By Shaun Casey

AFTER winning the Junior Championship in 2021, their first in 20 years, Belleek have continued to make huge strides and challenged in Division 2B for the previous two seasons before finally capturing the league title and promotion this year.

In 2022 and 2023, Belleek finished third in the pack and while those campaigns proved they could compete, getting over the line and gaining promotion to Division 2A is a major step forward.

Shane Quinn, a player when they won the JFC three years ago, took on the role of manager last season along with Caolan Quinn and they have guided Belleek to a league crown with two games still remaining.

“It’s the third year we’ve been trying to get up to Division 2A, that was the players’ goal,” explained Quinn. “In the last two years, the league was brought to the final day where we had something to play for, so we’ve not been far away. On those final days if we won, we were basically promoted but both years, we just weren’t able to do it. Cullaville beat us in year one (2022) and then Annaghmore beat us year two (2023).

“The Annaghmore one was tough to take after the previous year so this year you could see that there was an extra edge to our boys, that they were determined on the third attempt.

“They put the work in, so it was great just to see them get what they deserved. The bonus is going up as winners, it just makes it sweeter. It was all about getting to 2A but getting there as winners just makes it a bit better.”

Belleek burst out of the traps at the start of the season, winning their first nine league encounters to become the permanent fixtures at the top of the table.

But they did experience a shaky patch of late.

They suffered two back-to-back defeats to Derrynoose and Wolfe Tones, when they lost their inspirational midfielder Callum O’Neill to a shoulder injury, but they finally secured promotion and the league title with a one-point victory against Tír na nÓg.

“We’d gone on a big winning run, but we made a huge effort not to reference that,” Quinn continued.

I thought if we started using language like that then you start to build pressure where there’s bound to be a blip and it could potentially scupper things,” added Quinn.

“That was something that came into play after winning the Junior Championship in year one, the next year in the league they went on a winning run.”

He added: “You could see the longer the winning run went on, the performances started to dip, and it was nearly just because of the pressure they were putting on themselves. So, this year we learned from that experience.

“I think that helped us and nearly without realising it we’d won nine games in a row. Then you could see as soon as the finish line started to come within touching distance, the boys started to focus on that.”