By 
CLOGHER captain Conor Shields admits it was ‘heartbreaking’ to lose out in Sunday’s All-Ireland Junior Club final against Ballymacelligott but hopes the memories they built during this Championship run will last a lifetime.
The inspirational Shields has displayed tremendous leadership skills for the Eire Ogs both on and off the pitch across the past six months in their journey to Tyrone and Ulster Junior Championship honours.
He accepted though that despite their glorious run in 2025, it was tough to come up short at Croke Park as Kerry side Ballymacelligott claimed the honours by six points.
“It’s heartbreaking. It’s going to feel like that for a while but hopefully we will change the what-ifs to looking back at what we have done in the fullness of time. It was an absolute dream of a journey but that was gut-wrenching today.”
Clogher got off to a sluggish start falling behind 0-5 to 0-1 after a quarter of an hour, but they bossed the remainder of the first half to go in at the break two clear. Shields felt the half-time whistle came at the wrong time for the Eire Ogs.
“I don’t know whether it was just a bit of stage fright coming out onto the pitch. We had talked all week about trying to remove the occasion from it. I thought we did there. There was a deadly feeling in the changing room beforehand. The lads were all calm and relaxed.
“But then we had a very slow start. In fairness they (Ballymac) had a lot of young players who are operating at minor and under-20 level in inter-county football and have played here with schools too so they would have been more familiar. We struggled to get into it but then when we did get into it we played some very good football.
“Maybe half-time came at a bad time for us. It probably took a bit of momentum out of us though we did say in the changing room that if we could get a good restart then this was ours. Instead it was them who took control and we were chasing shadows after that.”
Conor dud rue the fact that Clogher did not put away at least one of the near half a dozen goal scoring opportunities they carved out.
“We missed some serious chances and dropped a lot short which gave them serious energy. If we had taken one or two of those goal chances it would have flipped the game on its head, but we just have to deal with it and enjoy things as much as we can over the next two days and reflect back on what we did.
“That feeling (All-Ireland loss) might never leave but you have to look at the glass as half-full. At the start of the Championship nobody would have thought we would have ended up here. You could only have dreamed about it but we knew we had the ability to come to HQ and perform.
“There was a lot of bumps in the road to get here.
“We got over them and we ended coming here but unfortunately nobody is going to remember the bridesmaid. But I am absolutely proud of every single man out there. They are an unbelievable group of players.”
The captain added that January 11, 2026 would live long in the memory of the whole Clogher community despite the outcome
“When you look around the stand there was people home from England, America, Australia to watch. It might be the last Clogher game they ever watch in person so it was special. Who knows what people will be around to watch us next year but they can all say they were here when Clogher got to an All-Ireland Final.”
