Feature – The Tyrone star who put club before county

Eoin McCusker is known across Tyrone as one of the finest club players of his generation.

He was part of the trailblazing Dromore team which won three senior championship titles between 2007 and 2011, and has eight league medals in his back pocket, but despite that, he spurned the chance of playing for Tyrone barring a brief dalliance in 2010.

Part of that was for work reasons, but his sheer love of the club was an undoubted factor as well. While McCusker was a gifted forward, he relished being part of a team which was envied – and let’s be honest, loathed – by their rivals at the time.

These days they aren’t so feared, and McCusker says they were proud of their reputation at the time.

“I think it only helps a team. Nobody wants to be a team that’s liked as it means you’re not successful.

“Dromore were liked for years I suppose. We’d go to other clubs and have a few pints afterwards, and other clubs would come to Dromore and it was the same.

“But our reputation was a badge of honour for us – when we weren’t liked we knew we were doing well and unfortunately it’s something that’s left us in the last couple of years.”

It’s worth reminding ourselves that when McCusker arrived on the scene, Dromore had played in and lost five senior championship finals down through the years.

Unfortunately, they didn’t manage to end their hoodoo in the 2004 decider against Carrickmore, but three years later they finally did the business when they trounced Coalisland by 0-14 to 0-4. McCusker says keeping the hype down in the lead up to the final made all the difference as they finally reached the promised land.

“In 2004 Dromore was decked out with blue and white everywhere and you couldn’t escape the excitement of it,” he said.

“In 2007 we made a conscious decision to play it down and approached the final as another game. Everyone got into that feeling and there was no bunting in the town. I know Coalisland got really hyped up about it and on the day they didn’t really show up.”

Dromore had leaders everywhere on the park in those days– the likes of Tyrone star Ryan McMenamin, Fabian O’Neill, Cathal McCarron and Colm McCullagh – but their manager Noel McGinn also played an important role in steering the team to their inaugural title.

McCusker said: “McGinn was very respected in Dromore and still is to this day. He had a massive impact, he took no crap and if you messed about in training you were dropped for the match. It didn’t matter how good you were – he treated everyone the same.”

“Ricey was a massive leader in Dromore as well. If he felt something wasn’t going right or that people weren’t putting the effort in in training, he always spoke out. We were blessed with leaders and a lot of our team meetings were very hot and heavy but that’s because there were a lot of strong characters there. Everyone was rowing in the one direction.”

Dromore made it back to the final in 2008 but they were pipped at the post by Clonoe on a scoreline of 0-10 to 0-9 after extra-time, a game which is unfortunately most remembered for a brawl at the end of normal time.

Lady luck was on their side the following year, however, as they won one of the most dramatic finals in living memory against Ardboe as captain Colm McCullagh fired home a winning penalty right at the death.

McCusker admits he thought their chance had passed, recalling a heated exchange he had with his direct opponent Eugene Devlin.

“I remember leading into the final stages of the game, Eugene Devlin hit me a good tight shoulder off the ball, and he looked me in the face and said ‘we have it here’. I thought we were screwed at that stage.

“When McCullagh scored the penalty, I turned round and give him a good shoulder and said to him ‘we have it now’, so that’s how quick that game changed.

“Of the three finals we won, that’s the one that sticks out because in those final stages I thought we were gone and that we’d let another one slip, but we had a bit of luck that day. I suppose we didn’t have much luck down the years so it was nice to get it.”

Dromore won a third O’Neill Cup in 2011, again in dramatic circumstances as Niall Sludden popped up with a late winner against Clonoe.

However, it’s fair to say that their stock has fallen in recent years in the championship arena with some bitterly disappointing defeats.

They lost by a point in the semi-final against eventual champions Killyclogher in 2016, and have bowed out in the first-round in the last three years. Getting hammered by Trillick last Autumn was particularly chastening, and McCusker is forthright about their limitations.

“Some games we were just a point away from victory, but ultimately we probably weren’t good enough.

“When you get beaten three years in a row in the first round, it doesn’t matter what way you dress it up or down, we just haven’t been good enough in those particular matches and there’s no excuses.”

McCusker did, however, pocket his eighth league medal at the end of 2019 with a superb victory over Errigal Ciaran. He says the young players in the club deserve praise for how they responded to that humbling defeat to their neighbours Trillick.

“Trillick gave us a lesson in the championship and the last thing I wanted to do was go to training after that. I just wanted to pull the pin, but we all came together and that’s where the young lads helped. They wanted to win something and it was a good way to finish the year. At the end of the day there’s only two tournaments you can win in Tyrone and the league is one of them.”

Despite being one of the best forwards in the county, McCusker only played for Tyrone for a brief period at the beginning of 2010, but his work commitments as a joiner got in the way and he decided to bring his short intercounty career to an end.

“I was there for three or four national league games and left of my own accord. I was working up in Newtownards and it just wasn’t working out, a few times I was landing late to training.

“I wasn’t fit to give the commitment of some of the other lads so I just decided to pull the pin myself.”

McCusker does admit that his love of Dromore football did play into his relative lack of interest for playing for Tyrone.

“At times I thought that if I had committed to Tyrone I wouldn’t have been able to give the same commitment to Dromore.

“The club came first. I was coming from a club that wasn’t overly successful when I was young and we were pushing really hard to win a championship.

“I really enjoyed playing from the club but you have to give huge credit to the lads in the intercounty set-up, their commitment is unbelievable and they’re very easy to criticise as well.

“I just wanted to give that commitment to Dromore. I didn’t want to sit on the bench during starred games, that sort of stuff just didn’t sit well for me. At the same time we had four or five men on the Tyrone panel and I could see it was affecting Dromore’s training.

“That stuff about everyone hating Dromore as well – our us against the world mentality – to be honest maybe I fell too much into that thinking as well.”

McCusker also suffered a serious facial injury in 2014 during work, but he says he was exceptionally fortunate and that it could’ve been a lot worse.

“I cut the face with a saw, I got 35 stitches but lived to tell the tale. I still have a scar but I’m lucky it missed the bone. I missed the Omagh game in the championship that year, they got a goal in the last minute to beat us so that was a tough one to take – they went on to win the championship.”

Obviously things are up in the air at the minute, but McCusker is still planning on lining out with Dromore this year. He has high hopes for their new crop of talented players after they won last year’s Ulster U-21 Championship title.

“It was the first Ulster in our club, that’s something to be proud of in itself. I’m not going underestimate them, I think they have it in them to achieve in Tyrone.

“Every winning team goes through a transition and it’s up to those young lads to make their own name.

“I’m more than confident that they can do it, it just will take time.”