It’s 2015 and an Armagh SFC semi-final against Crossmaglen is around the corner. Cross’ are still all-powerful in the county, but Maghery are building something too and are, as it happens, just 12 months away from a historic first county senior title.
Crealey is still a teenager and is part of the Maghery set-up, but that weekend, he is double-booked.
The young Crealey also holds a considerable interest in rallying. His father raced in England at semi-pro level and his son is following in his footsteps.
He’s worked through the grades from go-karts to the tracks. And that weekend, he chose the bucket seat of a rally car at an event cross-channel rather than the dressing room.
“My dad was a rally driver,” Crealey explains. “He started in small Fiestas and then worked in a semi-professional contract for Mitsubishi in 2001. Driving Evos.
“He was in England and Scotland driving, competing in the British Championships and going well.
“He had a couple of bad accidents and his neck started giving him bother, so he concentrated on me. I started go-karting and once I turned 17, I was rally driving.
“When I got my road licence, it was a Nissan Micra for three or four years. It was on wee airfields, closed roads. So one week, I could be rallying, the next week I would be playing a football match. I struggled to juggle the two.
“I started missing big football games because I was playing for Maghery seniors at the time and missed the semi-final against Crossmaglen in 2015.
“That was the year before we won the county in 2016. So we were beat by Cross’ and I missed that game. I was over in England and that was my last rally.”
That was the weekend the penny dropped that he couldn’t properly pursue both things. Football came first, but, coincidentally, his co-driver at the time, Liam Regan, now competes in the World Rally Championship alongside William Creighton.
“I couldn’t live with the guilt of it. Missing games. Rallying, it’s a small sport and it runs through families, I suppose. It’s pretty niche and you are born into things like that. Just adrenaline.
“I had to make the decision then. I had to make a decision and football was starting to get serious then, too. You have to go down either road.
“I chose football. You go to rallying because my dad was looking for me to do that. But you go to football because there are 35 lads going after something. I remember watching that game in 2015 and then having to face the lads after.”
Maghery made the breakthrough in 2016 and won again in 2020, beating Cross’ in the final. These are heady times for the club, hemmed in by Lough Neagh on one side and Tyrone on the other. On Sunday, they had three on the Armagh panel, with Crealey joined by Ciarán Higgins and team captain Aidan Forker.
For his part, Crealey always believed.
“You always thought you could get over the line in big games. The penalties… We played a lot of big games and we knew from that we were always going to be in it for the last ten minutes.
“We also had to tidy up on the last five plays. That’s what had cost us in the past and it wasn’t perfect [against Galway]. But we could have beaten Donegal in our last five possessions in the Ulster final.
“When you watch it back, the coaches are always telling us there was an All-Ireland in this group and they were telling us for years.
“There are days when, like the days after those big defeats, you are so down. But what do you do? You have to get up and go after it again.”
Their perseverance paid off, with Crealey making a telling late intervention to help seal the win. And on Sunday night, he spotted two of the heroes of 2002, Stevie McDonnell and Paul McGrane, all three now part of an exclusive Armagh fraternity.
“Seeing Stevie and Paul McGrane last night and you still look up to them. To emulate them is unbelievable. It’ll take a while to sink in.”
