By Niall Gartland

THE Abbey CBS footballers have suffered their fair share of heartache in recent years, but their manager Dan Gordon hopes that they’ve concocted a winning formula for Sunday’s MacRory Cup final against St Patrick’s Academy, Dungannon.

The younger lads on the team felt the brunt of defeat to Omagh CBS in Rannafast and Oisin McGrath finals, while their final year students fell one point short against the Academy in the Corn na nÓg showdown four years ago.

A disappointing losing streak, yes, but there’s no doubt that Abbey CBS are brimming with talent and former Down star Gordon is hoping for redemption on the biggest day of all in Ulster Schools’ football.

“Both year groups have been successful enough without winning anything, but we’re hoping that the effect of joining the two squads together is going to bear fruit for us.”

While they haven’t won a MacRory title since their last final appearance all the way back in 2006, the Newry-based school has a strong pedigree at this level. They’ve appeared in 14 MacRory Cup finals in total, winning on five occasions.

“There is a good pedigree in the school – there’s a lot of very famous past pupils who went on to play for Down and Armagh, but unfortunately it was 20 years ago since our last final.

“A lot of time and investment has been put into the current crop of players, and hopefully this is the culmination of a lot of hard work by a lot of teachers, and a lot of support from different quarters within the school.”

Joining Gordon on the management team are his former Down teammate Kevin McKernan, Sean Gallagher, Mark Grogan, Robbie Hannon and Stephen Dyas, whose older brother Kevin starred in that 2006 campaign. Another esteemed figure who would also surely have been involved is the late Jody Gormley.

“Jody coached a lot of these fellas coming through. He took the current sixth year lads when they were in third and fourth year. He was supposed to take them in fifth year as well but it didn’t work out.

“We had talked about him perhaps getting involved with MacRory this year. I know he was heavily involved with Trillick at the time.

“He did have a lot of experience with our players and thought very highly of them. He helped me with the team when we played the Corn na nÓg final against Dungannon. He’s definitely a massive loss to us.”

So will they savour the spoils of victory come Sunday afternoon? Gordon believes it will ake a massive effort to get the better of their Dungannon opponents.

“I watched their quarter-final win over Castleblayney and spoke to their manager afterwards – he was disappointed with how they played, but the way I see it, they still ground it out.

“Then they came up against Abbey VS, who I personally considered the team to beat this year.

“So for St Pat’s to travel two and-a-half hours in Donegal and come out with the victory after extra-time shows the calibre of the Dungannon team. They’ve won every competition at their age group coming through, so they’re a very formidable opponent and have been most people’s favourites from the start of the year.”