Darach McGonigle has won an All-Ireland minor medal with Derry but the Dungiven teenager believes that he is going to be part of just as big an occasion on Sunday when he lines out for St Patrick’s, Maghera in the Danske Bank MacRory Cup final against Abbey Vocational School.
“It will probably be the biggest game of my career because I have been in that school for seven years and the only thing that I won was in first year,” remarked McGonigle.
“We won nothing else coming up through the ranks and now that this is my final year it’s going to be a very big game especially alongside all my friends.”
It’s a clash between a school with bucketloads of tradition against first-time finalists and McGonigle acknowledges that not too many would have forecast that pairing before a ball was kicked in this season’s competition.
“It’s two teams that you wouldn’t have thought would make the final at the start of the year,” he said.
“We produced a superb performance the first day to beat Enniskillen but after that they were all tight games with only a point or two between us and our opponents in each game.
“We just have that factor, I don’t know what it is, but when it comes down to a dogfight we seem to come out on top, I don’t know if it’s skill or our hard work.
“I think our momentum really kicked off against the Convent in the quarter-final. They were meant to be hot favourites and to get past them gave us serious momentum and I think that all the work that we did over the year got us through in the end.
“The pressure was all on Magherafelt after beating us last year but we had confidence in ourselves and I think that we prefer to be underdogs as we know that we are capable of coming out and upsetting the odds.
“We were told before we went out that it was going to go to the wire and it didn’t matter what we won by as long as we did.
“With time ticking away we knew that we had it in us to win the game and when our goal came there was only one winner after that.”
St Patrick’s, Armagh in the last four proved to be a real scrap, with Maghera coming through 0-5 to 1-0 in a contest that was played in horrible conditions.
“We had the wind in the first half and were four points up when Armagh got that goal which was a proper sucker-punch,” he said.
“I would say everyone doubted us at half-time when we were only a point in front but it was just an unbelievable defensive performance from everyone and we were then able to get that crucial point to go two ahead and we had it in us to hold on.
“We know ourselves that we will have to be on our game to win the final. Four Masters haven’t been beaten since we (Dungiven) beat them in 2023 so that shows you how good they are.
“They have a very dangerous forward line and everybody seems to be talking about them.
“Having said that I have always full faith in everyone around the panel as they are all capable of putting in a full shift and hopefully as can win it.”
