Talking to my brother Eunan recently, I realised something.
I haven’t been back to Davy Brennan Memorial Park since I came home.
Not yet.
I played there countless times before I left Ireland 38 years ago. blue and white with Naomh Conaill. I also wore the green and gold with Donegal at under-16 and minor.
In Ireland, pulling on a county jersey isn’t just sport.
It’s identity.
You’re not just representing yourself.
You’re representing your place.
That was another life.
Since then, I’ve led global teams. Sat in boardrooms. Measured performance in revenue, targets, P&L. Built something on the other side of the world.
The boy who ran onto that pitch in blue and white feels distant now.
And then Naomh Conaill made another county final.
Their 13th since 2003. Seven wins already. I’d missed every one of them.
Thirty-eight years abroad means you miss things. Not just matches. Weddings. Funerals. Birthdays. The ordinary moments that quietly matter.
But this time I was home.
October 2025. O’Donnell Park. Two finals. Senior and reserve. Back to back.
I’d walked through those gates before.
September 1978. Sixteen years old. Donegal U16 versus Dublin. Green and gold on my back.
Forty-six years later, I walked through them again.
Not as a player.
As someone who had been away long enough to wonder if he still belonged.
The answer came quickly.
A hand on the shoulder.
“McGlinchey, is that you?”
A laugh I hadn’t heard in decades.
“Jesus, look who’s back.”
Faces older. Hair thinner. But the feeling was immediate.
You don’t realise how much you’ve missed something until you’re standing in the middle of it again.
We stood there for over four hours.
Two games.
Two wins.
The second final whistle — our 8th senior county title — the roar wasn’t just noise.
It was release.
It was pride.
It was the sound of people who’ve stood beside each other for years, believing together.
And I was there.
Not watching from across an ocean.
There.
A few weeks later, Ulster quarter-final. We lost.
It stung.
But not the way losses used to sting.
Because this time it wasn’t about the result.
It was about presence.
About not missing it.
About standing shoulder to shoulder with people who knew me long before job titles and travel schedules and airport lounges.
I talk now about alignment. About teams. About trust.
But none of that started in a boardroom.
It started on that pitch.
Learning to move together. To back each other. To take a hit and get up because someone beside you expected it.
Standing in O’Donnell Park, not playing but watching, I realised something simple.
Success changes.
Belonging doesn’t.
The jerseys I wore are long gone.
But what they built in me isn’t.
I’ll go back to Davy Brennan Memorial Park one day.
I know it’ll hit harder than I expect.
That’s where it started.
For now, it was enough to walk through those gates in Letterkenny and realise something I hadn’t fully admitted to myself:
I didn’t miss this one.