Eamon Deeny

A quiet intruder Portaferry is a small place, and it has had a very large loss. Ciara Mageean died on 1 November, aged 34, and was buried on 3 November. Young players from Portaferry GAC formed a guard of honour for her. Camogie was where she started, at that club, in a family that lived for hurling and camogie. To the world she was a champion. To the people who loved her she was Thomas's wife, Catherine and Chris's daughter, and sister to Máire, Nuala and Brendan. They have lost the most. If Portaferry is like any other small town, I'm sure they have good neighbours around them. In her last year she became the public face of a disease most people keep private. Bowel cancer is a quiet intruder. The symptoms are easy to explain away and awkward to mention. Ciara was an athlete, used to an unsettled stomach, and she found sensible reasons for what she was feeling, as most of us would. In May 2025, aged 33, she got her answer, and it was the worst one: stage four. That means the cancer has spread to distant parts of the body, in her case the liver and lungs. At stage one it is still inside the bowel wall. It is mostly a disease of older people. About 1,300 are diagnosed each year in Northern Ireland, and around 6% of them are under 50. That share is small, but across the UK the diagnosis rate for 25 to 49-year-olds has gone up by more than half since the early 1990s. And in England, if it is caught at stage one, around nine in ten people live at least five years. She didn't hide any of it. She talked about it on the radio and on podcasts, and wrote a book, My Greatest Race. She told people what her oncologist had said about how long she might have, and admitted she probably shouldn't have googled the survival rates. She married Thomas Moran in Belfast and wanted it to be a normal day, not a hospital bed in a wedding dress. I have seen the photographs. They are lovely, and they are also the pictures of a woman who knew how little time she might have. She was a beautiful young woman. Health campaigns struggle to get people talking about bowel cancer. She managed it just by being honest. Here was a fit, young, well-known athlete with the disease so many still think happens to somebody else. I assume I have little in common with the Mageean family, because I stand under a different flag. But I'm a parent, and my child is not far off Ciara's age, and I can't begin to imagine losing them. Every parent understands that grief, whatever flag they fly. I hope her family know they aren't on their own in it. My own reason for caring is closer to home. My father came from a family not known for athleticism, and this disease took him as it took her. It's a strange sort of kinship, and plenty of families belong to it. My father died of bowel cancer, and so did his father and his twin brother. I'm over 50. I can't assume I'm safe. If you've noticed blood, a change in your bowel habits that lasts, weight loss you can't explain, or constant tiredness, see your GP. If bowel cancer runs in your family, tell them straight out and ask about an assessment. Don't wait for a screening kit to arrive in the post. Ciara spent a year getting the rest of us to talk about this. We should keep doing it. It's the one part of my father I hope I didn't inherit. Figures: Northern Ireland Cancer Registry; Bowel Cancer UK; Cancer Research UK. – at Swanage, England