Conor McKeown

We're talking about football.

And there's only 38 football clubs.

But four of them are in a population that's half of the size of the county.

So it's all sort of set up wrong.

And because it's a historically soccer-based city, three of those clubs are junior clubs and one of them senior.

So there's only one club that's really representing the county at the minute over the last year.

two decades anyway from the biggest area of the county so Derry City was always seen as a big rival because it was pulling so much of that population away in the soccer direction like you know if you like I obviously played for a city club if you were playing down the county that would be on this label that you obviously city clubs town clubs get that anyway but it wasn't just city it was soccer

I was like, you're a bunch of soccer so-and-so.

Because that was such a different world almost.

Even though everybody likes football, everybody likes soccer.

But it was just a big rivalry.

And I'm talking during the teens there, like the 2010s, when Derry wasn't going well as a GAA county as well.

So the fact that they go from that to now, where Derry City are training on their own big...

Derry City are inviting the GA team and they're all going, the board and everything are going to the Brandywell together to watch the Derry City matches on a Friday night.

There's a real sort of...

a real sort of communal experience there coming together amongst the whole county.

And now they're obviously sharing the pitch and it's not a threat to anybody.

It's actually just, I feel like it's rising all the boats here at the minute.

And if you get a night like that where 7,100 people there to play the champions and they actually go and do it and they win and get back into some sort of form in the League of Ireland now, it was massive.

They were windbreakers, but they were also pacemakers as well, which they were helping.