Mattie hopes for another red-letter day

By Niall Gartland

SUNDAY represents a sixth Tyrone Senior Championship final appearance for Mattie Donnelly.

The 2015 final is regularly cited as the start of the journey for this Trillick team – that momentous October day against Killyclogher where they once again got their hands on the O’Neill Cup after a 19-year wait.

When interviewed after the game, team captain Donnelly explained with passion and fervour that they were following in the footsteps of giants – that celebrated Trillick team that won five senior titles between 1974 and 1986. He said that “every morning you go down the stairs since you were able to grasp the concept of football, you were reminded of those great teams, and those stories probably gave us ambitions and our own dreams. Since we were able to draw up dreams in our head, those dreams have been about winning O’Neill Cups with Trillick”.

The new generation of Trillick stars didn’t stop there. They’ve added two more O’Neill Cups to the collection, though there have been a couple of near-misses, including last year’s defeat to Érrigal Ciaran. Three finals victories, two final defeats, basically. Sunday’s final against Loughmacrory is a chance to push their record further into the black, and Donnelly says the experience of parading around the Healy Park perimeter amid the noise and colour never gets old.

“It’s unreal to look forward to, walking behind the band on county final day. It’s a special day for clubs in Tyrone – a hard-earned day, a really hard-earned day, and we’re definitely looking forward to it.

“Some of us have won three and lost two so it’s a mixed bag and we don’t want to even the ledger at this stage. But no, they’re special days and we’ll be going out to give a good account of ourselves. We know the hurt from last year’s final, and those days you lose county finals do stick with you, but right now we’re thinking of the 2025 final and we’ll be ready to bring the best version of ourselves to see if we’re good enough.”

There was a lot to unpack from their 1-13 to 1-11 victory over Érrigal Ciaran in the semi-finals, a ferociously contested tussle that swung this way and that over the course of an hour. There were setbacks – the concession of a sensational goal where Darragh and Ruairi Canavan combined forces, the black card to Michael Gallagher, but Trillick found a way.

“We’ve so much respect for Érrigal. They’re always really hard-fought close games, but played in the right spirit. They’re from a similar cloth to ourselves, they love football and invest a lot into it. They’ve given their club serious days out of the last few years.

“We knew it was going to be a serious encounter and we both left a fair bit on the table in terms of converting scores. You have to appreciate their goal, I said to the boys at half-time – ‘what can you do, that’s serious players doing their thing’. We stuck in there and kept plugging away. Then when we went down to 14 men it would have been handy to maybe feel sorry for ourselves but we don’t do that, and we got our reward I suppose in that respect.”

The Trillick players have spoken in interviews over the course of this championship campaign about the memory of their late manager Jody Gormley, and the light he continues to shine on this team. Donnelly says they “bring the whole of Trillick” to the heat of battle, and he also has warm words for the new addition on the sideline, Richard Thornton.

“We have been fairly open (about Jody) – it’s a brave thing to do, I suppose, leaning on him and chatting about him, but at the same time we’ve approached this championship the way we always do. We bring the whole of Trillick with us, whoever’s here, whoever’s looking over us, we try to bring them onto the pitch with us.

“We’re so lucky in Trillick to have the quality of people around us. We maintained the management team from last year with Jody, and we’ve brought Richie in. Peter (McGinnity) is still on board and he’s been such a good addition, we’ve loved having him about.

“We’re clannish to a degree in terms of who we bring into the group, and we knew we were letting in a quality person in Richie. We’re lucky to get a person at that level in, and he’s brought so much to it, though as a group, we’re just back to where we were last year so now we want to see if we can go one better.”