By Alan Rodgers

ALMOST  two decades as a key dependable defender for Errigal Ciaran have taken Aidan McCrory to the brink of what would undoubtedly be the crowning glory of a distinguished career that has seen him reach the heights at club and county level.

Now aged 37, he has seen and done most of it. Three Tyrone championship medals, numerous Ulster medals with Tyrone and an appearance in the 2018 All-Ireland Final are surely among the stand-out moments. Add in the recent Ulster Club success and it’s clear why his consistency has been such a major factory.

Now, though, the potential is there for perhaps the most significant of all. Errigal play Dr Crokes of Killarney in the All-Ireland Club semi-final and the possibility of an All-Ireland Club Final appearance at Croke Park will be driving them on to new levels of effort.

Of course, nobody is taking anything for granted. But McCrory believes that Errigal are well capable of making the most of a golden opportunity.

“This is definitely the most exciting part of my career. It has been a long road with plenty of sad days and you get more years that end in sad rather than happy days. You grow up dreaming of this stage of a competition and start to think that you’re maybe never going to get there.

“Thankfully, everything has gone for us and we’ve gone on the crest of a wave. In the last few years, I’ve won as much as I did in the early part of my club career.

“If I had retired a few years ago, it would have been at an age that the move wouldn’t have been inconceivable and I’d have finished with a lot less honours than now.

“Dr Crokes have an unbelievable club history that we can only dream of. Coming up against teams of that calibre is what you want to be doing – these are the games you want to be part of and playing at the stage that we’re at now – you can’t ask for more than that.”

Having worked under Mickey Harte during his tenure as Tyrone manager, and with a variety of quality managers with the club, McCrory’s steady influence is clear.

He’s still learning, and the past number of weeks will have brought new lessons about the qualities of the Dr Crokes team from Killarney that will do battle against Errigal this Sunday.

“You’re definitely always learning. If we weren’t learning then you would having seen the improvements from this season. The new players that we have brought in have all got more senior football and we’ve been working on making the most of their strengths coming into senior football.”

McCrory was still a teenager when Errigal last reached this stage of the All-Ireland club. He remembers the buzz around the parish at that time, and the exciting of winning the provincial title.

Time moves on and now he finds himself as a serious and experienced member of the team that will bid for glory this weekend. It’s a challenge which he’s understandably relishing.

“The Ulster Club win brought back a lot of memories of the past and what we experienced as children,” he added.

“The current committee have made a real thing about our identity and things that have been done with jerseys and photographs on the walls. Your history forms part of your identity, we remember what went before and the boys who put in the work and that’s just what we try and do. You see that in a lot of clubrooms.

“I think every club wants to remember the people that worked hard and trained hard to get them to where they are.”