St Paul’s MFT – Emyvale ready for big day

ST PAUL’S MINOR TOURNAMENT

QUARTER-FINAL

Emyvale v Termon

Sunday, Coláiste Feirste, 4pm

LAST Saturday the Emyvale management team could have made their way to Belfast for the Silverbridge and Termon match to scout their potential quarter-final opponents. Instead they will be remembering their player Luke Aughey who passed away back in May. A reminder that there is more to life than football.

It’s back on the agenda this weekend though and after winning a Monaghan Championship back in October, Barney McNally says that they will head to Coláiste Feirste on Sunday determined to enjoy themselves regardless of the outcome in their contest with the Donegal side.

That county title was to be won in Luke’s honour, the players had decided earlier in the season, and now they are just looking forward to experiencing new surroundings.

“It’s going to be a huge occasion for the club and players,” said McNally, part of a management team that also contains Declan McNally, Shane McKenna, Keith Murphy, Brendan Stewart and Enda Fields.

“We’ll go have some fun, that’s important, and we are really proud to be representing the club in an Ulster tournament.”

McNally believes that the Oriel champions head to Coláiste Feirste at a disadvantage for two reasons.

For a start they were working with a very small panel up until the semi-final and final. Secondly as an u-17 side, they will be one of the youngest squads there with only Niall McKenna being added to the match programme for this u-18 tournament.

“When we got into the semi-finals we asked six members of our u-15 panel to join the panel for the numbers,” he said.

“We had a few more players for the semi-final and final and we have been able to give the u-15s the experience of what the minors were going through.

“We are going out to enjoy the game but in reality we will be going out against 18-year-olds and if we end up losing a few lads we could have a number of 15-year-olds playing against them, and that’s a big gap.

“We reached our goal, and more than our goal, with the county title. It was the first time in the club’s history that we won an underage Division One double.

“We had only ever won the Division One title once before in 1950, so it was more than we ever expected.”

That county final win came courtesy of a 2-10 to 1-11 win over Latton at the end of October.

Corner-forward and team captain Ben Ryan was in scintillating form while defender Rio Corrigan scored their second goal.