Trillick and Errigal ready for Friday night lights

By Niall McCoy

FRIDAY night lights come to Omagh as champions Trillick and Errigal Ciaran get ready to restart their engines after a false start and battle it out for the O’Neill Cup.

Like much of the province, Storm Ashley got in the way last weekend with the Healy Park final being pulled late on Sunday – undoubtedly the correct call giving just how hard the wind whipped up.

Has much changed in five days? It’s hard to know, but the Errigal management team of Enda McGinley and Stephen Quinn won’t have been too disappointed to see star forward Darragh Canavan get an extra five days’ grace.

The livewire attacker suffered a shoulder injury in the early stages of his side’s dramatic semi-final win over Killyclogher leaving his participation in the final in doubt, but those chances will have no doubt improved with some more rehab time.

The Errigal camp told Gaelic Life that the situation remains as it was ahead of the initial fixture as they prepared for their final training session last night. Essentially, Canavan is not going to be fully fit even if he does play.

Given his father’s hardiness in the club championship over the years, you’d still bet on him making a massive impact. Peter was often the target of some close treatment, but there’s trying to stop a Canavan and actually stopping a Canavan.

For Trillick, much of the build-up has been around their ability to go back-to-back, something alien in Tyrone for nearly decades too.

If you need reminding, the last side to manage that was Carrickmore in 2004 and ’05, and the 18 finals since have produced eight different victors – Errigal, Dromore, Clonoe, Omagh, Coalisland, Trillick, Dungannon and Killyclogher.

Their manager Jody Gormley has also reported no change in their panel situation to Gaelic Life, so it’s the same for the Reds.

One consequence of the delay though is that the victor will only have a week’s turnaround before their Ulster preliminary clash with Donegal champions St Eunan’s.

Given the nature of Tyrone clashes, and their tendency to go past the 60 minutes, it could be a dead-legged champion heading into the provincial series.

For now though, that’s all in the future. There’s only one thing that matters now.

Under the Friday night lights, Trillick are going to end the long wait for back-to-back champions or Errigal are going to join them on nine titles.