Massive day in store for Carmen’s young guns

SUNDAY is set to be a momentous day in the lives of the young minor footballers from Carrickmore, Ardboe, Loughmacrory and Drumragh.

With Galbally playing host to the Grade One and Two Minor Championship finals, Loughmacrory take on Drumragh at 3pm before Carrickmore and Ardboe duke it out for the Grade One title with the start time set for 5pm.

GAA at underage level is underpinned by a number of different driving forces – participation being one obvious factor, to the long-term business of ensuring that there’s a smooth and structured transition to the senior ranks.

This week, however, Sunday is really all that matters for the youngsters involved – and the quality of football should be high across the board given the depth of talent that exists within Tyrone at the moment. Schools success, county success, we’re on a bit of a roll, to put it mildly.

Leading Carrickmore on the line is Mark Corey alongside Conor and Sean Daly. They can draw upon two members of Tyrone’s All-Ireland minor winners, namely Padraig Donaghy, who captained the Red Hands to a first Thomas Markham success since 2010, and Vincent Gormley. Incidentally Carrickmore are actually skippered by Ryan Donaghy – Padraig’s twin brother.

And Mark Corey says they’re embracing the build-up to Sunday’s Grade One showdown against their counterparts from Ardboe.

“You want the lads to enjoy the build-up as much as they can – it’s not every day you get to a Minor Championship final so you have to embrace it.

“It’s been good in every respect – some of our lads have had schools’ success and two of them have won an All-Ireland. Then on the other hand, quite a few of the lads haven’t had as much success and it’s newer to them, but they’re just as important and we’re all looking out for each other.”

Whatever happens on Sunday, the majority of the Carmen panel will be back on board next year. Corey doesn’t expect anything handy against an Ardboe side backboned by a number of players who are already producing the goods at senior level for their club.

“It’s a massive step up from minor to senior football, and none of our lads are playing at that level yet. Our team is relatively young – only four of them are in their last year of minor. We’ve a panel of about 29 players and a dozen of them are playing at U16 level as well. We can’t wrap them in bubble wrap so we accommodate them.

“Ardboe have three lads playing exceptionally well for their seniors – Davin McKeown, Jamie Concannon and Darragh Devlin. They’re gaining a wealth of experience at senior level, so in that respect they’re probably more advanced than ourselves so we know we’ll be up against it.”

Both participants produced really impressive performances in their respective semi-finals. Ardboe produced the goods against Trillick, while Carrickmore rocked Cookstown for five goals.

Corey said: “We did well, we’d a great start, Cookstown came back into it but before half-time they lost two big players for them through injury and they lost their shape a bit.

“We were able to march on – we had two or three purple patches in the second-half. Look, some days you get the rub of the green and other days you don’t.”