NIALL GARTLAND: Charting the rise of Darragh

THE first time the name Darragh Canavan entered my consciousness was all the way back in 2014.

Jerome Quinn – you know the one – had produced a video of Darragh ripping it up for St Ciaran’s Ballygawley as they captured their first ever Ulster Schools title with a 0-19 to 1-6 victory over St Columb’s Derry.

It was uncanny really. This was Peter Canavan’s son bouncing off the deck like a rubber ball, leaving his direct marker with twisted blood before neatly tucking the ball over the bar.

And get this – he was already two footed.

Since then, in anticipation of great things, I’ve kept a close eye on Darragh’s progress through the ranks with both Errigal Ciaran and Tyrone.

In 2018, I covered Errigal Ciaran’s Minor Championship victory over Killyclogher on a sunny Saturday afternoon at Clanabogan.

In the match report I wrote that “black and white print doesn’t do justice to a show-stopping performance from the Errigal Ciaran starlet, whose individual heroics inspired his side to a second Grade One Minor Championship in a row.”

He scored six points from play – including the side’s winning point against a formidable Killyclogher, but it was the quality of his scores that shone like a beacon. He was outrageously good.

For the record, a host of other newly minted Ulster Champions played that day – Cormac Quinn, Joe Oguz, Odhran Robinson, Pauric Traynor, Tiarnan Colhoun, while a certain Ruairi Canavan was sprung from the bench.

By that stage, lest we forget, Darragh had spearheaded Tyrone’s run to the inaugural All-Ireland U-17 Championship title a year earlier, scoring a TG4 Goal of the Year contender in a Tour de Force performance against Roscommon at Croke Park in the final.

He’d later go on to star at u-20 level as well, and he was called into Mickey Harte’s Tyrone Senior set-up while still only 18 years of age in late 2018, making an impressive cameo against Derry in the McKenna Cup.

That same year, he came off the bench against Coalisland in the quarter-final of the Senior Championship and wreaked havoc. They lost, but had he been introduced earlier, it could’ve been a very different story.

A modest lad by nature – when presented with a microphone at Sunday evening’s homecoming at Gormley’s Corner in Ballygawley, he said he felt nervous – Darragh always seemed destined to become a mainstay of the Tyrone senior team.

He was unfortunate with injury in the early throes of his senior inter-county career, but he still played a hugely significant role in Tyrone’s surge to the Sam Maguire in 2021. In the bedlam of a frenzied All-Ireland semi-final win over Kerry, he was ice-cool in possession, and he scored a fine point from play in the All-Ireland final showdown against Mayo. He was nominated for Young Footballer of the Year as a result.

Both this year and last, he was nominated for an All-Star, no mean feat given Tyrone’s championship campaigns ended earlier than hoped, and now he’s widely regarded as one of the elite attacking players in the country. Some say that the new rules will allow lads like Darragh to flourish, and that may be so, but he’s already doing damn well against opposition defences the length and breadth of the country.

In 1993, a 22-year-old Peter Canavan was at the heart of Errigal Ciaran’s first ever Ulster Championship victory, climaxing in a 3-7 to 1-8 victory over Downpatrick.

Nine years later, Peter the Great was again at the fore as Errigal won their second provincial title with a narrow victory over a strong Enniskillen Gaels team.

On Sunday, it was his sons Darragh and Ruairi leading from the front as Errigal Ciaran ended their 22-year wait for another Ulster title. Darragh had the honour of holding aloft the Seamus McFerran Cup, and you know what they say – the cream always rises to the top.