Armagh star Aidan Forker recalled his first meeting with Kieran McGeeney on a recent episode of ‘The Kaizen Better Everyday Podcast’.
The Maghery man made his championship debut for the Orchard County against Tyrone in 2012 while McGeeney was drafted into Paul Grimley’s management team in 2014.
“I was still very raw, still very naïve to it all, very much off the cuff. Show up, train hard and go home. There wasn’t much preparation or reflection involved”.
“I remember building up the courage to ask Kieran to go and meet for a coffee and it was probably very much a selfish thing. I was like ‘I’m going to make sure I’m in the team this year, so this seems like the right thing to do to get the manager on side’.
I had this meticulously planned. We’ll meet in Portadown, go to the Yellow Door, nice food and he probably hadn’t been in Portadown for years because he’s coming up from down south at the time”, Forker explained.
The 2020 All-Star nominee continued to detail how nervous he was going to meet Armagh’s All-Ireland winning captain.
“I was thinking ‘should I shake this boys hand here or should I leave it or what will I do’. Going over and over in your head because it was Geezer, he was an All-Ireland winner, he was a real idol, a real icon”.
“He pulled out the laptop and pulled out a book, I was wondering, ‘is this boy going to give me a test or what’s going on’.
He just asked questions and he talked most of the time and I listened. He opened up the laptop and said, ‘where do you see yourself in this team’.
He pulled up this big flowchart, at the top I remember the word ‘vision’ and I didn’t have a clue what this meant.
Underneath that was every position and what it entailed and what the expectations were for each position”.
Forker credit this discussion with McGeeney as his “first introduction to that type of ” high performance.
“That just opened a door for me in terms of what it meant to be a high performer, what it meant to be deliberate about what you do.
That just started me on a path of studying leadership and trying to be a better leader and be a better person”.
Forker has been a consistent member of the Armagh side over the past few years and has grown into one of the main leaders in the team.
His quality and versatility helped the Orchard County gain promotion to Division One and he will be key to his sides hopes of remaining in the top tier.
