Omagh mentors ready for tough test

FORMER Tyrone stars Ciaran McBride and Noel Donnelly are to pit their wits against ex-Kerry great John O’Keefe at Croke Park on Sunday.

The Red Hand pair are joint managers of the Omagh CBS team that faces Tralee CBS in the Hogan Cup final, with O’Keefe a member of the Kingdom side’s coaching team.

McBride believes that tradition can be a big factor in favour of the Munster champions. “You expect that from any team coming from that part of the world. John O’Keefe is part of their management set-up, and they’re going to have that degree of experience and pedigree. I suppose all Kerry teams are the same.

“When you get to an All-Ireland final, the team you’re playing is going to be a well-drilled, well organised, skilful outfit.”

The Omagh management pair are in no doubt that, while their team has diced with defeat on a number of occasions, there’s more to be learned from a close-fought battle than from a runaway win.

“If you’re being truthful about it, every manager wants to win easy, but you learn a lot more from competitive, tough games than what you would from an easy game, because your team hasn’t been tested.”

The Omagh squad travelled to Dublin on Monday to get a brief run-out on the Croke Park pitch, an exercise that was, in McBride’s opinion, an important part of the build-up.

“It was fantastic. You only get 20 minutes on the pitch, but we had planned to go down and go through the routine for the match.

“It’s mainly a case of removing this occasion thing, where you land down on the day, and you’re over-awed by the surroundings, so we want to familiarise ourselves with the place and make things normal.

“At the end of the day, the more normal the boys feel going down to Dublin next Sunday, the better it will be for them.”

Both Christian Brothers schools are looking to win their first Hogan Cup title. In fact it will the first appearance in the final for Omagh CBS and Tralee CBS, with Omagh hoping to emulate the feat of Abbey CBS (Down) who won the Hogan Cup in a thriller against St. Pat’s (Navan) last year.

Added Donnelly: “There is a great tradition of Gaelic football in the school, and we have produced some of the best players ever to wear the county jersey at senior level. Players like Pascal McConnell, Michael McGee, Dermot Carlin, David Harte, Joseph McMahon and Stephen O’Neill have passed through here and we are extremely proud of what they have gone on to achieve with Tyrone.”

Donnelly admits to not knowing anything about Sunday’s opponents, but that’s the way he wants it.

“You can go overboard completely about the opposition. You can view videos of their games, or have them watched and depending on what you’ve seen, there would be a tendency to change your own game plan to counter the opposition and that could be fatal.

“For that reason we tend not to pay any particular attention to the opposition preferring instead to concentrate on our own team and ensuring everything is right for the big day.

“The beauty of going to the Hogan Cup final against the backdrop of not having seen your opponents is that teams will have self-belief and have a right go at each other and you tend to end up with an open and great game of football. I would expect that to be the case on Sunday.

“Croke Park is a huge pitch, but we have a strong work ethic. We are very much an attack-minded team and what opens up defences, as I see it, is quality kick passing into the open spaces. If we can get a good supply of ball into our forwards, we have the players who can score”.