The last time St John’s were in an Antrim county final, Domhnall Nugent went a bit viral. It was 2017 and it was the football final and the first thing to understand about it is that he wasn’t playing for St John’s. Rather, he was in the colours of Belfast rivals Lámh Dearg and neither club had won an Antrim title in the guts of a quarter-century.
The second thing to understand is that Nugent was playing against not just some of his best friends and neighbours but also his family. His father Paddy was managing St John’s, his brother Pádraig was in goals.
Finally, you must understand that he was 20 years old and he was an alcoholic, with all the chaos and bad decisions that entails.
With 10 minutes to go and Lámh Dearg two points up, his brother Pádraig went to take a kick out for St John’s, only for Domhnall to run in and kick the ball away to waste time. It had the desired effect – Pádraig drew out and hit him, earning himself a red card. Domhnall got away with yellow for his messing and Lámh Dearg went on to see out the last 10 minutes against 14 men. He had his 15 minutes of social media infamy in the days that followed.
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In the eight years since, Domhnall Nugent has been to hell and back. He is six-and-a-half years sober, he has made it back to the Antrim hurling panel and won a Joe McDonagh medal, he is in a solid relationship with his girlfriend Amy and life is good. But it wasn’t until the St John’s hurlers played in the county final last month that he was able to box off that niggling page of the ledger.
“I’m not gonna lie,” he says. “Lámh Deargh in 2017 against St John’s was in the middle of my madness. And honestly, there wasn’t one night I went to bed and didn’t think about that from then until the night before the county final a few weeks ago.
“Honestly, I had forgiven myself for nearly everything. But not that. And I enjoyed my time with Lámh Dearg and it was good crack and there’s no bad blood or anything. It was just the way it sat for me.
“My password on my old Bebo account used to be the 17.03.20 – basically, the 17th of March sometime in the 2020s. It was a way of saying I wanted to someday be in Croke Park on St Patrick’s Day in the club finals. That was always my thing.
“So the relief that I got even off getting to a county final with St John’s was unbelievable. And then winning it, that was the first thing that came into my head. I get to celebrate this with everyone that I grew up with.”
Nugent is 28 years old now and he is well and in a good place. Davy Fitzgerald is giving him a shot at being one of the goalkeepers on the Antrim panel over the winter, which may or may not work out but he’s up for taking it as far as he can anyway. He is also the current Down camogie manager, exercising a coaching muscle that he has been working on ever since he took a St John’s under-12 team when he was just 15.
[ Davy Fitzgerald ‘more guarded’ after criticism over Antrim commentsOpens in new window ]
But though he is in the planning stage with all that stuff, the here and now is about the St John’s senior hurlers. In beating Loughgiel a few weeks back, the Belfast club won their first hurling county title in 52 years. They’re more famous as a football club and sit on top of the Antrim roll of honour in the big ball code. But this is only their eighth hurling crown, five of which were won in a 12-year period in the 1960s and 70s.
So when it happened, when half a century of nothing finally became something, Nugent threw off his helmet and tried to take it all in. He has a picture in his phone of the first person to reach him to celebrate – his brother Pádraig, fists clenched, mouth roared open. The circle squared.
“It was just class,” Domhnall says. “But on the other side of it, a club championship like that is probably number one in most people’s things in life they want to do. But mine has to be my recovery. That’s where Amy came into it. We actually sat down before the final and we booked a flight for the Monday morning to go to Spain for 10 days.
“We just got out the gap straight after the county final and that was it. Which was good. It’s good to have that support system where you’re going, ‘Right, you understand me – let’s get out of here.’ I went to St John’s for an hour after the match and then we went home and got a pizza and watched a movie. That was me, content and happy out.”
Nugent has spent plenty of time talking in public about his struggles over the years. He did his first big interview with The Irish News back in 2019, a couple of months after coming out of Cuan Mhuire in Newry. He has done the rounds of national media days promoting Movember and the GPA’s mental health initiatives. And it has helped people. He knows it has.
“Recently I got an email from a guy who was at the gig I did in Croke Park two years ago. I went to do the launch of the Ahead of the Game for Movember. This guy messaged me to say that the day after I talked about addiction at it, he went to the GP and it saved his life. So you just never know the impact that you can make on people’s lives. That’s what it was about.”
Through it all, he hasn’t sugar-coated anything. He has talked about being homeless, about being addicted to drink and drugs, about lying to the people closest to him. Stories of blowing thousands of pounds, of being left with nothing, of scrabbling around McDonald’s late at night looking to swipe leftover chicken nuggets. He has been brave and open and unflinching. Sometimes to a fault.
“I was probably naive for myself. It was the right thing to do for other people, but I’m probably not so sure it was always the right thing to do for me. One, for my recovery and two, for my hurling.
“I probably got put on a pedestal and probably pigeonholed myself as someone who was in recovery, someone who was in addiction. And kind of forgot about, ‘Oh, I actually need to work on being fitter or stronger and my touch needs to be better and I need to get better finishing.’ And all these things that I probably didn’t really think about much.
“The other part of it, the validation part, that’s probably something that I kind of grabbed on to. People saying to me, ‘Oh, you’re great for speaking out and you’re this and you’re that.’ In some ways, that’s the same thing I was getting from drinking.
“It’s two different things but it’s the same feeling. You’re being validated by a substance, whether that’s a human substance or a drink or a drug. So I probably grabbed on to that a wee bit too much. Then all of a sudden, you’re on social media and you’re a wee bit more active on Instagram and waiting on likes and comments because it’s like you’re chasing something.
“But listen – do I regret it? No. I definitely would do it again because I know the impact that it’s all had. And there’s been a wee bit of growing up along the way too because I was so young when I got into rehab. I forget that. I forget that I’m six-and-a-half years sober and I’m 28.”
Does it get easier? Not really. Or at least, that’s not really how he frames it. Sobriety isn’t a done deal. The lease runs out every night and you start again on a new agreement the next day. It isn’t about easier or harder. It’s just what he has to do.
“I want to be very honest with you,” he says. “I think about drink a lot. There wouldn’t be a week in the past six and a half years where I wouldn’t have thought about having a drink. Or going, ‘Jesus, I’d love a pint.’ Or even a wee whiskey. I do think about it regularly.
“Sometimes I dream about it and wake up the next morning, tasting Jameson down the back of my throat. You’d wake up sweating and afraid that you’ve relapsed and stuff like that.
“So it’s definitely something that is still in me. And I’m just really, really good at the minute. I’m so happy I can say that now because I probably wouldn’t have before. Like, I’m so good and proud that I’m managing it really well through AA and through my friend group, the people who I surround myself with.
“I’m so lucky. I’m in a good relationship and I have Amy and things are really, really good. She understands me and I understand her. But it took me a long time to be able to let someone into that journey with me. Even whenever I was sober, I was half-letting people in and getting afraid and pushing them off and doing mad things, stupid things. Just because I wasn’t comfortable.
“I always just talk about this journey of no destination. That’s where I’m at. This journey doesn’t have a destination. Obviously it’s great, this kind of fairytale of winning a club championship. That’s brilliant. But that can’t be the journey. External things can’t be the journey. It has to start with you and end with you.”
So on he goes and on they go. St John’s have only ever played one Ulster club hurling match – when they won Antrim in 1973, they went out the next day and trounced Ballygalget of Down before getting a walkover in the final against Dungiven. The following March they went all the way down to Cork where Blackrock beat them by 19 points in the All-Ireland semi-final.
They start this weekend against Donegal club Setanta and after that, they can only go the only way he knows.
One day at a time.
