Errigal Ciaran hope it’s third-time lucky when they take on Kerry and Munster champions Dr Crokes in Sunday’s All-Ireland semi-final.
They are the only club from Tyrone to have won the Ulster title but on both those occasions they fell at the penultimate hurdle against Nemo Rangers in both 1993 and 2002. Former Tyrone star and current Errigal Ciaran manager Enda McGinley played in that latter All-Ireland semi-final and it’s a defeat that still haunts him.
“We’ve lost two and as I said to the boys, the loss in 2002 was easily the worst loss of my career,” he said.
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“I was only 21 and I knew sitting outside the ground, as sick as I was, I knew how unlikely it was that you would ever get all the way back again and so it passed, I never got close to it again.
“They are exceptionally precious things, particularly coming out of the Tyrone championship, to try and navigate that first.
“The following year we’re sitting in a different mindset and it’s a long way back, so we have to make the very most of it when we’re there.”
McGinley is well aware of the challenge as the Munster kingpins have quality throughout their ranks not just their county players.
“The Munster teams and Kerry teams know Dr Crokes much better than we do,” he said.
“You’ll always know the named players, the star names, they’re easy enough to identify because their names are up in lights.
“But it’s the second level within a club side that, particularly at this level, they’re fantastic footballers, and it’s those players that can quite often dictate and control a game.
“Their opponents within Kerry and Munster, because they know them so well, those players will be well-identified and shut down.
“So when you’re looking at videos, two, three, four videos of games, those players may not be prominent because the opposition have put so much effort to shut them down or maybe the opposition do certain things on kick outs and know not to do a different thing because that would be Crokes’ Plan A, and if they get to play their Plan A, they could hammer you out the gate.
“Most teams will try to force them to Plan B. When we look at videos, they’re winning games by their Plan B so it’s very easy for us to focus on stopping their Plan B, and potentially unleash their Plan A on us!
“It is trying to get an inside line, trying to move away from just the obvious names and see the other names that make them tick. That’s the very difficult thing. But isn’t it a really lovely challenge and privilege to have.
“I’ve been very lucky this last while, there’s plenty of people in Errigal who have plenty of knowledge on teams in Ulster and that’s been a massive help to me all along in terms of the Ulster run. Crokes pose a different challenge geographically, they’re a long way away, we’re struggling for any inside lines.
“The video tapes will be analysed, we’ll try to get a few closer sources to try and add a bit of colour into what we’re seeing on the video. But at the same time, you still haven’t seen your players up against them.
“Certain people you might think match up on paper but then when you get into play them, suddenly they don’t match up and vice-versa.”
McGinley added: “You know that experience coming up through underage ranks within your own county, a lot of those wee match ups, and the players all know each other, you know who matches up well and who doesn’t.
“No matter what you learn, of either the people surrounding Kerry football or from the videos, the first 10-15 minutes of this game is going to be such a learning curve, to try to identify what you’ve got right, what you’ve got wrong, and trying to make the switches and changes to try and put yourself in the best position to push on and make something of it.”
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