FARM

‘Just mind you don’t touch that, there’s a few volts going through it,” Darren Hughes says, holding one end of an electric fence and beckoning you through the gap outside a gigantic farm building.

Inside, the wonders of technology and agriculture harmonise in the wonders of Automatic Milking.

In behind the machine, you see it all best. Wellies on now, of course. The cows stand on a mat that measures its weight before and after milking.

A brush revolves and cleans the teats and stimulates milk production before canisters rise up and begin the process.

“Wait to you see this,” says Hughes, swinging open the door of the computer cabinet, showing you the chemical bottle inside that measures the fat and protein content of the milk.

The computer has everything measured; the weight of the cow today, before and after milking, and for every day as long as you want to go back, the condition of the milk, and everything you never knew you would ever want to know.

Last year, the Ireland International Rules team were toasting a series win against Australia the day previously, with a pool party.

At home, Hughes’ younger brother Kieran was struggling with operating the milking robot and was getting a hand from Darren, who had the system rigged up to his phone.

“What are you at lad?” shouted one of his Ireland teammates, convinced the Scotstown man was being anti-social and had his head buried in his phone.

It was easier to just pretend than go through the explanation.

Last year, this building almost burned down. A stray spark from an angle grinder caught on a few whisps of straw and the whole thing was ablaze in seconds, generations of the Hughes family trying to beat it away, saving the technology in time.

Some of the less damaged sheets of iron went back up on the fresh timbers but the fire left an unwanted legacy of pigeons, who took to roosting on the warm girders and never went away.

Once the cows are milked, they wander out to a gate that leads to an acre of lovely grass.

One cow — unmilked — followed another out, but the computer box on her collar communicates with the gate system. And so she is sent back in through another gate.

From there, it’s back through the electric fence, through the old milking parlour, a couple of bags of meal filled and into the jeep.

“Here’s the next generation,” he says as he pulls the jeep up a few hundred yards away at a gate where roughly two dozen calves are huddled at the bottom of a field.

Once they hear the rattle of the meal in the feeding trough they come scampering up the field. “Make sure there’s 25 there,” he says.

Ever tried to count cattle running?

From there, on up towards the next field, cresting the top and down to where his grassland management system is in operation.

For 120 acres around here, and a few dozen more over in Threemilehouse, this is Hughes’ luscious green fields.

This is no stony grey soil of Patrick Kavanagh’s language.

We are in the land of high achievers here. In the Scotstown club they have had Sean McCague as a recent President of the GAA and the manager who presided over Monaghan’s successful period in the ‘80s.

Páraic Duffy was Director-General of the GAA until recently. Dr Niall Moyna is well-renowned in coaching circles and another former player, Fergus Connolly, has held many respected positions for his work in sports performance.

North Monaghan has produced Sir William Whitla, Tommy Bowe, and Barry McGuigan. It’s a county that has teemed with talent.

Pat McCabe. Nudie Hughes. Big Tom.

“That’s the other side of farming there,” says another talented man, as he nods in the direction of a sick cow. If they can get it up on its’ feet by the end of the week, then it’s a triumph. If not… That’s farming.

It’s what he does. It’s rare that an inter-county player works in this type of agriculture, but then the industry itself is shrinking.

It’s less and less of an attractive proposition to successive generations.

“If you had have told me when I was 18, 19 that I would be at this, I wouldn’t have listened,” laughs Hughes.

While he took five years at University of Ulster Jordanstown (“my first year didn’t go so well”, he chuckles), he achieved a degree in Business.

He manages this dairy farm along with doing some sales rep work for a car dealership in Dundalk and some internet marketing.

It’s been a bad year for farmers, with the drought forcing many to break into fodder that would have been intended for sale or the winter.

Hughes avoided the worst of it.

He’s a ‘show you’ rather than a ‘tell you’ man of action, so it’s back into the jeep to look at a damp meadow that saved the farm.

Bobbing along the road, he explains his life in farming.

“I am my own boss. I am at my leisure. You do have tough days and Mal (O’Rourke, Monaghan manager) and the boys would be very understanding.

"They know when I come to training if I am fucked or not. They know to look at me.

“You could go round lightly, take it handy. Some days you would go to training and you would be like a zombie and you have to say to them that there might not be much of a point of you training. I don’t go and sit in an office every day, driving around…”

For him, that’s torture. He sees his teammates who believe he is half-mad running around fields for a living, but he considers their two hours in a car and nine hours sitting at a desk and wonders how they can stomach it.

“And then they come to training, trying to get out of the car and bent doubled, having to go to physios and…”

He interrupts his train of thought as we amble down a lane that would, for most months of most years, be entirely under water.

While the whole world fried and shrivelled up, these acres of boggy land were the most desirable residence in Monaghan for the beautiful cattle, who got all they wanted and more in the way of grass.

“This is where they grazed last night. They will be coming off that now soon. There is a drain which runs along it, and it would be flooded during the winter. It was just scorched two weeks ago.

