Joe Sheridan's meeting with Queen Elizabeth

The choice of Meath footballer Joe Sheridan to meet Queen Elizabeth II this week in Croke Park was an apt one, as this article by John Donohoe published in the Meath Chronicle in 2007 shows ..... It has been a tremendous couple of months for the Seneschalstown area and its senior football team, which won the Keegan Cup in Pairc Tailteann for the first time in over a decade following a replay with neighbouring Navan O'Mahonys. Much has been made of the involvement of the Sheridan clan in the Seneschalstown win - with manager Damien, a former star player for O'Mahonys, and sons Joe and Damien on the team. So much so, that with all the other Sheridans on the panel, the area was dubbed 'Sheridanstown' by some of the sports media. The female members of the family have been involved for many years with Meath women's football. It is an area that has been struck by tragedy in the recent past - the Navan bus crash victims of two years ago lived in the parish, and even though they may have left the headlines for a while, they haven't left the hearts and minds of their friends, families and neighbours, making it a particularly emotional win for the local side. There was also the added news from Australia of further pain for another local family following a fatal car accident at the time of the championship conclusion. But is there is one story that provides inspiration for anybody, particularly those involved with sport, it is that of Stephen Coyle. It may not be a name familiar to many. Maybe those involved in cycling would recognise him as an All-Ireland under-16 cycling champion. But for the Sheridan family - Damien, Geraldine, Damo, Joe, Mary, Nina and Brian, Stephen Coyle is a special individual. On August 15th, 1998, Damien was working on the building of a new house in Seneschalstown, having returned from England some time before, residing on Donaghmore Lane with his family. His wife, Birmingham-born Geraldine, was considering travelling to see her former teammates from Warwickshire play in the All-Ireland junior championship. The whole family decided to travel to the game outside Omagh, and were travelling through the town when the bomb, now regarded as a major impetus in the peace process, exploded. Only for they had stopped seconds earlier to seek directions, and were waiting at a traffic lights, they would have been in the centre of the horror. And horror it was. The interviews with Damien and Geraldine at the time, and their graphic accounts of the scenes of devastation and dying and mutilated bodies, make harrowing reading. The Sheridans, who were travelling in a large van at the time, immediately went to the aid of the victims, as Geraldine is a nurse and knew what to do. Damien recalls that the afternoon went from being a sunny day to a war zone, with dust, dirt, water flowing, and glass shattered everywhere around them. One of the first they came to the aid of was nine-year-old Stephen Coyle, who was literally blown apart by shrapnel. His parents were also with him, with his father Francie also badly injured, later to lose the use of his arm. The Sheridans loaded nine people into their van, and set off for Omagh Hospital, still dazed by the experience and not knowing what was happening, or even where the hospital was. The scenes are caught in the film, Omagh, later ironically filmed in Navan. They were the first to arrive at Omagh Hospital, and their patient passengers were immediately brought into the hospital for treatment and examination. The nine-year-old boy was so badly injured that he was immediately airlifted to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast. Stephen spent months at the hospital, and underwent operation after operation, and, to quote Damien "a bucket of shrapnel" was taken from him. He eventually decided he had enough, and said whatever was left in him, could stay there. And his strength to carry on ever since that has been extraordinary. He took up go carting. And cycling. And he is not satisfied with cycling on flat landscapes, but tackles the hills and mountains of Donegal. He has won All-Ireland honours, and the Sheridans put his survival of the Omagh atrocity down to his strength and will to carry on. They have maintained contact and both families are regular visitors to each other, and Stephen was one of the first to contact the Sheridans to congratulate them on the club's win in the county championship. It is just one of the extraordinary stories that makes the winning of the cup so special to Seneschalstown, which has seen its fair share of trauma.