BALLYBAY’S last experience of the Ulster Club Championship was short and not particularly sweet. They drew a Kilcoo side that was at the beginning of its ongoing era of dominance in Down and ended up losing 0-12 to 0-7.
After watching on from the sidelines for the last decade, the Pearse Brothers are back in the provincial mix once again and this time they’re up against Armagh champions Crossmaglen whose reputation as unquestioned Ulster heavyweights precedes them.
Cross are back in provincial competition for the first time since 2019 and, like Ballybay, a number of their players will be experiencing the cut and thrust of the Ulster Championship for the first time.
Ballybay skipper Eoin McKearney is one of his club’s Ulster rookies and, with his first Monaghan title in the locker, does he feel his club is in ‘bonus territory’ now?
“At the start of the year it’s the Monaghan championship we want to win,” said wing-back McKearney.
“Obviously you can’t do anything else without that and we hadn’t won the county championship in 10 years so winning it was priority number one but we have it now, the medal is got so we’ve parked that. I wouldn’t say we’re in bonus territory because we’re not just here representing our club, we’re representing our county now and we have to represent it as well as we can.”
With 11 Ulster titles and six All-Ireland crowns, Crossmaglen set the benchmark for success in club football and the starting point for Ballybay at the Athletic Grounds on Saturday night will be setting the Rangers’ reputation to one side and playing the preliminary round clash on its merits.
“Everyone knows the history behind Crossmaglen,” said McKearney.
“They are one of the teams that have been up there in Ulster and Ireland for God knows how many years. But you are never going to get an easy game in Ulster, you look at all the teams involved and every one of them is strong no matter what county they come from.
“So we’re going to have to win big games no matter who we’re playing against and it’s a great opportunity for us.”
McKearney may not have played in Ulster before but, in the likes of the Wylie brothers Ryan and Drew, Paul Finlay, Dessie Ward, Christopher McGuinness and others, Ballybay have a wealth of club and county experience in the squad.
Ward (1-3) and Christopher McGuinness (0-4) were the leading scorers in the county final and McKearney, Shane McGuinness, Thomas Kerr and the evergreen Finlay all chipped in with vital scores and Ballybay, who led by eight points at one stage, got over the line by three.
“We had a good run at it this year,” said McKearney.
“You have to have a certain degree of confidence every year but we didn’t have the best start to the league but we had a few lads coming back from injury and we knew we had lads coming up who we hadn’t had in previous years.
“We were all determined to get to the right level and the right kind of experience was gathered between everybody and we knew that if we put all that together we could have a fairly good go at it. “We had a couple of good wins at the start of the championship in the group stage – we beat Scotstown in the first match – and we ended up getting over the line against them in the final.”
