AIB Ulster Club Junior Football Championship final: St Mary’s, Faughanvale (Derry) v St Mary’s, Rockcorry (Monaghan)
(Sunday, Athletic Grounds, 1.30pm)
MENTAL toughness can be measured in how a team reacts to adversity. Ulster Club JFC finalists Faughanvale and Rockcorry have already shown this season that they are more than capable of responding to disappointment.
Both sides were relegated from the intermediate grade last season. Faughanvale dropping a tier was viewed as a major surprise while Rockcorry had to deal with back-to-back relegations after playing senior football in 2013. Both clubs could have been hampered by those setbacks but, instead, they responded in the best possible fashion and now find themselves on the brink Ulster glory.
They have taken similar paths to get to the Athletic Grounds too. Both drew their respective county finals and won their replays by seven points. Both had narrow Ulster quarter-final wins, Rockcorry seeing off Coa by three points and the Oak Leaf outfit having a point to spare against Brackaville, and both won their provincial semi-finals by five points.
In those last-four encounters, both sides gave perhaps their best defensive performances of the season.
Joe Gray’s Faughanvale side may have given up 1-9 to Templeport, but the Cavan champions had been averaging slightly under 20 points a game until that point. County man Michael Sweeney (above) was a rock in the heart of the defence, while Odhran McKinney played the sweeper role to perfection, even getting forward to contribute two points to their 2-12 total.
Gray, who still lines out for the side, managed three points from centre half-forward, while one of his coaches Ryan King, finding fitness after a cruciate knee ligament injury, also made an impact in the full-forward line. Alongside him were livewire corner-forwards Kevin Martin and Eunan Murray, who helped themselves to 1-2 apiece.
While Faughanvale caught the eye in thwarting Templeport, Rockcorry were perhaps even more impressive in defence as they saw off a strong Glasdrumman side on a 0-11 to 0-6 scoreline.
In their 24 games before that in league and championship Glasdrumman’s lowest tally was 1-11. In 23 of those games they had managed at least one goal and they scored 65 in total.
It looked ominous for Rockcorry, but Mickey Morgan’s side simply wouldn’t them to add to that tally. Captain and full-back Niall McKeown had a tremendous battle with dangerman Connaire HarrIson, while they defended like demons across the pitch. Jamie Smith, once again in top shot-stopping from, denied Harrison from the penalty spot late on to maintain their clean sheet.
They are a side with plenty of big-game experience. Morgan wasn’t there when the side won the Monaghan Intermediate League in 2012 to facilitate that move to senior football but, thankfully for him, a lot of the players still are.
Of the 17 players that featured in that two-point win over Doohamlet three years ago, 15 remain with 12 of those starting the win against the Down champions. They will look to the likes of McKeown, former captain Keith Daly, the excellent Mark Daly and inside forwards Lorcan Smyth and Fergal McGeough to carry them onto the All-Ireland series.
Rockcorry’s appearance in the final also keeps up the extraordinary record of Farney sides in the Ulster Junior Championship. Their participation means that a Monaghan club will have featured in 11 of the 14 finals since the competition’s inception.
Those 11 appearances have featured nine different clubs with Emyvale and Corduff the only sides to have played in the final twice. Monaghan clubs have won five and lost five of their 10 finals to date.
It’s a sign of both the strength of the Monaghan Junior Championship and its competitiveness. That’s perhaps why they have tentatively been made favourites for this match as no Derry side has ever won this competition and only Ballerin (2002) and Lissan (’08) have reached this stage.
Despite that, it’s hard to escape the notion that this is a match that will go the distance. It is two good sides, full of confidence and believing that they are intermediate teams rather than junior.
Both have had their problems in recent times, but both have responded in an impressive manner. It’s the Derry team, though, that may break their county’s duck in this particular competition on Sunday, upsetting the odds in the process.
