BY DÁIRE BONNAR
NAOMH Pádraig defender Darragh McIntyre believes that the team are ready to go to battle in what could be the club’s biggest ever game.
For a club who hadn’t been able to get out of the Junior Championship since their inception, losing two finals (2010 and 2016), October’s emphatic win over Carndonagh in the final was a monkey off the back.
But they have continued the fairytale into January and McIntyre, who is in his final year at ATU Donegal doing a Sports & Exercise course, is trying to focus on the task ahead.
“It’s mad, most of the population that have played the game in their life will never play in Croke Park so it has definitely been a dream of mine and a lot of the team.
“I’m back in college this week but it’s a big week and it might not ever happen again so we’ll want to focus, train hard and recover for it.
“This is the biggest game the club have had and probably could ever have and there are both nerves and excitement but sometimes that’s good so hopefully we’ll be alright.”
Success has been slowly coming at underage level and there were hopes of silverware coming to the Ture club, but the heights reached this year have surpassed even their own high expectations within the group.
“We could tell at a young age that if these boys stuck together that we could definitely push on so it’s good now that the results are showing.
“The aim was win the county and stay in the league and we sort of surprised ourselves in the league.
“We seemed to sort of go under the radar in the championship, a lot of talk was on Carn and Convoy and we had an eye on Carn especially because they had some good results but when you’re playing at that higher standard it definitely helped us to get over the line.
“We have a very good management team and they really trust us and we really trust them so that’s half the battle and they’ve got everything spot on so far this year.”
Obstacles are always expected to be encountered during a long season even with success, but nothing came harder for the club when they lost their teammate Evan Craig.
The 24 year-old sadly passed in September following a battle with cancer and the community mourned a huge character.
But the club have had an incredible bit of togetherness and using the sadness as motivation to kick on, which they will be hoping to finish on Saturday with a win.
“It has been tough, Evan was a few years older but he’s always still with us on this journey, he’s in the changing room with us every game and the number 13 jersey is there.
“But we’re doing well and everyone has stayed together in the parish.
“It could easily have affected us but it’s added a lot of motivation. Everything we do is for us but it’s also for him and we want to get that All-Ireland medal for ourselves and him.”
