LCC Tyrone SFC final: Errigal Ciaran 0-12 Trillick 1-8
THIS was the best county final you will see in 2024.
Tyrone football remains an easy dog to kick. All you have to do is throw a past prejudice at it.
But those that actually watch it know.
It was Errigal’s day. Justly.
The last 20 minutes were the nearest thing to hurling you might ever seen on a football field.
Whether it was emotion, exhaustion or both, Darragh Canavan could hardly get his words out from the podium.
A leader of actions rather than the spoken word, his hoarse voice still filled the giddy air as the people of Errigal stood as a united sea beneath him.
He had a half-chuckle thanking Sean Hurson. It was not a forward’s night.
Hurson was hardly whistle-happy to begin with but there came a point when he decided anyone getting a free was going to have to be half-killed to get it.
Both sides could have looked at decisions he didn’t give but they were both eating out of the one tray
And as much as the coaches would have disliked it, the pace it gave to the game and the fever-pitch it led to in the stands were on a different level to anything else you’ll have seen in a county championship.
Errigal Ciaran’s only defeat in championship football in the last three years was an extra-time loss to Trillick in last year’s final.
The only game of championship football they’ve lost in the last three years was last year’s final after extra-time.
That was a game that turned off a Ciaran Daly out of nothing. History threatened to repeat itself.
Errigal had been leading by four points and looking comfortable midway through the second half when Mattie Donnelly pointed.
It came off a Daire Gallagher turnover on Darragh Canavan, the Errigal captain bundled over as he tried to collect a ball skipping off the turf at him.
Most nights that was a free but not this time. Same for any one of 100 tackles in the last quarter. The teams contented themselves with it, accepted that no-one was getting anything, and met each other right at the line.
Two minutes later, Stevie O’Donnell waited for Daly to throw the back door cut. Then he threw the dummy, Darragh McAnenly stepped out and Daly lashed the ball low through him on the line.
But fittingly, it was the championship’s top scorer and the game’s best player who won it for Errigal.
Ruairi Canavan had a great night to himself, right from the moment he threw an early dummy, cut in behind the prone would-be blocker and fired over his first of the night.
He would finish on six, half from play, including his last two, one of which was the winner.
In normal circumstances Trillick would have felt Seanie O’Donnell earned a free when he took a late hit after popping the ball across goal to nobody. But there so many of those on both sides and so much time to rectify it that it’s fair to call it inconsequential.
Errigal broke rapidly. So rapidly. From one end to the other in seconds. They got the ball to Ruairi and going away from goal, he slung the ball over his left shoulder to the delight of the young band of saffron, blue and white right in line with it.
There were 13 scoreless minutes of football after he kicked it and the whole place was spellbound. Absorbed. Engrossed.
It didn’t need a score. It was just the most incredible end-to-end spectacle in that last quarter.
Darragh Canavan kicked two in the first half, both of them under the most severe of pressure. He knows kicking it he’s gonna get hit for it but he kicks it anyway. The spatial awareness allows him to both score and avoid as much of the hit as he can to bounce back up again.
At this stage he stands on his own two feet. Still the son of, but his own man. But of all the qualities, manufactured, inherited or both, it is that bravery that has begun to really stand out.
Joe Oguz had a huge second half. Quiet in the first, he just started to get on ball, particularly in the third quarter, leading the Errigal press that helped turn their lead from one to two to three to four very quickly.
Peter Harte fought off Seanie O’Donnell’s attentions to get himself into it. Tommy Canavan’s cameo involvement was to spray a delicious diagonal ball for Odhran Robinson to throw a point not dissimilar to Ruairi Canavan’s winner.
But perhaps above all, their defence, their much-maligned defence, earned some of the winnings.
Cormac Quinn, Aidan McCrory and Ciaran Quinn had very little at times in the way of cover, dealing with a team that wanted to kick the ball and eat up those spaces. It was last-gasp at times but they stuck to it.
For a lot of the game they had no cover, an approach that Enda McGinley mulled over and decided had to be the lesser of the two evils.
“If you stand off Trillick, you allow them to dictate the entire game and it becomes a very slow, methodical, controlled game then.
“We felt our best chance was to man up.”
They had bother dealing with Mattie Donnelly, though Niall Kelly got a decent handle on it eventually, but they negated Richie, kept Rory Brennan occupied defensively.
Alongside Mattie, the other man that threatened to beat them was Liam Gray in the first half, with a display of fielding and kicking. At one stage he won a kickout from Joe Maguire, drove it down the line to his brother Ryan who pointed within about 15 seconds of it leaving the tee.
Trillick dropped deeper and packed things tighter and you felt in the first half that might come to pay off in the end.
But Errigal kept coming. The two scores in two minutes from a Ruairi Canavan free won by Peter Harte, then a Ben McDonnell point when he found rare space 25 metres out, were critical. They drew it back to 0-6 apiece with half-time coming up on them.
Darragh Canavan kicked them into the lead with the last meaningful act of the half.
Trillick are used to being pitched into battles but aren’t used to losing them.
Perhaps an indication that they felt they were losing this one at half-time was the very pointed three-quarter run down the tunnel.
The second half got stretched and chaotic that the game almost made a hero out of Peter McGaughey, who made three big turnovers for Trillick in that final quarter.
But as the floodlights flicked off to the groans of the Ballygawley faithful at 9.45pm, their smiles lit the place back up.
The back-to-back is dead and gone again, meaning Carrickmore get to hold on for two full decades waiting on someone to repeat their achievement of 2004 and 2005.
Errigal have six days at most to recover for St Eunan’s as they go out to defend once more a proud record of being the only Tyrone club ever to have won Ulster.
It’s eight days away.
“You make sure you really, really enjoy the next couple of days. They talk about controlling the controllables – the controllable is to make absolute maximum enjoyment out of the next two days. If we do that, we’ll start looking at next week then.”
MATCH STATS Trillick: J Maguire; D Donnelly, P McGaughey, D Gallagher; R Brennan; Stevie O’Donnell, Seanie O’Donnell, C Garrity; R Donnelly, L Gray; C Daly (1-0), M Donnelly (0-2), R Gray (0-2); L Brennan (0-3 frees), J Garrity (0-1)
Subs: M Gallagher for R Gray (49), D Tunney for Stevie O’Donnell (59)
Errigal Ciaran: D McAnenly; Cormac Quinn, A McCrory, Ciaran Quinn; P Óg McCartan (0-1), N Kelly, T Colhoun; B McDonnell (0-1), J Oguz; P McGirr, P Harte (0-1 free), C McGinley; D Canavan (0-2), O Robinson (0-1), R Canavan (0-6, 0-3 frees)
Subs: T Canavan for C McGinley (39), M Kavanagh for Colhoun (49), E Kelly for McCartan (56), P Traynor for McGirr (57) Referee: S Hurson (Galbally)