By Michael McMullan

YOU can literally hear the satisfaction in Aidan O’Rourke’s voice after Dromintee landed the club’s first ever Ulster minor title on New Year’s Day in Belfast.

With the cheers of celebration ebbing from the nearby dressing room, he takes a quiet moment. For now, the work is done.

When Michael O’Neill’s insurance point etched their name on the Jimmy McConville Cup, it completed the set for a group of players.

All the leagues and championships in Armagh. The Paul McGirr Cup at u-16 level. An All-Ireland Féile. Now the Ulster minor. They’ve won the lot.

“I’m grateful to get this because it’s the end of a very long journey with this group of boys,” said O’Rourke who manages the team with Kevin Toale and Stephen Dyas.

“We were joking during the week that if we win this game, we’ll have completed the game,” O’Rourke added, comparing it to maxing out a computer game.

“This is the final level and there is a big boss to beat at the end but the game’s over now and they’ve done that.

“They’ve won everything that was possible for them to win. That’s not what we set out to do.

“We set out just to produce players but they’ve come together collectively and done all that.”

O’Rourke won an All-Ireland with Armagh as a player. He is an All-Star and has been involved in football his whole life. There have been good days and tough ones. Thursday was a memorable one.

This is different. This is Dromintee. It’s home. His son Diarmaid is a central figure. It’s a group he’s help mould since they were u-10. What is the measure of satisfaction? A tough question? O’Rourke agrees.

“The satisfaction, for me, is as a coach when I watch this group play, I have very little coaching to do anymore,” he said.

“The cliche is that a good coach should make himself redundant in that you’re not needed during a game and you’re not needed much in the prep,” he said modestly, heaping praise on the group of lads celebrating a matter of metres away.

“Honestly, I’m not really needed anymore with these boys. They’re self-sufficient, they organise, figure stuff out on the pitch, move people around, make changes themselves. I can take a seat here now. So that’s the satisfaction.”

This is the end result but it didn’t happen by chance. It’s a decade of work. Of coaching. For O’Rourke, Dromintee are no different to anyone else trying to get a foot on the ladder. Development is key. Work, habits and repetition.

“The starting point is maybe different for us in that we’re a small country club,” he said.

“Even though a generation back we would have been challenging for county senior titles, we would have perceived to be a bit bigger than we were.”

Dromintee’s push over the last decade was about getting a conveyor belt of players moving towards senior. All with good habits, knowing what is needed.

The moment @drominteegac won their first Ulster title

The minor competitions in @StPaulsGAC ans @ScreenGAA are excellent fixtures in the calendar pic.twitter.com/8vokRJA4Qu

— Michael McMullan (@malmcmullan) January 1, 2026

Keeping things simple was as important as any other factor. After that, it was about being consistently correct in the application. There is no other secret sauce.

The messages delivered from the sideline in St Paul’s are a testament to that. A word on positioning. A reminder to tackle one hand at a time. Shape. Kick ir early or run and mind the ball. An insistence on keeping the scoreboard moving.

“It’s ultimately down to the players,” O’Rourke added. “We put the coaching in front of them; we nudge them in the right direction and tell them what good looks like. It’s up to them really.

“It’s just an absolutely exceptional group of players who are very, very hungry to be better.

“They know they’re not perfect but work very, very hard. We’ve beaten better teams than us this year because we’ve outworked them.

“That’s just their DNA now, at this stage, just to work hard, to stay in the game and play football when the opportunity arises.”

O’Rourke used their final against Clontibret as an example. They were nine up at half-time. At a stage they stretched it to eleven but by injury time, only a goal separated the teams.

James McBennett’s long kick-out found link man Oisin Byrne beyond midfield and seconds later Michael O’Neill had the ball over the bar. The insurance and a time to breathe freer again.

“There were lots of periods in the second half where we couldn’t get our hands on the ball and struggled,” he said.

“They dug in and made tackles and made blocks. When they got their moments, they picked off their scores, they’re just good footballers.”

There was always a realisation they’d a group of players with the potential to group.

As they headed into their teenage years, O’Rourke and the management trekked them all over the country for challenge games against some of the top clubs as an indicator. It was learning too.

“At that point, they could do all those things but the difference between a 10, 11 year-old and a 17, 18 year-old is day and night,” added O’Rourke, who works as a Performance Sports Manager in QUB.

“It’s about the journey in between and they have taken every step that’s been put in front of them. At every level, we don’t put any pressure on them. We just want them to be better.

“We tell them what the next step looks like, what better looks like in the gym and what better looks like on the pitch and your mentality.

“They’re just hungry to be better and ultimately that produces days like today. These days are brilliant for the parish and a brilliant experience for the boys and a lot of satisfaction for the coaches.

“Ultimately, it’s a stepping stone because what we set out to do at the outset was produce players consistency for the senior team that can allow us to compete.

“Hopefully we’re starting to see that over the last couple of years. There’s a lot of good young players coming into our senior team. Hopefully over the next three or four there’s a fair amount of consistent, consistently good players coming.