By Shaun Casey

BACK in 2019, Gaelic Life published an article on Redmond O’Hanlon’s. The Poyntzpass club were recruiting players as they attempted to compete at the lowest level of league football in Armagh.

The club wasn’t in trouble of folding. The work being done at underage level would ensure that. But at certain times, the senior team were arriving to league games with 12 players. It was a real struggle.

Things were at a low ebb in 2022. They failed to win a single game throughout the entire season, suffering 16 defeats in the league to finished anchored at the very bottom of the Division 3B league table.

An Port Mór duly handed them a 22-point hammering in the opening round of the Junior Championship that year. Things have changed drastically since then. Already in the 2025 championship campaign, they’ve doubled their win rate from the previous five seasons.

In the five championship campaigns since that article, from 2020-2024, O’Hanlon’s won just one game.

An eight-point group stage victory over Clady saw them progress to the playoffs last season, where Middletown wiped the floor with them.

Their first-round win over Ballyhegan this year set them up beautifully for round two, away to Middletown. This time, the sides finished all square. A much different result from 14-point mauling in last year’s encounter.

On the final day of the round-robin series, O’Hanlon’s beat Lissummon, who had already been knocked out, to secure a spot in the Armagh Junior Championship quarter-finals. They were last there in 2021, due to a bye in the first round of the knockout championship.

A burst of young fellas have blown new life into the club, as manager Aidan Gough explains: “We got those young fellas coming through, we have older fellas I’ll say rather than old fellas who are still there.

“It’s an immense achievement by our fellas. It’s a small club but we play with pride. We have the same pride as any big club. For us to come out of this group is a testament to the hard work that has been done. That’s all it is, hard work. We struggled to field down through the years, through no fault of the club, but the work the men and the women do behind the scenes here if phenomenal but it’s just numbers and thank God we have a few coming through.”

Daragh McNulty, a former Armagh minor captain, kicked 2-11 on Sunday to ensure his side claimed top spot and his one of a number of youngsters, like Ryan Cookson and Adam Canavan, that are really starting to make their mark.

“It’s the boost the older guys needed,” said club stalwart Brian Canavan, a former Armagh player and manager who helped guide the Orchard County to provincial glory, alongside Brian McAlinden, in 1999.

“The likes of Noel Donnelly, Stephen Daly who came on and got a goal, the two Hudsons (David and Ryan) who didn’t play against Lissummon, they needed the young guys to come along to help them.

“They hadn’t enough support over the last number of years, there wasn’t enough players coming through but that batch of lads coming through, there’s five or six of them, we have a good mix at the minute.

“We have five or six subs to come on which we haven’t had over the last ten years, and it’s really gave the club a great boost. There’s great support too from all the locals that hadn’t been to matches for years and we’re looking forward now to a quarter-final.”

There’s more to come says their manager. Redmond O’Hanlon’s aren’t finished just yet and while they celebrated the successful group stages, they now have a quarter-final to look forward to in a few weeks.

“We believe there’s more to come,” added Gough.

“We wanted to top the group, we believed we could do it and now that we’ve done it, we’re not resting on our laurels. We’ll work hard, the boys enjoyed themselves last week and why not?

“You have to enjoy these moments. We must be one of the smallest clubs in the county and for us to come out on top of a Junior Championship group, it’s fantastic.

“We have to celebrate it, it’s football, it’s enjoyment.”

The skies the limit for O’Hanlon’s moving forward. “We’ve won one championship back in 1997, I was on it, and I was 40 years of age, the youngest guy was 18,” Canavan continued.

“While it’ll be very difficult for them to win the championship this year, there’s a lot of good teams left in it, but O’Hanlon’s are in the hat, and I think most teams would fear them.”