McGeary expects titanic tussle with Rock in Tyrone Intermediate final

By Niall Gartland

POMEROY skipper Kieran McGeary has a tidy way of explaining things. Rewind the clock a few months and the aftermath of Tyrone’s narrow All-Ireland Senior Championship quarter-final defeat to Kerry.

Speaking after the game, he mused that “All the experts had ruled us out, and their own records wouldn’t be deadly against Kerry either.” Quite.

His appraisal of Pomeroy’s comeback victory over Cookstown at the semi-final hurdle a fortnight ago was equally succinct: “All you can do is keep playing, that’s literally it.” He did elaborate, of course, on their Lazarus-like recovery which saw Pomeroy through to Sunday’s Intermediate Championship showdown against the Rock.

Reminded that they were literally nine points down with 20 minutes remaining, McGeary said: “I didn’t even realise that. Nine down, Jesus, there you go. All you can do is keep playing, that’s literally it. I couldn’t even see the scoreboard with the glare of the sun, so you’re trying to pick off points.

“We had a couple of chances, particularly in the first half where we didn’t nail them, and they were getting attacks off the back of our mistakes. That’s our own fault, so we’ll look to tidy those things up in the next two weeks and see what happens.”

McGeary continued: “Don’t be kidded by that comeback. Cookstown are an extremely good team. There was a lot of talk about their youth and our experience heading into the game, but we had no experience of playing Cookstown in a semi-final of the Intermediate Championship.

“They’ll talk about that coming into the final too. I have no experience of playing Rock in an Intermediate Final. It’s a 50/50 game; the way I look at it, it’s a level playing field, and they’ll look at it the exact same way. We stole a draw off them in the league down in The Rock, and I’m sure they were very disappointed with how that finished, so I’m sure they’ll be ready to go.”

It’s been a busy few months for the 2021 Footballer of the Year but he wouldn’t have it any other way. The afterglow of club championship victories makes it all worthwhile. Reflecting on his transition back to the club scene, he said: “You’re straight back at it. You can talk about being tired, but you want to be playing in matches like this. You want to be part of it, you want to be among your supporters and among your own players and come out on top of big games.”

There are two prizes on offer this Sunday evening at O’Neill Park – the Intermediate Championship and promotion to the top-flight. It’s all on the line then.

“All we’ve done is get ourselves a ticket to the final, that’s all we did tonight. You’ve got frig-all hands on anything, so you have. You just have to battle on and see how it goes. We have two weeks of prep. The Rock are in the same boat, so we’ll take it from there.”