By Shaun Casey

IT was a different kind of Christmas in Scotstown this year, but captain Damien McArdle wouldn’t change it for the world. Instead of enjoying the usual celebrations that come with the festive period, Scotstown were on the pitch, plotting the downfall of St Brigid’s.

This Sunday, the Roscommon men stand between David McCague’s side and a shot at a first-ever All-Ireland Club title. Scotstown have only reached the decider on one previous occasion, but Nemo Rangers proved a step too far in 1979.

The club put a torturous decade of provincial pain behind them this season, but they don’t want the dream to end just yet. Having clinched a fifth Ulster title in their history, McArdle and his teammates are hungry to continue the journey.

“Christmas was great this year, we were a bit fresher over that period, and it was great to be training over Christmas,” said the Scotstown skipper.

“It’s a massive privilege to still be training and playing at this time of the year. It all comes down to the opportunity that we’ve got ourselves into now and we want to put our best foot forward.

“We want to prepare with the best of our ability for the challenge that is coming down the line this weekend. We’ve nearly had a month, we’ve had three weeks since the Ulster final, so it was a nice time.

“We got to go away and enjoy that Ulster final for a couple of days and then we switched back into game mode in around the Wednesday or the Thursday of the following week.”

St Brigid’s know this path all too well. They reached the All-Ireland final as recently as two years ago, but a strong comeback late on from Glen saw the Derry team snatch the Andy Merrigan Cup from their grasp at Croke Park.

St Brigid’s have been crowned All-Ireland champions once before, in 2013. They also hold a host of Roscommon county footballers in their ranks, like Conor Carroll, Ruaidhrí Fallon, Brian Stack, Ben O’Carroll along with former Rossie star Senan Kilbride.

They have quality and experience, but McArdle knows what his side are coming up against.

“This time of year, it doesn’t matter who you face, you’re playing champions and teams that have a serious amount of experience, and they definitely have that experience.

“It’ll be up to us to do our homework and hit the ground running against them. Playing teams at this time of the year, every team is going to have quality so it’s just all about matching that with work rate and our own quality.”

The Ulster Championship seemed like a hurdle Scotstown were never going to clear. Final defeats to Crossmaglen and Gaoth Dobhair, both after extra-time, as well as a two-point loss to Glen seemed to suggest it would never happen again.

But they came back with a vengeance this year and all the pain and suffering was worth it that faithful day in the BOX-IT Athletic Grounds. Extra-time proved their friend this time around as they had enough to squeeze past the challenge of Down kingpins Kilcoo.

While St Brigid’s are more familiar with the All-Ireland club scene, Scotstown are battle-hardened going into Sunday’s clash. Three of their last four outings have been decided after extra-time, and the An Bhoth men are still standing.

Inniskeen earned a draw in normal time in the county final while Newbridge and Kilcoo both came back from the dead to force extra-time (and penalties in Newbridge’s case) but Scotstown never panicked and stood firm when the going really got tough.

“We went the distance in all of those three games and ultimately, we probably finished the stronger against those teams and credit has to go to the likes of David (McCague), Diarmuid (Scullion), Donal (Morgan) and Barry (McKenna) and the boys.

“They got the training right and they got us peaking at the right time. We didn’t really feel any pressure this year because we weren’t going that well in the group stages of the Monaghan Championship.

“That was probably down to the fact that we were training very hard but from there on out, it was just game on game.

“Nobody even mentioned winning an Ulster Club, it was just about game nine and then game 10, then game 11.

“That’s the way it rolled this year so we didn’t actually feel much pressure going into Ulster and it’s just the same now, Sunday is just another game that will hopefully take us to the final game of the year.”