O’Rourke following in the family tradition

WHATEVER about his family background, Abbey CBS’s Diarmaid O’Rourke is one hell of a footballer in his own right.

His father Aidan, current coach of the Kildare senior footballers, was a leading member on the Armagh team that won their maiden All-Ireland title in 2002. Aidan’s brother Cathal also won an All-Ireland, while Martin played his part in a number of provincial successes.

The youngest of the O’Rourke clan, Mícheál, was another fine player for Armagh.

It’s an important point of relevance – all four of those men attended and played for Abbey CBS in their school days but none ventured as deep into the MacRory Cup competition as O’Rourke, who scored nine points in their semi-final win over Omagh CBS.

He’s an awesome prospect but he’s a grounded fella and will lead out Abbey CBS into their first MacRory final since 2006 in Sunday’s showdown against St Patrick’s, Academy.

On his father and three uncles, he said: “They’re probably the reason I ended up here. I wanted to replicate what they did.

“I think my dad got to three MacRory Cup quarter-finals, and Cathal and Marty also went to the school. Mícheál was a couple of years older than the 2006 team that won the Hogan.

“So they were my main reason for coming to Abbey in the first place. They were all my heroes and inspirations growing up.”

O’Rourke plays his club football for Dromintee, who recently won the prestigious St Paul’s tournament with a 1-12 to 1-8 victory over Monaghan side Clontibret. The Dromintee influence on the Abbey team is pronounced – six club lads started in their last-four victory over Omagh CBS, while Charlie Fox is another fine player who is currently sidelined with injury.

The magnitude of that win over the 2023 and 2024 MacRory champions can’t be overstated coming 10 weeks after a disappointing group stage defeat to the same school at Healy Park.

O’Rourke said: “We talked about that game in Omagh a lot in our preparations for the semi-final.

“We knew we didn’t do ourselves justice – Omagh were by far the better team but we also knew our work-rate and desire wasn’t up to scratch, and if we brought that to the semi-final in Fintona we wouldn’t be far away, and thankfully it worked out.”

St Patrick’s, Academy are similar to their semi-final opponents in that they both call upon a number of members of Tyrone’s All-Ireland winning team of last season. Nullifying their attacking threat will be half the battle, according to O’Rourke.

“They’ve a lot of All-Ireland minor winners, so they’ve good pedigree and top footballers.

“It’ll be tough to keep them quiet but we’ll do our homework and hopefully we can keep them as quiet as possible – we’ll need to keep the score down as much as possible.”