the lads, their faces all adored with wide smiles, It doesn’t get much better than this, This is what you play football for, days like this. Minutes earlier as the game entered the final stages | paced up and down the line willing the referee to blow the final whistle. 1 looked at the stopwatch around my neck, 33 minutes 30 seconds gone, 7 points up, half a minute injury time remained, We had it. No way were we being caught now. | shake hands with Darren Flynn and John Kelly and. then the ref blows up for full-time and all hell breaks loose as we invade the pitch. The first man | embrace is Paul Moran. What an exhibition of football this man gave today! He didn’t lay one foot wrong all day and even in the last minute he broke up field, ball in hand at 100 miles an hour - some of our own forwards couldn't even keep up with him, Next up is Merv Marley and | lift him up in the air for all I'm worth, I'm so happy for him especially as | know how hard it was for himself and james Gillespie playing against their home club Lahardane in the semi final. Hopefully, this win today makes it all worth the sacrifice for them. Those first few minutes out on the field after we had won, the sheer emotion, the sheer happiness will stay with all of us the rest of our lives. 1 look around and see all the people on the pitch that have done so much over the years for this club. Ginger comes over and offers his congratulations and my thoughts drift back to the 1981 county final, me a mere 8 year ‘old out on the Ballina pitch after we'd beaten Ballycastle in the final, in the middle of what seemed to be a crowd of hundreds. Ginger was a sub that day and | can still remember boasting at Parke National School the next day that my brother was playing for Parke. It was that game in 81 that got me interested in football and nearly 30 years later I'm still here as interested as ever and stil boasting about my “brother's” exploits because in truth I consider all of us involved to be a band of brothers. Thinking of all the brothers that have ever played for Parke at senior level and great family names like Moran, Flynn, Dunne, Lynch, O’Boyle, Cloherty, McHale, Conway, Lawless, Neary, Reilly come to mind. Their names alone bring up so many great memories, both on the field and off it. The 1981 Parke Team & Pane Couey Junior ChampionsThe 4 Morans from Lavallinree were and still are in my mind the 4 strongest men that have ever played for Parke. Stories of their strength are legendary and the one that stuck in my mind after hearing it was of the time that rather than take a hay shed apart to move it, they cut the four girders with an angle grinder and lifted it a couple of 100 yards down the field. A former Parke player who shall remain nameless told this story to a work colleague who happened to be a former Mayo county player, to which the former Mayo star replied you must think I’m awful gullible if you think I'd fall for a story like that”. Fast forward to McGraths of Dublin before a Mayo game in 2004 and our two work colleagues are socialising before the game. In walk the 4 Moran brothers and our own club man introduces them to the former Mayo star who can’t get over the sheer size of them. When things quieten down the Mayo star nudges our clubman and says Do ya know something, that story about the hay shed foesn’t seem so unbelievable now”. \ close second to the Morans in the strength department or me was the Lynch's. Matt McHale could get away with nurder in the full back line because he knew he had Mikey Patrick & Niall Dunne Celebrate afer the and Stevie backing him up. Them being identical twi had its advantages also, as | can remember Jimmy Cog} getting ready to brandish a second yellow card to Mik after a rather robust challenge on a Ballintubber forwa but Martin Keaveney stepped in to inform him that was Stevie and not the bould Mikey who committed act. After much debating, and much confusion Jim eventually booked Stevie, Parke kept their 15 players the field and Mikey got away scott free. | could regale you with various other stories of oth days and nights over the years, but for fear of losing, head before the club enters its 41st year I'll leave you a list of all the brothers that have ever play second team football for the club.