But aye, what was I saying? Yeah, I think the bigger torture is coming up the road from Dublin and then driving down after it. Or getting up in the morning to get a bus at 7. I roll out of bed and could have an hours’ work done before I am half-awake.

It’s the same with strength and conditioning work. What need does a man have for strength and conditioning when he lives his life in wellies?

But when he has a winter programme to do, he will get it over with.

Scan his Twitter feed for pics of him post workout, you won’t find them. Instead, it’s 90% agriculture, 10% humour.

“I might have the breakfast and go down to the club gym dressed like this. I would be wearing the wellies but bring the trainers with me. Back out in 30, 40 minutes. I go to the farm ready to cover both eventualities.”

Back over to a field by the road, via the farm office to pick up two clear plastic bags and a hand-held grass clipper.

Hughes puts the device in action, shredding some grass that he crams into the bag.

This is the Monday morning grass test, which he will measure and then estimate the projected growth and tonnage for the rest of the week.

Asked by his dumbass accomplice why he does not just pull it out by hand, he deadpans, “Trying to prolong my career here…”

You see the ever-growing army of county footballers and hurlers, the Lee Chins, the Darran O’Sullivans, the Declan O’Sullivans, Karl Laceys who decided that rather than work and play Gaelic Games, they were just going to play Gaelic Games?

He doesn’t get it.

“Like, how does he (Chin) put his time? I mean, it’s alright, you get a phonecall to go down the road and do your gig and get a cheque and then up the road, but…

“Like, if you didn’t do this, then what would you actually do? Sitting watching videos of Galway all week? You would be going out onto the pitch like a robot.

"I would be watching the video and thinking, ‘right, he is definitely going to do a dummy solo here and then turn on his left.’”

It’s the same with diet fascism. Once upon a time his face was rounder when he was a student and fond of the odd takeaway.

His tastes haven’t changed that much, but the difference is that he is on his feet all day. Now, skin clings for dear life to his cheekbones.

He’s hardy and all angles in that farmer’s way.

“Here, I don’t get hung up on diet. I know what works for me and everybody’s metabolism is different. Dieticians will come in and spiel all this ‘all for one’ shit but… I probably will have a bar of chocolate every day, if not two!”

It’s been some morning. A few drops of rain have brought out the green again on the fields.

Darren Hughes awaits the appearance of a photographer, a city sort who appears at the opposite opening of the shed.

Carrying lighting equipment and cameras slung around his neck, he has to pick a dainty path through straw and cow dung to reach us. He’s wearing tight jeans and no socks.

No wellies.

At the sight of this, Hughes’ face breaks into a broad grin for the hundredth time this morning.

FAMILY

Darren Hughes’ mother Patricia is from nearby Emyvale. Her maiden name was Hughes before she married Francie Hughes from the fringes of the charming village of Bellanode.

Now, here’s one for all you metropolitan elite. A woman marrying a man with the same surname grants you ‘the cure’ for whooping cough.

People come from far and wide for it and get back in touch when it has taken effect.

Patricia and Francie live in a red-brick house alongside the farm. A little strip of grass alongside it has a well-worn goal frame with a tyre tethered to the crossbar.

The noise of a car crossing the cattle grid sends Patricia’s ball of fluff dog, Holly, skittering out to suss out the commotion. Patricia soon follows and retrieves her precious pet.

She enquires about you, your people and when she catches where you are from, makes several connections in the way Irish people can.

Francie’s parents Frank and Greta are still living on the farm next door, in their 90s and doing well.

Darren’s fine two-storey timber-frame house is about half a Rory Beggan kickout away.

He and Orla keep Holly’s parents up there, while Orla has her horse Kala — who she does eventing with — in the paddock beside the house.

Their real pride and joy is baby Ava, born just over eight weeks ago.

Last Sunday, they spotted a gap in the football schedule between Super 8s, a potential All-Ireland semi-final or, if that does not materialise, the Monaghan club Championship gobbling up the weekends.

A few frantic calls to local priests and venues later and they had themselves a christening.

Don’t worry for his sleeping schedule. Ava is down by 11pm and might wake once in the middle of the night for 20 minutes.

Orla and Darren cannot believe their luck but are also careful not to share this information with other, more frazzled and sleep-deprived friends in a similar boat.

The robot milking machine ensures matrimonial harmony.

“If I hadn’t the robot, we might be divorced,” smiles Hughes.

I might be coming back from visiting friends and you could drive by a parlour some night and see the lights on, some man still at it, the lights still on… That could be me!

While Darren and Kieran grew up watching his Hughes uncles playing for Emyvale on occasion, football wasn’t a draw in his father’s family.

Already, Ava has been with her mother to see Daddy play against Laois, Kildare and that game for the ages against Kerry, her first trip to Clones.

It might have been only that former Scotstown and Monaghan great Gerry McCarville arrived on the yard to sell farm machinery to Francie Hughes that he realised the club could always be doing with more strong farm boys.

