Christmas time in Tyrone

By Niall Gartland

It’s my favourite time of the year. Sort of. The Tyrone Club Championships – time to bid adieu to a social life (I’m a total galavanter: not) and hello to the country roads of Tyrone. By the time this is all wrapped up for another year, I’ll be sick, sore and tired of the narrow lanes twisting through the heart of the county as I spin back and forth from Omagh and Dungannon. The A5, I hear you cry. I give it a miss if I can.

It is busy. Last season I attended roughly 40 matches in the space of a two-month period but at least the craic is good, whatever about the quality of football on offer. Admittedly that certainly isn’t bad either.

In Tyrone, we like to bleat about having the best championships in the land. I’m not sure of the qualitative evidence underlining that boast, but it’s probably just a hunch as much as anything else.

There is something special about it though. For me, it’s the wanderlust as much as anything else. Saturdays spent in places like Pomeroy or Galbally before heading off for the graveyard shift at a floodlit Stewartstown on the Lough shore are firmly embedded in my memory.

99 times out of 100, the hospitality at Tyrone club matches is first-class (I’d a run-in at a gate a few weeks back from a hardy-looking and equally hard sounding volunteer who wasn’t too impressed with my shiny press pass but I won’t hold it against him; we all have our foibles).

The Junior Championships got underway last weekend, and in the weeks to come the train will leave the station for the Senior and Intermediate Championships.

A neat addition last year was the introduction of the post-match draws. In previous times, the path to championship glory was neatly laid out from the starting pistol. Not anymore.

I’m thinking about Loughmacrory’s victory over Donaghmore at O’Neill Park, Dungannon last year. First things first, it was their first-ever victory in a Tyrone Senior Championship quarter-final. And then came the draw over the loudspeaker… Loughmacrory would take on… CARRICKMORE in the semi-finals. The big parish rivals. The gasp that cascaded through the crowd spoke for itself, but there was also a giddy excitement in the air – among the spectators at least. You could sense that the draw, which must have been made only 10 minutes after the final whistle, focused minds among the players and management team.

Loughmacrory’s Eoin McElholm attempts to escape the challenge from Donaghmore’s Ronan Donnelly at O’Neill Park, Dungannon. Photo: Michael Cullen

The semi-final lived up to its billing. On the first day out, Pomeroy was packed to the gills in a game of almost unbearable tension. It really could have gone either way. In decades to come, Eoin McElholm will be remembered around his home club for his game-saving tackle as much as his attacking exploits for club and county. The replay, played under lights at Healy Park was just as gripping. A late two-pointer from Ruairi McCullagh will go down in Loughmacrory folklore. And before we all knew it, they were county champions for the first time in the club’s history with a one-point victory over Trillick. Ah Trillick, they’ve brought so much to the Tyrone Senior Championship over the course of the last decade – consistency is one of the hallmarks of a great team and they’re certainly not lacking in that or any other respect.

I could go on and on really. I haven’t mentioned the camaraderie between local journalists in attendance at all these matches, I’ve glossed over the Intermediate and Junior championships, and I suppose I’ve done a fair bit of waffling about myself.

Maybe the ultimate beauty of the whole thing is, pardon the sudden onset of tweeness, the hope among the bulk of participating teams. You could make a case for any number of teams going on that classic championship run. Dungannon in 2020, I’m thinking of you. In that respect the lack of group stages is a bit of a godsend, so there really is a giddy sense of adventure about the whole thing for teams and supporters alike. It’s one big bandwagon and I’m about to hop firmly aboard for another year. Here we go, to paraphrase a certain unavoidable soccer journalist.