Lessons learned from the wisdom of old hands have stood Trillick well in the defence of their Tyrone SFC title, according to wing back Seanie O’Donnell.
When a semi-final clash with Dungannon hung in the balance, leaders inspired, and experienced figures such as the Donnelly brothers, Mattie and Richie, and the Brennans, Rory and Lee, rallied the troops.
The champions stamped their authority on a semi-final that turned dramatically in their favour in the final quarter, as they seized control to power to a 0-17 to 0-7 success, setting up a repeat of last year’s decider against Errigal Ciaran.
“It’s a plus, it definitely is, and it’s up to the rest of us boys to take whatever on board that they say in training, and learn as much as we can from them, and we are doing that,” said O’Donnell.
“It’s just about pushing on and taking that information on from those boys. They have been there and done it and they know what it takes.
“But we still have to put in the hard yards and get a result at the end of the day, and we did that.”
Trillick are where they want to be, back in another county final, but history does not bode well for the prospects of winning a second successive title.
The Tyrone title, fiercely contested year after year, has not been successfully defended since 2005, when Carrickmore completed back to back triumphs.
“You hear about that quite a lot, but it’s another game, and we have a game now to go out and win it.
“We’ll not focus too much on that, we’ll just take it one game at a time and see where it takes us.
“Any final you’re in, it’s always a pleasure to be there.
“It’s another game and we’ll prepare for it and look forward to it. It will be a good build-up, training will be good.”
The defending champions led by just a point after playing with the wind in their backs in the first half at O’Neills Healy Park, Dungannon keeping in touch with breakaway scores.
But there was no sense of panic in the Trilick dressing room as they detailed the areas where they felt they could gain an edge.
“We were creating chances and didn’t take them all, but if we’re in the game at half-time, it’s always a good thing, and we were.
“We just knew that against the wind in the second half we had to up out workrate, and the boys did.
“We’re just glad that we did that, and we got that result.
“It was about hard work. We knew we had to step it up, we weren’t good enough in the first half, and in fairness to the boys the workrate increased, and we got a good result.
“The game was let go, so we knew what we had to do, tackle hard and play fair, and boys did that in the second half.”
The physical battle turned in Trillick’s favour in those closing stages, their tackling crisp, fair and decisive as they wore down their opponents.
But it was the quality of Dungannon’s tackling that set the tone for the intensity that fuelled the champions’ late surge.
“In fairness to Dungannon, their tackling was ferocious as well. We knew we had to match that and we did.
“That’s where the ferocious tackling came out of, they set the standard and we just had to match it and push on from there, take our scores and take the scores that we were missing in the first half.”