Oisin looking forward to Clarkes challenge

A VERITABLE footballing feast. That’s what lies in store on the club front this weekend as all eight Tyrone Club Senior and Intermediate Championship quarter-finals will be played off in a bumper 48-hour period commencing with Friday night’s double header at O’Neill’s Healy Park.

Intermediate contenders Beragh and Greencastle get the action underway followed by the senior showdown of Carrickmore and Killyclogher and that’s only the start of what’s sure to be an enthralling round of matches in every respect.

There’s plenty of stand-out ties and one that’s really captured the imagination of the neutrals is the Saturday afternoon meeting of Loughmacrory and Dungannon Clarkes at Pomeroy, two evenly matched teams that have firmly established themselves in the top flight over the course of the last five years.

Dungannon can draw upon the experience of winning their first O’Neill Cup in 64 years in 2020, where they just so happened to hold off Loughmacrory after extra-time in a gripping quarter-final encounter.

But St Teresa’s have made steady strides and will take massive encouragement from the nature of their first-round win over Galbally a fortnight ago, producing arguably the performance of the round in a 2-15 to 2-7 victory.

St Teresa’s goalkeeper Oisin O’Kane was composure personified under the high ball as Galbally went in search of goals in the second-half, while his pin-point kick-outs were another factor in their opening day win.

The burning question is whether they progress to the Tyrone Senior Championship semi-finals for the first time in the club’s history, and O’Kane is relishing the challenge of attempting to plot the downfall of the Clarkes.

“It’s certainly a huge challenge and we know all about the players and the firepower that they have. We’ve a big job on our hands, but you know what, that’s what we want and there’s nowhere else we’d rather be.”

Perhaps lost in the post-match analysis of their utterly convincing win over Galbally was the fact Loughmacrory also achieved redemption for last year’s first-round penalty shoot-out defeat to Trillick, which was also played under lights in Omagh.

O’Kane commented: “It was good to get back to have the chance to redeem ourselves. That defeat to Trillick was hard to take but that’s football for you, you just have to keep coming back.”

For a brief spell in the second-half, Loughmacrory looked in danger of relinquishing control of proceedings against Galbally, conceding 1-3 without reply. O’Kane said that there’s no shortage of character in the St Teresa’s team and that was at the fore as they reasserted themselves en route to an eight-point victory.

“We said that at half-time, that teams will always get a purple patch and it’s how you deal with it. We’ve been building this last couple of years. A few years ago we mightn’t have recovered but thankfully we were able to do that, we’ve a lot of wise heads on young shoulders on our team.”