By Niall Gartland

CAOLAN Taggart was only a teenager when he pocketed an Ulster Championship medal back in 2014, but it’s taken Portaferry a full 10 years to get back to provincial final day.

You could point out with some justification that they have received a bye into the final, but their performance against eventual champions Cushendall at the last-four juncture last year suggests they’ll give Sleacht Néill their fill of it this Sunday at the Athletic Grounds.

They were within touching distance of victory against the Ruairí Ógs but they let a place in the Ulster final slip through their fingers in stoppage time.

Cushendall had found themselves four points in arrears and were staring defeat flat in the face, but the inspirational Neil McManus saved their bacon.

In the 62nd minute he opted for a point rather than go for goal. Two minutes later that decision paid off when he won a free around 20 metres from goal. He drove it low, bagged the goal and got his team off the hook. Extra-time was called for, and Cushendall didn’t look the gift horse in the mouth.

That’s a victory that surely stung the Ardsmen, but Taggart says there were positives to take from their near-miss against the Antrim titans.

“You can look at it both ways. We were definitely hurting after that defeat, but at the same time you can take a lot from games like that. We’d brought quite a young team into that match, so it was good to know we can compete with the big boys.”

It could easily have been Cushendall again only for a superlative performance from Sleacht Néill in a thrilling semi-final clash nearly a fortnight ago that also went the distance. The Derry men are justifiably favourites – they won four Ulster titles in a five-year spell between 2016 and 2021, and only two years ago they took Portaferry to the cleaners in a semi-final that ended up 2-24 to 0-11. A lot of ground to make up but Taggart sees no reason for pessimism.

Brendan Rogers and Shane McGuigan and Gerald Bradley and co. – they need no introduction but let’s not get too bogged down.

“I don’t tend to focus that much on names. They’re obviously a great team, look at the score they put up against Cushendall, it speaks for itself.

“We played them a few years ago and they gave us a bit of a trimming. At the same time you have to back yourself any time you take to the field, given the work we put in. We’ll be going out fully believing we can do the job.”

Portaferry are managed on the line for a second successive year by Gerard McGrattan, an icon of the club who won seven county championship in his own playing days. There’s also a core group who were part of that Ulster-winning group of 2014, Taggart included, while their younger cohort are getting better all the time. There’s a sense of stability and Taggart hopes that comes to the fore against Sleacht Néill.

“I think we’ve every player available that we had last year. We’ve brought in a few younger lads in the last year or two and they’ve matured a bit. We’ve had Gerard in for the last few years and that’s been great as well. There is a real sense of continuity – sometimes the game-plans change and sometimes Gerard has new ideas, but we’re all rowing in the one direction.”

Portaferry won their third Down Senior Hurling Championship title in a row with victory over Ballygalget. It was a protracted enough campaign – they played seven matches in total – and there were no assumptions made about getting out of the group stages.

“We think it went well. The Down Championship is quite long, there’s five round-robin games, a semi-final and then the final. I think we did what we needed to do.We’ve been very driven this year. We took each game as it comes, you definitely can’t afford to pace yourself as you’d be going out with the mentality that you’re going to start slow. We’ve been all out to win every game that we played.”