By Niall Gartland

PADRAIG McGrogan will kick every ball as Newbridge take to the provincial stage in Sunday’s Ulster Senior Championship quarter-final clash against Clann Éireann.

McGrogan was forced to sit out his club’s surge to a first Derry Senior Championship title in a full three-and-half decades, culminating in the dethroning of All-Ireland kingpins Glen in an astonishingly dramatic county final.

The Derry defender suffered a season-ending cruciate injury back in May – and first thing’s first, how is the recovery going?

“Things are going well. I’m on track. There’s no panic like, I just take it as it comes and look I’ll keep doing the gym work and I’ll get back at some stage.

“I was relatively lucky before as I’d never had much bother. You just have to accept it – what can you do? You have to be positive, I was able to get back to running in the summer months and that’s preferable to having to do that in the winter-time.”

McGrogan has two brothers on the Newbridge team – Conor and Shane – as well as a batch of cousins, and he was fully immersed in their historic run to championship honours in Derry. The players reveled in their success but it was just as important to the wider community.

“I got injured a long time ago at this stage so it’s about much more than myself and much more than the players in general, it’s about the community of Newbridge. The buzz around the club has been crazy.

“They’ll always back you but maybe they weren’t as aware that we had as good a chance as we had, but football’s a funny game and we’re not the first underdog ever to win a championship.

“That’s what makes football so enjoyable, you don’t know what’s going to happen no matter what the form team is or what they’ve won.”

The celebrations have been placed on hold as they switch their focus to their provincial opener against a Clann Éireann armed with All-Star footballers Conor Turbitt and Barry McCambridge to name-check just two of their formidable operators.

McGrogan was mightily impressed by the nature of Clann Éireann’s 3-15 to 0-15 victory over their Lurgan neighbours Clan na Gael in the Armagh SFC final, so he’s expecting one hell of a battle.

“I’d say they didn’t expect to be playing us but they’ll have their homework done and all you can do is prepare and give it as good a shot as you can.

“I watched their Armagh final and they were very impressive. They don’t lack in pace, they’re very aggressive in the way they play football and they’ve a lot of youth in their side like us. I think it’ll be a great game, we’re definitely looking forward to it and we’ll see who comes out on top.”