McCaul cheering on Monaghan despite his own ACL trauma

A couple of weeks ago, Monaghan's Bobby McCaul woke up in a terrible mood, got dressed, jumped into the car and just started driving.

Where he was going, he wasn’t exactly sure - but he just needed to get away. He needed to get away from the questions, the reassurances, the friendly offers of coffee to help him through his recent strife. All well intentioned, incredibly well intentioned, but undeniably grating for a person who just - at that very moment - wanted nothing more than space.

The Aughnamullen man headed west to Donegal, to the beauty of Rossnowlagh, the bustling Stranorlar, up to the Glenties and down along the coast to Killybegs. Alone, sea and sand to his right, silence. The perfect tonic.

If football wasn’t as cruel, McCaul would be one of the star attractions on All-Ireland quarter-final weekend with Monaghan coming up against Louth for a spot in the semi-final on Sunday.

Hyperbole for a youngster who has clocked up just 147 minutes of senior championship football? Possibly, but after Kerry’s David Clifford and Mayo’s Kobe McDonald, there’s not too many more who would garner more interest after those two and half hours of football he has produced in white and blue.

Twenty years on from Kieran Donaghy’s seismic switch to full-forward in a qualifier to revive Kerry’s fortunes, McCaul was drawing favourable comparisons with 'Star’ - especially due to his superb cameos against Derry and, in particular, Mayo.

But football is indeed cruel. A player who barely strained a hamstring for 19 years tore his cruciate while on Ulster Under-20 Championship duty last year. After a year of rehabilitation carried out with precision, and with a re-tear estimate placed at 3-5% by medical professionals, he was ready to finally make his mark.

And make his mark he did, only to crumple to the ground in the final quarter of the side’s clash with Mayo at the end of May. McCaul knew instantly he'd suffered another cruciate injury in the same knee, he was familiar with the feeling. What he wasn’t familiar with was just how different he felt - feels - second time around.

"It was being back at the bottom of the mountain for a second time, only this time there's not even a sense of adventure," McCaul told RTÉ Sport.

"The first time you are looking at surgery straight away, when can we get rolling.

"I wouldn’t say it was easier to process, but it was faster to process. I got on top of the swelling, got back in the gym, there’s a lot you can do in terms of anti-inflammatories because your quad takes such a big hit after surgery, it wears away to nothing, so you have to get into good shape and into surgery condition because they won’t touch your knee until the swelling is gone.

"This time? It’s been a different set of emotions and I’ve struggled.

"It was four or five days after the Mayo match that it hit home. I needed a break, I headed to Croatia with my girlfriend, spent time with family, I needed space and I probably still do.

"My surgery is 25 July, that’s only day zero and it’ll be two months after the injury when I get it done. I wasn't in the headspace to have it straight away.

"I was getting all these texts, people looking me to come do this, do that; it’s not fake but just the headspace I was in, I was just thinking ‘you wouldn’t be offering if it wasn’t for the injury’. And that’s just where I was, how I felt.

"People were being incredibly kind, trying to help me through it all, but deep down I knew I was just keeping myself busy so I didn’t have to face the music.

"I was filling out my day with side-quests, just kicking the can down the road, but that day in Donegal was a big day for me. I needed that day."

Sunday should have been a big one for McCaul; it should have been his first time playing at Croke Park and the fact it’s Louth should have brought plenty of extras.

His father Phil is a principal at Scoil Náisiúnta Réalt na Mara in Dundalk and has his white and blue flag out. McCaul has enjoyed plenty of club battles with Louth half-forward James Maguire, who plays his ball with Carrickmacross. Maguire went to Patrician High in the Oriel County, and competed in a fierce rivalry with McCaul’s Our Lady’s, Castleblayney. When he was younger, McCaul played rugby with some of the Louth squad.

Which makes the next question so hard for him to answer - is he actually looking forward to the weekend?

The trainee veterinary student knows how his answer will come across - selfish. He constantly repeats that he wants nothing more right now than to see Monaghan get past the Wee County, they’ll not have a bigger supporter.

But he’d be lying if he didn’t say other emotions were pulling at him. It pisses him off that he won’t get to run out with the team, it pisses him off that he hasn’t played with Aughnamullen since October 2024. He’s counting the days in hundreds now and it’s over the 600-mark. He knows it’ll be 1000 by the time he finally gets that chance again.

"You put your whole year into trusting the process and then that trust isn’t repaid," he said of his recovery between cruciate injuries.

"I’m no special case, lots and lots of people have done their cruciate twice but I’m finding the transition back to supporter from a player tough.

"People keep saying it could be a lot worse, and they’re dead right, you could be sick or something, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard to accept as a 20-year-old.

"I’m finding the trauma hard to deal with this second time around. First time you go down and you think ‘Jesus Christ, what was that?’ Second time I knew instantly, everything ripped away in a split-second.

"I found it hard to raise myself to actually go back to Clones [for Monaghan’s games against Roscommon and Westmeath]; that may sound selfish, and probably is, but there was trauma there coming off that pitch.

"Even with that, there will be nobody more than myself hoping they do it. It would just bring me so much happiness to see them find a way through and to continue that journey. What a group of lads. I just absolutely love watching them play."

If there is one positive to glean from such a negative it’s that his inaction on the pitch over the last year has reignited his grá for music.

McCaul is no dabbler, though. An underage All-Ireland champion on the banjo and mandolin, he is also an expert on the concertina.

Right now, he’s no interest in competition, instead linking up with guitarist Stephen Cusack to form a two-piece called Banjaxed - gallows humour given McCaul’s recent injury history - and they’re mostly booked through to the end of the year.

Music wasn’t a huge part of his parent’s lives. His father Phil played a bit of accordion at one stage while his mother Paula didn’t play anything.

Still, one day his father landed home with a rake of instruments and the four siblings were plainly told that they would have to commit. A football pitch was marked out at the home house but it didn’t matter, 30 minutes of music practice always came before football.

All-Ireland titles have rained down on the family homestead since. As well as McCaul’s haul, sisters Evelyn (harp) and Anna (accordion) have tasted national success. So too has brother Phil Óg, a specialist on the uilleann pipes. The flute and fiddle are other instruments the family can play.

Phil Óg, by the way, is only 17 but already is an inch taller than Bobby - 6' 5" to 6’ 4" - and is really improving as a footballer.

"Music would have been our number one, from ages 10 to 18, right up to Covid, music was my thing," McCaul said.

"When you get called into the Under-20s, seniors with Monaghan you get so invested with it to the point where it’s taking over everything. It’s your dream but other things slip.

"An injury like an ACL can actually make you realise how important other things are in life. Football maybe isn’t the be-all and end-all.

"I’m a trainee vet and maybe football was impacting that. It’s not that I wasn’t studying but I maybe wasn’t giving it the respect it deserved.

"Football is a short period in your life and even at that, it might not be your best friend."

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