Joe Cassidy

Joe Cassidy (born 2 April 1977 ) is an Irish retired Gaelic footballer and currently a manager. He played for Derry between 1997 and 2001. Cassidy played his club football for Bellaghy Wolfe Tones and won the Ulster Senior Club Football Championship twice, and the Derry Senior Football Championship 6 times with the club. For both club and county Cassidy played in forward line.

A back injury forced Cassidy to retire from playing at an early age. but Derry were defeated at the Ulster final stage by Armagh.

He made his Derry senior debut in February 1997 against Kildare in the National League. Derry lost out to Galway in that year's All-Ireland Championship semi-final. In 2000 he won the National League with Derry??. Derry also reached that year's Ulster final but were defeated by Armagh.

Club Cassidy had a successful underage career with Bellaghy; including winning two Derry Minor Championships and two Ulster Minor Club Championships, 1998?, 1999?, 2000? and 2005? In 1994 and the 2002 Castlewellan Sevens with the club. He was also the top scorer in the Derry Senior championship in 2005 scoring 21 points in 4 games.

School Cassidy's playing honours with his school include an All-Ireland B Colleges title, and 6 Ulster colleges titles with St Mary's Magherafelt.

Managerial career

Club Cassidy first started managing Bellaghy underage teams in 1998. He managed and coached the wolfe Tones club to U-12, U-14 and U-16 county titles. In 2005 he guided the Bellaghy minor side to the final of the Derry Minor Championship, where they were defeated by Ballinascreen. The first senior club he was involved in was Loughgiel Shamrocks (as trainer)(hurling) in Antrim. They won Antrim Senior league and Senior Feis titles although they lost consecutive county finals during his reign. In late 2008 he was appointed as the Bellaghy senior manager for the 2009 season. He stayed in charge for 3 seasons. Joe then was named as part of McQuilan's, Ballycastle Senior hurling Management for 3 seasons helping them to 2 U21 championships but the seniors could not make the breakthrough. He then went back into football management in 2015 and led Greenlough to a historic double - Intermediate League & Championship - both seniors & reserves.

School Cassidy is a PE teacher in Cross and Passion College in Ballycastle, and has had some successes managing the school hurling teams winning numerous Ulster Colleges titles and he coached the senior team in school to the All-Ireland Colleges Hurling title (April 2009), the first Antrim school in 30 years to do so. He then backed this up in 2010 and finally in April 2015 he and co-manager Oran Kearney led them to their 3rd All Ireland Title in 7 years. Under their stewardship they have won 5 Mageean Cup titles (Ulster Senior Colleges Titles) and 3 All Ireland's in the past 10 years.

Honours

Inter-county

Club