Aghaloo out to build on blistering Championship opener

ON a weekend when all the fancied teams prevailed in the opening round of the Tyrone Junior Championship, the scoreline that certainly caught the eye was Aghaloo’s five star showing against Eskra.

What on paper looked one of the most competitive of the first round meetings turned out to be anything but as the O’Neills coasted to a 5-13 to 0-11 triumph at Healy Park on Friday night to set up a quarter-final meeting with Brocagh.

The match was all square at 1-3 to 0-6 with four minutes remaining in the first half, but from there in Aghaloo took a firm grip on proceedings to surge clear of the shell-shocked Emmetts .

Team captain Padraig McGeary admitted afterwards that you would have got long odds on a 17 point winning margin coming up to the interval.

“It was a different story in the first half, it was a bit more tit for tat. I think there was just a point or two in it either way all the way through until we got the penalty just before half-time.

“At the half-time break we were four points up but we came out and really pushed on. Lucky enough for us a few kickouts went wrong for them and we just punished them for that. Thankfully the scoreline showed it in the end.

“That penalty just before half-time definitely knocked the wind out of them. But we just took it with a pinch of salt because we knew anything could happen in the second half. Thankfully it was us who got the purple patch. We dug deep and we kept the scoreline ticking over.”

Aghaloo lost just one of their seventeen matches in Division Three this past season but despite their superb level of consistency, they still came up short having lost that decisive crunch clash with eventual champions Drumquin down the home stretch.

McGeary stated that their sole focus now is on making amends via the Championship route.

“People can say what they want and talk about us and Drumquin or whoever but we are just keeping our heads down and focusing on one game at a time. You can only beat the team in front of you so it’s onto the next one.

“We had a good league campaign but we were beaten by the better side (Drumquin) that day. We might cross paths again later on in the year, who knows in the Championship.”