Young Edendork St Malachy's members celebrate Tyrone's Allianz Football League Division One win over Kerry on Sunday with club players Darren McCurry, Niall Morgan and Conn Kilpatrick.
By Michael Devlin
Darren McCurry came up the steps to Edendork’s Des Fox Pavilion on Sunday afternoon, and he was grinning from ear to ear.
Clutching the Man of the Match award under his arm, cheers and applause were coming in from left, right and above. He’d have come off that pitch and up those steps maybe a thousand times in his life, but never before like this.
McCurry had just put on a point-scoring exhibition on his home patch as the Red Hands forged out a narrow Allianz Football League win over Kerry on what was a remarkable day in east Tyrone.
A few thousand spectators braved the miserable conditions, and relocation of the fixture due to a water-logged Healy Park, to catch a glimpse of David Clifford and the Kerry stars in the flesh.
Cathal McShane’s much-feted return to the Tyrone team after his brief flirtation with Australian Rules football was another prominent plot-line.
It was McCurry though, and his club St Malachy’s, who deservedly owned the limelight by the end of it all.
“It’s been an unbelievable day, and a day that I’ll never forget as an Edendork man,” beamed the 26-year-old. “To have a match here, with Conn [Kilpatrick] and Niall [Morgan], boys that I’ve been playing with since I was 10 or 11, it’s a great day for us.”
McCurry scored six points for Tyrone on Sunday.
McCurry’s knowledge of the goalposts he was aiming at on Sunday could be described as photographic. His house is within sight just across the road from the pitch, and every week he would routinely load his work van with 10 or 12 of his own O’Neill’s footballs and spend a few hours at a time honing his shooting skills at the field.
That practice came into effect on Sunday in fine fashion. He kicked 0-6 in swirling conditions, including three frees, a mark, and two points from play off both his left and right side.
His majestic sideline score with his team defending their narrow lead late in the game was the pick of the lot though, and would have had the approval of an onlooking Maurice Fitzgerald in the Kerry dugout.
“Darren, as a child on this pitch, I can remember him at Under-10 and Under-12 kicking those same points, obviously from closer distances!” said Cathal Mallon, Edendork’s club chairman.
“But it just goes to show you how he has matured and developed over the years, and that’s just par for the course for Darren. It just doesn’t come easily, that is years and years of practice.”
Páirc Arthur Mallon, Edendork.
McCurry was asked to put a number on the number of shots taken on the field after the game. “In my life? Probably in the hundreds of thousands I’d say!”
“I’ve been up here all my life, my home house is just across the road there, so I’ve been coming up since I was no height.
“I know every blade of grass here, I’ve covered every blade of grass here and shot from everywhere, so if you can’t play well on your home patch you may forget about it
“I loved it, you have to lap it up, it mightn’t last forever! I definitely know that," he said about the adulation coming up the steps. "These are the good days, but it’s still only two points, and tomorrow we will be back on the training field recovering and working hard again.”
McCurry’s scoring tally was integral to Tyrone’s 0-14 to 0-13 win, as was that of fellow club man Niall Morgan, who lofted over four splendid frees off the ground in the challenging winds to help steer his team to victory.
“The arrangement is Niall hits the long ones, I kind of hit the ones a bit closer to goal. You see Niall’s points in the first half against the breeze, they were unbelievable. I couldn’t kick it that far!
“We have a great understanding there, especially playing club together, we have a great relationship when it comes to free kicks. You can see how good he is when he is on his day, he’s unbelievable.”
Tyrone goalkeeper Niall Morgan in action against Kerry.
Morgan was also instrumental in his own goals too, keeping out a Paul Geaney goal effort in the first half when Tyrone were struggling to stay in touch of determined visitors Kerry.
Conn Kilpatrick too, lining out at midfield in just his second ever competitive inter-county game, made it a memorable day for Edendork on the field as well as off it.
Storm Ciara put paid to the original venue of Omagh that morning, and so the fixture was moved thirty miles east to Páirc Arthur Mallon, a venue virtually unknown to those outside of Tyrone football.
A huge task was at hand, but the club rolled up their sleeves and were hard at work from 8am on Sunday morning to get everything in place for the high-profile game.
“It is history in the making here, Tyrone beating Kerry in Edendork, three of our own club men starring on the team,” said a proud Cathal Mallon as he wheeled a pitch line-marker into the club’s shed after the match.
“The second half performance was absolutely fantastic and to cap it all, Darren ‘Dazzler’ McCurry gets the Man of The Match. We are absolutely thrilled.
“We were put on standby last night and that was confirmed early this morning. Our grounds committee and wider club members all got into gear, so many people were involved, so it was a tremendous team effort from our club.”
Groundsmen tend to the pitch prior to Sunday's game.
That effort was there back in late 2008, when the previous clubhouse was burned to the ground in an arson attack by a loyalist paramilitary group.
The current pavilion was rebuilt from the ashes, bigger and better, and all from a massive homegrown fundraising drive that saw the club eventually clear the debt three years ago.
“We have so many volunteers, so many who have given their time here from youth coaches, parents who have all weighed in, ladies who have been making tea and sandwiches," said Mallon.
“We are delighted to be able to help out and give the county board an opportunity to host the game. If [Tyrone county chairperson] Michael Kerr is reading, Michael we are ready for all of Tyrone’s National League home games!”
