Rising out of the shadows

After enduring a tortured summer of suspension, Tyrone’s Gavin Devlin now stands on the brink of All-Ireland glory. Mark Gallagher reports.

GAVIN DEVLIN remembers the midge-biten evenings of his childhood, out in Frank McGuigan’s back garden which stretched onto the Ardboe GAA grounds. There he and the owner’s son Brian would pretend to be Peter Canavan for an hour or two.

They used McGuigan’s house because as Devlin recalls now, “it had the biggest garden in Ardboe. It was the only one we could go to and have a proper game.”