Senior clubs primed for league start this Friday night

DIVISION ONE footballers across the county are primed and ready to go as top-flight league football kicks into gear this Friday night.

The games get underway a week later than initially scheduled as the Tyrone CCC revisited the starred fixtures due to changes within the senior intercounty panel, but it’s a marathon not a sprint and a host of teams will be hoping to make 2024 a year to remember.

Reigning league champions Trillick start their campaign at home to Errigal Ciaran on Friday night in a repeat of last year’s Tyrone Senior Championship final.

There’s less at stake this weekend, but Trillick skipper Richie Donnelly says that they treat the league with the utmost seriousness and that they pride themselves on maintaining consistently high standards.

“The league is very important in Trillick, firstly from a competitive point of view, we want to go out every weekend and win league games, we want to be consistent.

“It’s something we didn’t have in Trillick for a number of years, it’s something we worked really hard on, to be consistent every weekend we go out. Thankfully we’ve managed to do that in recent years.”

Trillick had an excellent league campaign last season which stood them in good stead in the dog-eat-dog Championship, where they embarked on a memorable run to a ninth ever O’Neill Cup triumph. They rounded off the year with victory in the Division One final over Carrickmore, and Donnelly says that one doesn’t really go without the other.

“It definitely is. Being consistent in the league is a strong reflection of the standards driving us in the set-up. If you’re going into games, Jekyll and Hyde performances, it’s reflective of something not right. I think showing a level of consistency is very important to us because it gives you a good barometer of where the group’s at so it’ll be interesting to see how we go.”

If all goes according to plan, Trillick will have their sights on a third Division One title in as many years, an accomplishment last achieved by the club during the eighties.

Richie commented: “We’d absolutely love to do that and we’ll fight tooth and nail to do it. When you break that outcome down, what it means is being competitive every Sunday and fighting for two points, and that’s what we plan to do.”

It goes without saying that Trillick are a formidable team at adult level, and there’s reason to believe that will remain the case for the foreseeable with so many talented younger footballers coming through the ranks. Charlie Donnelly was named as man of the match for Omagh CBS as they retained their Hogan Cup in style, and there’s plenty more where that came from.

“On the surface there’s a lot of good ability there, Charlie Donnelly and Nathan Farry featured very strongly for Omagh CBS that did back-to-backs and you’ve a few hidden gems there as well. Club minors like James Corry and Liam Corry and Sean and boys like that, a lot of good young characters we’d be very hopeful we’ll pull through in the next year or two and play at a very high level for Trillick and beyond.”

Later in the year, Trillick will attempt to achieve the elusive back-to-back in the Senior Championship, something that has proven beyond the various champions of the last 20 years. They’ve as good as chance as any but it certainly won’t be easy, particularly given the knock-out nature of the competition.

“I’d say every team in the Senior Championship faces the same challenge. There’s a number of teams that can win it and you could literally be out on the first day or you could progress, it’s a lottery and we saw that in the first round last year, we went to penalties with Loughmacrory. We just know what it brings and we’ll prepare as best we can.”