THREE OF THE BEST - Dom Corrigan

Wednesday, March 17, 1999 - MacRory Cup Final

St. Michael’s 4-11 St. Colman’s 0-12

I BELIEVE that this was probably one of the most complete performances ever produced in a MacRory Cup final, and it was the start of a wonderful few years for St. Michael’s in the competition as we became one of the big powers in schools’ football.
A couple of years after the game, I was in Dublin and I got talking to a man about that performance, and he told me that quite a bit of that game was analysed at an All-Ireland coaching conference.
They highlighted the quality of the switching in the play, the score taking, and the movement.
That tells you where that game was at – the quality of the football, the swashbuckling style of play with boys playing with flair, and lads expressing themselves – the way we played was a joy to behold.
I never give a performance ten out of ten but, by God, that was a nine out of ten performance, for sure.

READ MORE: THREE OF THE BEST - Ryan McCluskey

We knew that we had a good team that year but the favourites, and justifiably so, were St. Colman’s, Newry who had won the Hogan Cup the year before.
They had eight players back from that team, including Liam Doyle who was a standout player in Ulster Schools’ at that stage.

Immense
The spine of our team, though, was immense that year. 
We had Dermot McKeogh in goals, Barry Owens at full back, Niall Keenan at six, Marty McGrath and Ciaran Boyle at midfield, Shane McCabe at centre half-forward and Colm Bradley at 14 ...
Here I am, 20 years later able to rhyme off the names and positions of those boys, and I can still see the quality football that they were producing.
This was a massive day for both St. Michael’s and Fermanagh football, as prior to the MacRory Cup final, our Corn na nOg side produced a brilliant turnaround second-half to defeat a fancied St. Pat’s Armagh team and we just followed on from that.
Colm Bradley produced one of the great individual displays in a final as he scored 2-04; people talk about James McCartan scoring 3-03 in a final – well, Bradley’s performance was up there with that.
And we had scores coming from all over the field; our Captain and corner back Ciaran Smith scored a goal that day that a corner forward would have been proud of, and half-backs Keenan and Ferghal Donnelly landed points. 
Midfielders McGrath and Boyle both kicked wonderful points from distance, too, and some of the moves for scores were fantastic.
I just thought that this win planted a massive seed in terms of Fermanagh football.
The likes of McGrath, Owens and Bradley showed Fermanagh people that they could match and better the best around, and I believe that this was a significant moment in turning Fermanagh around at Senior level in the years that followed.

Wednesday, March 8, 2000 - MacRory Cup Semi-Final Replay

St. Michael’s 2-13 Abbey CBS 0-08 (aet)

WE HAD drawn with the Abbey in a cracking game at a very wet Clones on the Saturday, when we had shown great steel to come with a late rally to earn a second bite at the cherry.
However, the replay was something else – it was an epic battle that needed extra time to separate the sides.
If the 1999 final stood out for the flair and quality, this game in 2000 stood out for me for the sheer grit, will to win, refusal to accept defeat and belief.
That is what marked out those men as something special.
I remember the replay was on a Wednesday afternoon in Omagh, and it was an old-style colleges’ game, and both schools had a massive crowd with them.
I remember our school was emptied out for it, and you had parents there and people had left work early to get to the game.
There was a wonderful atmosphere, and it was a great battle.
Abbey had a really good team and had about four All Stars on their team, whereas we had none.
They had Ronan Sexton, Ronan Murtagh and Michael Walsh, who was the dream player at that time, but we moved Barry Owens out from full-back to centre half-back for that one, and he never gave Walsh a sniff of it.
Owens was a special player and went on to show it at the highest level with Fermanagh.
We led by one at half time, and then there was – as Michael O’Hehir would say – a schmozzle.
Shane McCabe and Darran ‘Toots’ Lunny got pushed and jostled going into the tunnel by some Abbey players, and they responded in kind, and the referee had to speak to both teams at half time!
Funnily enough, I walked Culcaigh Mountain a couple of days ago with Toots, and we were reminiscing about that.
I would also meet John Rafferty from time to time, who was in charge of the Abbey back then, and we still talk about that, and John would reckon that the half-time incident was significant.
It did though need an Owens point late on to send the game into extra time, but in extra time we were brilliant – we blitzed them to pull away, and some of the unsung heroes such as Karlo Rooney, Barry Rice and Tony Martin were excellent for us, and the thing that stuck out for me was the character of the side.
That was actually our third meeting with the Abbey that year; they had beaten us in the league earlier in the year, and in some ways it reminds me of the epic Meath v Dublin four-game saga.
I think that took so much out of Meath that they didn’t win the All-Ireland, and from our point of view, those games took so much out of us and we lost to an Armagh side with Ronan Clarke and Sean Cavanagh in the final, and stopped us making it back-to-back.
We stopped Armagh going back-to-back the following year, mind you, by beating them in a gripping semi-final in Omagh.
Paul Gunn never gave Ronan Clarke a kick of it that day in a masterful display at full-back, I remember.

Monday, March 18, 2002 - MacRory Cup Final

St. Michael’s 1-12 Omagh CBS 1-05

I FELT there was a lot of pressure on coming into this game.

The back-story to it is that the year before we had met Omagh in the final which had finished in a draw, we had come from five points down midway through the second half to draw it and set up a replay. 
However, that replay just never happened, due to the Foot and Mouth outbreak, and the sides shared the cup.
Fast-forward then 12 months and both Omagh and ourselves were back in the final, and because both of the sides were pretty young the year before, a lot of the same players were involved again in 2002. 
The pressure, I suppose, came from the boys wanting to do it for the lads who didn’t get the chance to finish the job from the year before, and it was built as a two-for-one, so to speak.
The thing that maybe stood out on this day was the maturity of the performance – that extra maturity that the boys got from ’01, they carried it through. 
There was great expectation now in St. Michael’s; we expected to go there, produce a performance and win – and we did just that which was so pleasing. 
There was an unshakable belief that nothing was going to stop us that day.
This was a hard-working side but it was also one with a lot of quality as well.
Ryan Keenan (inset)captained the side; you had James Sherry, who scored three points from midfield; you had Shaun Doherty. and you had one of the great marksmen of colleges football of that era, or indeed many an era, in Ciaran O’Reilly.
Ciaran top-scored in MacRory Cup football in 2001 and 2002, which was an unbelievable achievement, and in the final the quality of his kicking and his passing was superb.

Brilliant forward
He was one of the brilliant forwards, and it was unfortunate that he got handicapped with injuries so much after that, because he could have been a real stand-out forward for Fermanagh, going forward. 
We also had Prionsias O’Kane from Trillick, Chrissie Breen in goals, Paul Johnston, Michael Cunningham and Paul Ward.
Then, of course, we had Shane O’Brien, who was lost recently in a tragic accident.

Very sad news
Shane is the first of that generation to have passed away, and it was very sad news to have received at the end of last year.
Of the game itself, it was a very controlled display; we led 0-07 to 0-01 after a strong first half, and we never looked like losing it in the second half, with Ciaran O’Reilly bagging the goal.
The win for us that day really rubber-stamped us as a huge force in Ulster Colleges’ football.
It was our fourth final in four years and we were now up there and feared nobody.