By Niall Gartland

IT would be easy to confuse Patrician High manager Dylan McEnaney for one of the players.

Having graduated last year, McEnaney has returned to his old school walls in a teaching capacity, and he has also been entrusted with managing a group of talented players who are one step away from the MacLarnon Cup title.

He admits that there’s a degree of sentiment attached to their run to Sunday’s showdown against Tyrone side Dean Maguirc, but still – there’s a job to be done.

“I did six years in Patrician High. It’s a bit sentimental, it’s a big day. We won the MacLarnon final in 2016, I was in third year watching on from the stands.

“The boys got across the line and it was a really big day for the school, so they’re very fond memories for me.

“In terms of this particular team, this is my first year and buy-in has been excellent, the lads have really working hard and the results are coming at the minute.

“This team has been very unfortunate coming up, didn’t win many games, and now we’re in the final we’re in a great position and we can’t wait for Sunday.”

McEnaney has done a crash-course on their opponents Dean Maguirc and says he was particularly impressed by their semi-final victory over St Pius X of Magherafelt.

“They’d an excellent win over St Pius, who have a lot of really good footballers. The Dean did their homework and got over the line so fair play to them. They have excellent forwards and seem to be big around the middle so it’s a tough task ahead of us but this is where we want to be.”

As for their own run to the MacLarnon final, he says one of the hallmarks has been the grittiness of their play. Even when things don’t look particularly good, they never drop the heads.

“We’ve been pushing ourselves and trying to maximise everyone we have, getting the best out of every player, manager and coach.

“We played Castlewellan in a home game earlier in the campaign and they went 2-4 to 0-6 up and that really put the pressure on.

“But we said we’d keep on grinding and we built momentum and got across the line.

“Then in our semi-final win over Aquinas, a game played in bad conditions, they took an early lead of 1-1 to no score but we fought back again and ended up winning comfortably enough.”

He also compliments the role played by the other members of the Patrician management team, who together have got a tune out of their players.

“There’s a coach from my own club (Corduff), Dylan Finnegan, we grew up together, he’s an excellent coach and is over all the details. Then our principal Sean Rafferty, he’s a huge influence and keeps everything under check. He’s great for pushing the football, he thinks it’s a great advertisement for our school.”