Emotional Eire Ogs captain Shields savours their success

JUNIOR CHAMPIONSHIP FINAL

AN emotional Clogher captain Conor Shields was as impactful off the pitch as he was on it on Saturday night as he spoke eloquently about what a Junior Championship triumph meant for himself and the local community.

The 27 year old has been an immense presence for the Eire Ogs across this successful campaign which culminated in a resounding victory over Drumragh at Healy Park.

Yet amid the jubilant scenes as the maroon and white players and supporters basked in only their third ever Junior title triumph, Conor took time to reflect on the collective significance of this victory and how the people of Clogher had been there to support his family as they came to terms with their own personal loss a few years back.

“ The community is unbelievable. Myself and the family I don’t know where I would be without them. There is more important things in life than football but there is very little more important than a close community.

“ What that community has done for me and my family personally over the last four years I can’t say. Some days they are the reason you get out of bed in the morning. Some days it is a struggle but you go down to the pitch on a Friday night or a Tuesday night, Sunday morning, whenever it is, your focus changes. There is nothing stronger than a community for putting the arm around each other and backing each other.”

Shields was only a teenager when Clogher lost out in the 2017 Junior Final to Tattyreagh but he felt that in terms of maturity and experience the make-up of this current Eire Ogs panel was a lot different.

“ It’s twenty-five years since we last won the Championship. It got away from us in 2017. It was different then as the team was just coming through at that stage. Today had a different feel to it.

“ We gathered back on October 4th last year, some of the boys sent a text this past week pointing that out. We didn’t know who would be involved or what management we would have but one thing we did know is that if we knuckled down and put the shoulder to the wheel we could win a Junior Championship. And that day is here.”

Conor has endured his fair share of ups and downs in a Clogher jersey over the years but he said that there was a realisation that time was running out on some of the elder statesmen in the squad to make a breakthrough.

“ It has been a long journey. We were relegated last year and we knew ourselves that things had to get better. We know we won’t have this particular group of players forever. There is a lot of older stalwarts within the group so we knew we had to do something in these few years. We knuckled down, we went to the well so this is unbelievable.”

Clogher played with a strong wind at their backs in the first period, but despite registering four two pointers, they were then hit with a spree of five points on the burst from Drumragh which brought the Sarsfields right back into contention.

Shields was delighted though with how his colleagues rode out the storm and were able to control the flow of the contest in the second period, as they bossed the possession stakes.

“ If you watched the last two games that Drumragh played against Cookstown they looked dead and buried a couple of times but they came back and finished unbelievably strong. We knew that there would be a purple patch in Drumragh.

“ It was always going to come but we knew among ourselves if we could get hold of the ball and control it that’s the biggest thing. If we had possession they couldn’t hurt us. Once we got over their purple patch we controlled it and took scores when we needed scores, and slowed things down when needed and sped it up at times too.

“ We did everything in our power to make sure we were going to be 2025 Junior champions.”