ALL-IRELAND CLUB IFC FINAL
Steelstown (Derry) v Trim (Meath)
Sunday, Croke Park, 3.30pm

By Niall Gartland

REACHING the All-Ireland final is stuff of dreams for Ben McCarron and all the rest of his Steelstown teammates.

McCarron is only 21 years of age, but even as a child he was acutely aware that this was a club that had suffered more than their share of disappointing days out.

That all changed this year as they claimed their first ever Derry Intermediate title, and the good times didn’t stop there as they landed the Ulster title before qualifying for Sunday’s All-Ireland final showdown against Trim.

Halcyon days for the Derry City club, and McCarron, who was their star performer in the semi-final victory over Kerry side Na Gaeil on Saturday, is loving every minute of it.

“It’s incredibly special, at the start of the year we couldn’t have foreseen this in our wildest dreams.

“Winning the Derry Championship was our main aim, we really wanted to get that monkey off the back. When we won that, it was always about the next match. That semi-final against the Kerry side was a massive task for us, and it only started to sink in on Sunday that we’re going to be playing in Croke Park.

“To play in Croke Park with my club is incredibly special, it’s everything really. These are your best friends and the ones you grow up with, so to play with them on the biggest stage of all is something else.”

McCarron does have prior experience of playing in the Jones Road venue – he was part of the Derry minor team that reached the All-Ireland final in 2017, only to be undone by a David Clifford-inspired Kerry. While he’s still a youngster, he hasn’t been immune from the many disappointing defeats that have been inflicted on Steelstown down the years.

“This is my fourth year on the senior team, but I’ve been following Steelstown teams since I was four or five and there’s been an awful lot of near misses.

“Maybe I don’t have the same hurt as some of the older fellas in a playing sense, but as a supporter I still felt it massively. I know what they’ve been through so to get that win in Derry was incredible.”

GAA has played second fiddle to soccer in Derry City, but McCarron is also happy to report that everyone seems to be rowing behind the club in their voyage to an All-Ireland final.

“Within our team there’s boys working all over the city, and the word in the last few weeks is that they can’t believe the amount of people who have come up to them in shops and restaurants and asked about Steelstown, people who had never really paid attention to Gaelic before.

“If you look around Steelstown itself there’s flags everywhere. There’s people texting me who I thought didn’t really know anything about Gaelic.

“For the city itself it’s massive. It’s given the whole thing a lift and it’s what we needed as the numbers aren’t great. This is only a first step – there’s a long way to go but it’s still a big step in the right direction.”