Sixteen teams began their quest for All Ireland Junior Cup glory in October and on Saturday, Enniskillen and Clogher Valley were the last two standing, as they booked their place in the showpiece decider at the end of the month.
It’s a first-ever final appearance for Enniskillen and Skins coach Stephen Welsh says ‘it’s massive’ for the club.
“It’s obviously new territory to us, ”he said. “We’ve won the Towns’ Cup and Junior Cup in the last number of years and it was great to get to all them finals but the All-Ireland is a wee bit bigger again. It’s something we haven’t won before and I know there’s a couple of boys in the team, that was always a goal, to try and win it.”
The last silverware that graced Mullaghmeen was three years ago when they won the Ulster Junior Cup by beating Armagh. Clogher doesn’t need to look too far back for their last success, having won the Ulster Junior and All Ireland competitions only last year.
Valley will be raging hot favourites. They have been one of the form teams this season, sitting second in the league with a game in hand of Ballyclare, and Welsh knows they will be up against it;
“They are favourites, we are underdogs, but sport has a funny way of working.
“When me and Stevie (Bothwell) took over (at Enniskillen and Clogher), he was an underdog and we were winning things and all of a sudden they flipped it around and made a great job of their club” acknowledged Welsh.
“There’s massive rivalry but there’s massive respect (for Clogher).
“We both want to win and fair play to them, they’ve set the stall out with a fantastic couple of years but some of the boys might just want to knock them off the pedestal.”
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