FERMANAGH’S last team standing in Ulster Club competition is the Irvinestown minors and this Sunday (12.30pm) they travel to the Coláiste Feirste in West Belfast for their quarter-final meeting with Armagh champions, Clann Éireann.
It’s familiar territory for the St Molaise minors but the tournament, run by the St Paul’s GAC in Belfast, hasn’t been very fruitful for them in recent years.
Last year they lost to beaten Ulster finalists Cavan Gaels in the opener and in 2022 they lost to finalists Four Master from Donegal.
Irvinestown manager, Shane McDermott knows it’s a massive challenge;
“We’ve found the step up the last number of years to be of a high standard in the St Paul’s Tournament and it is going to be a step,” he anticaptes, ahead of this weekend.
“The lads, with Eugene (Swift), have been working hard and that’s really the mentality; we’re going up there to really just give it a go.
“We’re not putting any massive pressure on it but we feel we’ve a good enough team.”
Irvinestown minors won a fourth Fermanagh Championship in a row when they defeated Derrygonnelly in the final at the start of November. Now they’ll hope to go one step further and bring the learnings of years gone by to the Belfast venue this Sunday.
“We’ve shown in the last two years that we’re well able to compete, we just hope that we can get over the line on this one.
“We’re really just going to give it a lash. It’s another step and another challenge for us and in fairness to the lads they have knuckled down over the last two or three weeks.”
A couple of Clann Éireann’s main attacking threats come in the form of the McCooe twins Dylan and James who starred for St Ronan’s Lurgan last weekend in their MacRory Cup victory over St Michael’s but McDermott, Swift and Co. will be preparing for threats from all over the park.
The Irvinestown management boasts a clean bill of health for this weekend which is very welcome after being without key man Oisin Swift last year and Reece Love the previous year.
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