FOOTBALL

Not that we are judging or anything, but taking up Domino’s and their largesse of offering ‘Two for One Tuesdays’ - the staple diet of the Jordanstown Sigerson footballer during Hughes’ college years - might have contributed to Hughes’ gentle introduction into county football.

When they decided they were going to become a serious football county again under Seamus ‘Banty’ McEnaney, they reached the Ulster final in 2007.

Hughes had been a late substitute in the semi-final win over Derry but watched the entire final from the bench.

He was second sub in against Donegal in the round three qualifier and when the time came to give Kerry a serious fright, he was the first man off the bench.

Prior to the 2008 Championship though, Banty and his right-hand man Martin McElkennon had a cunning plan; Fat Club.

Hughes joined Rory Woods and Raymond Ronaghan for more running.

And everyone went on the ‘Caveman Diet’, which ruled out carbohydrates and sauces. Soon, Monaghan footballers were candidates for Men’s Health cover stars, all angular cheekbones and abbed-up, but an empty sack won’t stand.

“You looked good but you didn’t feel good,” Hughes recalls.

“We did it pre-Championship but there was a load of club games on. We played three in a week and I swear if there had have been a fourth I would have been dropped, I was playing that bad.”

The Caveman Diet was soon abandoned after an Ulster quarter-final defeat to Fermanagh. Monaghan got back to basics and made it back to Croke Park to take another chunk out of Kerry, but ultimately come up short.

Where have we heard that before?

Those years laid some solid founds for Monaghan to gain their respect again. At times it looked as if they were making their own rules as they went along, but McEnaney never got the credit he deserved as an innovator.

In 2010, Hughes was at the centre of another innovation.

Goalkeeper Shane Duffy was struggling for fitness ahead of an Ulster quarter-final against Armagh. Rather than going with substitute goalkeeper Sean Gorman, Banty recalled Hughes in action with the county minors in goals.

One night in training they were short on goalkeepers and he went in and made several incredible saves, as well as being assured under a dropping ball.

For Banty, the decision was tough. But this is the gig. When Gorman was told Hughes would start in goal, he never travelled with the panel to Casement Park.

A buzz went around the ground when they noticed that Hughes was togged out in the goalkeeper’s jersey, doing some last-minute cramming with their goalkeeper coach, Cavan’s 1997 Ulster winner, Paul O’Dowd.

As well as his experience with the county minors, he had played between the sticks for local soccer side Glaslough Villa over the winters in the Cavan-Monaghan soccer leagues.

“Paul Grimley told me on the Friday night. He said not to let on but Banty would be ringing me the day after,” Hughes says now.

“I went into town and bought a pair of gloves - goalkeeper gloves — in Sean McDermott’s Sports shop and he looked at me funny. I said it was a birthday present for a cousin.”

He kept it to himself. Didn’t tell his parents. Didn’t even tell Orla. They made it back to another Ulster final. Tyrone again. Hammered again.

The Banty years came and went. Hughes’ football life in club and county followed a remarkably similar path.

Scotstown hadn’t had a sniff of a Championship since a remarkable group that fizzled out after a decade on the batter in 1989. Monaghan hadn’t an Ulster title to crow about since the year before.

In came Mattie McGleenan at club level and Malachy O’Rourke with Monaghan. Ulster titles in 2013 and 2015. Monaghan senior championships the same years. His medal collection had filled out.

One more push will take them to their first All-Ireland semi-final since 1988. This is the closest they have been since 2015 which was, even by the mitigating circumstances of a lot of Monaghan defeats, particularly harrowing.

They came down to Dublin as Ulster champions for the second time in three years and the omens were good.

In 2013, the team stood on a stage in Monaghan town a few hours after beating then-reigning All-Ireland champions Donegal in the Ulster final.

The stage belonged to a country and western festival in the town. The prospect of an actual win in the football caught everyone on the hop.

By 2015, they had a body of work compiled. Donegal were the 2014 All-Ireland finalists but they beat them in the following Ulster final to set up a quarter-final against Tyrone, who, as it happens, they had swiped aside in 2014.

They arrived with no hang-ups and baggage, but left with plenty after a four-point defeat and one of the most bizarre incidents in a game in years, when Hughes tousled the hair of Tyrone’s Tiernan McCann, McCann went down claiming an assault had occurred, and Hughes was sent off.

“It’s more embarrassing,” he says, than frustrating to look back on.

“I was actually concussed when it happened. Me and Richie Donnelly had actually clashed heads beforehand.

“There is a photograph of me coming off and blood coming down the back of my head, Richie had a black eye.

“I knew I was going to rub his hair, but I was thinking ‘I lifted the hand, I wonder…’ But I suppose when you see it afterwards…”

He’s okay about it now though. Bears no grudge.

“But I would have no qualms with him over it. He did what he did and I was cleared the following week but it is a week too late at that stage. The harm was done.

“I think he had more to put up with after it than I had so ultimately, neither team got anything out of it.”