Drumquin expecting a hard Harps assignment

DRUMQUIN are coming off the back of a hugely promising league campaign, and their manager Niall Glackin says they’ve nothing to fear from their Junior Championship quarter-final clash against Stewartstown this weekend.

It’s actually Drumquin’s first game in the competition (they were due to play Coalisland Thirds in a preliminary round clash but they subsequently dropped out), but any sense of advantage has possibly been negated by the fact they’re facing Division Three champions Stewartstown.

But the Tones did manager to finish seventh in the league, an indicator of the strides they’ve made, and their manager Niall Glackin is looking forward to getting cracking in the championship.

“We’ve worked hard over the last three years and we’re starting to see an improvement with the younger players who have come in.

“Stewartstown are obviously a very impressive team, and they wiped the floor with a good Errigal Thirds side, but at the end of the day this is what championship football is about. It wouldn’t be any easier if we’d drawn Strabane or Aghaloo, and we only have three games to win a championship so that’s good motivation for ourselves.”

Glackin’s backroom team includes Damien Leonard (one of the Tyrone Masters management team), Johnny McLaughlin and Tyrone legend Conor Gormley.

“I brought Conor in this season, he worked with Damien with the over 40s and expressed an interest in doing a bit of coaching. We gave him a free role to come and go whenever he pleased, but he’s missed very few sessions. He’s really taken to the role and seems to enjoy working with us. Damien and Johnny are a massive help as well, which is great as there’s a lot of commitment involved.”

Players to watch out for include Oisin Gormley, a super attacking prospect, Danny Patterson, Eoin Skelton and Sean McDonagh. Then there’s the stalwarts like captain Stephen Gormley, Paul Sheridan and Barry Gormley.

Time will tell whether they can last the course with Stewartstown, favoured by many to win the Junior title, but they’ll give it a good lash.

Glackin said: “We’re looking forward to it.

“No doubt everyone outside Drumquin will have Stewartstown as massive favourites and understandably so.

“They won the league and that makes them the best team in my eyes as sometimes there’s an element of luck involved in winning champions. But you never know, we’re training hard and it’ll be great to get started as we’ve had to wait a few weeks since the end of the league.”