WITH a seventh Monaghan title safely in the bag, Scotstown can now set their sights on the Ulster crown that has eluded them.
The An Bhoth club have come tantalisingly close before: Crossmaglen denied them in the 2015 provincial final and in 2018 Donegal’s Gaoth Dobhair won the Seamus McFerran Cup decider by a single point.
This year Scotstown intend to go a step further but first Colin McAree’s men have a league semi-final (and they’ll hope a final) to occupy their minds.
“The league is good prep for the Ulster club and we’ll be trying to get another trophy in the bag,” said vastly-experienced goalkeeper Rory Beggan.
“Experience could be beneficial there as well. We got to two finals and we said we probably left it behind us. So we’ll focus on the first round against whoever comes out of the Derry v Donegal game.”
Scotstown will face the winners of the St Eunan’s (Donegal) versus Glen (Derry) preliminary round fixture and Beggan says his team will need to improve on what they produced in Sunday’s county final against near neighbours Truagh Gaels.
Scotstown won by six points at the finish but the game was in the balance until Conor McCarthy’s injury-time goal added gloss to the scoreline.
“We made hard work of it but we’re delighted to get it – especially against our local rivals,” said Beggan.
“We expected nothing less from Truagh. We had two wins over them earlier in the year back-to-back but we knew the final wasn’t going to be like that and we were expecting what we got today. The scoreline probably flatters us a wee bit, we pulled away near the end and we’re just delighted to get over the line.
“When you’re 4-0 down it’s hard to know what way it’s going to swing but I knew that with the group of players we have and the experience we have that we were going to get it back and we did that.”
Beggan’s importance to the Scotstown effort cannot be overstated. On top of his traditional goalkeeping duties he is of course the go-to man for long range frees and 45s and, after his side established a three-point lead, he pushed out the field to provide an extra man and help them keep control of the ball.
However, he could have been left red-faced toward the end when a stray pass gave Gary Mohan a sniff of goal but, with Beggan scrambling to get back between his posts, the Truagh forward’s effort drifted just wide.
“That’s the last thing we needed!” he admitted.
“We were three points up at that stage and it would have been an absolute killer if they had got that goal. With all the fans they have here it would have put us on the back foot so, lucky enough, we got a bounce of the ball and it went wide. We’ll not worry about it now!”
Beggan is one of a host of players including the likes of Darren and Kieran Hughes, Shane Carey, Conor McCarthy, Damian McArdle and Donal Morgan with massive reserves of big-game experience. That know-how and quality meant that Scotstown were able to recover from going four points down early in Sunday’s final to win by six.
“A lot of teams might panic when they go 4-0 down but we just knew that it was a blip, that we’d get over it and that we’d get to the water break and reset,” said Beggan.
“We did that and we went in at half-time seven-all and we thought we were doing well to be level at that stage.
“We wanted to go out and stamp our authority on the game in the second half and it was nip-and-tuck but I knew the quality would show and the experience.”
