Fintona’s McGillion savours Pearses landmark success

FINTONA’s fortunes are very much now on an upward curve following Sunday’s Junior Championship victory over Drumragh which has reaped the perfect dividend from the club’s big efforts to rejuvenate all its affairs during the past decade or so.

It has been a journey from the lower-reaches of Division Three action which highlighted their struggles a few years ago. As 2024 approaches, the Intermediate grade will beckon them, and who’s to say they won’t go on to repeat the marvellous success of the seventies when winning both the Junior and Intermediate titles.

For the moment, though, the Ulster Club will focus their attention, and the chance of provincial success is certainly one which will be driving them on during the coming weeks.

Full-forward, Conor McGillion, was among their stars in the narrow one point win over the Sarsfields afterDrumragh on Sunday past. He has no doubt about the significance of the victory, and the prospects as they look ahead with confidence to 2024 and beyond.

“We were always targeting this success, but I suppose nobody expected it to come so soon. It was something I didn’t think I’d see in this near future, ” he said.

“But everybody has stuck at the challenge and fair play to the management and the players for how they’ve done. This is the best day of my life.

“The game was very close all the way through and in fairness, Drumragh were probably the better team today. We knew that they are a great team all over the field, and their defence probably had us blocked for periods of the match.

“I suppose Fintona are now known that much for grinding out games like this. But we came good when it mattered most and got the scores.”

Victory on Sunday meant that throughout the Tyrone domestic season, the Pearses have only lost one game. That result was a one-point defeat to the eventual league winners, Cookstown.

No wonder, then, that there was a special sense of satisfaction among the players as they celebrated the club’s fifth championship title, a list which includes two senior in 1914 and 1938, two Junior in 1975 and 2023 and that Intermediate triumph from 1978.

“That one loss by a point probably cost us the league. The whole thing in our head was to get this one back and now this is the best thing that has happened to the club in a long time,” added McGillion.”