Trillick: A shining example of excellence and evolution

TRILLICK have won nine Tyrone Senior Championship titles: 1937, 1974, 1975, 1980, 1983, 1986, 2015, 2019, and 2023. There are two very obvious golden eras yielding a rich harvest – and we’re still, a decade on from that 2015 success, in the midst of a sustained period of excellence that shows no sign of coming to a halt any time soon.

Take a peek at the team that took to the field against Killyclogher in Trillick’s 2015 triumph and some very familiar names leap from the page: Mattie and Richie Donnelly, Lee and Rory Brennan, Daire Gallagher (then playing at corner-forward), goalkeeper Joe Maguire and Stephen O’Donnell have all featured prominently in their run to a sixth county final appearance in eleven seasons. In hindsight, you can see how their first year back in senior football finished up as it did.

Ruairi Kelly, Niall ‘Jib’ Donnelly and Niall Gormley all started back then and remain on the panel. Damian Kelly came on as a sub on that historic day and is also still involved.

But if there’s one word that encapsulates Trillick’s remarkable levels of consistency over the course of the last decade, it’s this – evolution. A steady drip-feed of talented younger players ensures that the Donnelly Park-based club continue to dine out at the top table, and that hasn’t happened by chance.

One of their coaching mainstays at underage level is former player Willie Garrity – father to James and Simon Garrity, two of those players who came on board in the years following that 2015 success. He has a couple of younger lads coming through the ranks as well: Peter was a key player on the Tyrone Minor team that won this year’s All-Ireland. Unfortunately, he suffered a dreadful knee injury on county final day – he didn’t just do the ACL, but tore both menisci. It’s a long, arduous road back, but he’ll get there. Another son, Matthew, was part of Tyrone’s Buncrana Cup-winning team this year.

The above paragraph is Trillick in a nutshell really. It’s hardly a sprawling metropolis, and the community is backboned by industrious local families serving the greater good.

Willie himself works in Dublin at the moment, but that’s the height of his adventures: Trillick remains his base and he still coaches the club minors.

That sense of duty is the secret sauce. Nationally recognised players who have adorned the big stage for Tyrone are no fairytale figures. If you can’t see, you can’t be, and the senior players in the club are never far away.

Speaking last Friday, Willie said: “There’s a parish blitz on tomorrow, and I guarantee you if you want to see the likes of Mattie and Richie [Donnelly] and a lot of the senior team, that’s where you’ll find them. Even with their busy schedules, nothing is ever a problem. Richie was involved in Peter’s Tyrone U16 team last year, and he was excellent. He’s one of the best underage coaches I’ve come across. When all my lads were coming through the ranks, Mattie and Richie would stay on the pitch for 10 or 15 minutes after senior games and have a kickabout with all the younger boys.

“It’s the same for all of them – we brought James [Garrity] and ‘Jib’ [Donnelly] in a few years ago at underage and they won a Championship, we have Joe Maguire in, they’re all so willing and accommodating.”

He added: “I’ve got very friendly with a fella from another club this year, through Peter’s involvement with the Tyrone minors, and he said: ‘what exactly are you doing, we have so many good younger players and we can win nothing at senior.’

“ But he added that he has a young lad going into the senior team next year, and he’s very rarely even spoken to a senior player.

“That’s just not the case in Trillick – young lads at U14 and U16 level go into the gyms and there could be a number of senior lads there.

“ Peter’s in rehab at the moment, and they all stop and chat to him, and help him as well, which is brilliant to see.”

Trillick have won various underage titles over the course of the last decade or so. Here’s a sample: a Grade Three U14 title in 2012; a Grade Three Minor League success in 2015; a Grade Two Minor Championship double in 2018.

In more recent times, lads like Nathan Farry, Charlie Donnelly and Liam Corry (all of whom made their Championship debuts this season) even won a couple of titles at Grade One, but Garrity says that operating at the top tier at underage level isn’t the be-all and end-all.

“A fella said to me in the town one night years ago, ‘we need to be playing Grade One if we’re to win Division One titles’, but we’ve proven we don’t – the important thing is to keep the players happy. Playing in Grade One and getting well-beaten would only turn players off. It’s easier to keep lads happy when they’re winning an odd thing here and there.

“If you look at how we’ve brought players through, it’s generally two or three players a year. Sometimes other teams have a crop of seven or eight coming through at once and it’s very hard to keep lads happy in that situation, and sometimes they end up losing players.

“Our attitude in Trillick is that everyone goes to underage, and they play and play and they don’t stop with a big emphasis on enjoyment and skills.”

Asked if it was blindingly obvious if Seanie O’Donnell and a swathe of others were stars of the future, Garrity said: “You do see it in them. We had that double-winning minor team captained by Liam Gray and Mickey Gallagher, we got a great batch out of that one. I remember seeing Liam at U14 and his attitude is just fantastic.

“Mickey’s such a worker, and they all had brilliant skills.

“Seanie was a very young cub at the time, he must’ve been still playing U14 level and he was already playing minor.

“Our Simon, Peter McCaughey, Daniel Donnelly, Daley Tunney, and Ciarán Daly were on that team as well.”

You also need the right people on the sideline. Garrity, who played on the Trillick team adorned by the late Jody Gormley, says that Trillick have been blessed in that respect.

“Another factor is that the management has been really good all through the years.

“We had Nigel Seaney, Jody, Richard Thornton, and there’s always three or four Trillick men in with them, like Eunan McAnespie and Stephen Campbell – he’s been a big underage coach in the club and is in with the senior management this year, and he’s extremely knowledgeable about football.”

“There’s Peter McGinnity as well, and Trillick’s almost become a second home for him.

“When he first came in, he said “I’ve been watching Trillick this last number of years, and you’re conceding too many goals”, and that’s what he’s stopped. He loves Stephen O’Donnell – he thinks he’s the best man for making blocks!

“If you remember the 2023 final against Errigal, the amount of blocks in that final was amazing.”

So here we are. Trillick stands on the cusp of what would be a 10th ever Senior Championship title and a fourth since 2015. It’s been a storied decade for the club, but there’s not even a hint that they’re coming to an end of a cycle, and that’s a testament to the vision and drive of dedicated club people at every level. Indeed, adds Garrity, missing out on county honours is now seen as an underachievement, and that just about says it all.

“Since 2015, it’s got to the stage that Trillick’s in bad humour if they don’t win the championship.

“Simon and James went away travelling a few years back – James went to Boston and then Simon headed off the following year, in 2023.

“He was really angry that he missed the championship, though he came back and played a role in their Division One title win – I remember he scored a goal against Killyclogher in the semi-final.

“There’s that expectation of success, but the nice thing from my perspective, is that when you head up the town to go to the shop, all the lads stop and chat, even those who didn’t end up coming through to the senior team.

“That makes it all worth it from my perspective – every single one of them is a grounded fella and that’s a very nice thing.”