By Niall Gartland

ST MACARTAN’S are back in yet another Tyrone Senior Championship Ladies Final and Tara O’Hagan says that’s a testament to the resilient nature of a wildly successful team that also know the pain of defeat.

This time last year, St Macartan’s fell narrowly short in extra-time of a classic county final against Errigal Ciaran, and they lost out to the same side just a few weeks back in the Division One final, ending a remarkable winning sequence of a dozen consecutive league titles. But not for the first time, they pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and overcame Errigal in the last-eight of the championship before carving out another hard-fought win against Trillick in their semi-final clash last weekend.

Now they face Carrickmore ladies in Saturday’s eagerly anticipated triple header in O’Neill’s Healy Park, and O’Hagan says they remain as motivated as ever in their quest to win their latest senior championship title.

“We feel we’re always able to come back every year as we continually want to better ourselves. The standards are getting ever-higher in Tyrone Ladies Football which is great, so I feel getting to the final in itself is a big achievement in itself.

“I think we’ve shown a lot of resilience – as much as we’ve won, the games that we lose really sting and you go away and put in the work and try to learn from the mistakes that we made. We feel we’ve plenty left in us, and it’s about doing it for ourselves and our management team, they really drive you on and make you want to be better.”

And on that note, St Macartan’s continue to be led on the line by former Tyrone defender Ryan McMenamin, who has managed the team for the guts of a decade. He’s been involved with various men’s teams down the years but O’Hagan says that he’s always made time for the Macs.

“He’s had a lot on but he’s always been good at managing his time and we’re grateful to have him. I don’t know where we’d be without him. As I say, he believes in us and what we can do and that drives us on to want to be better for both him and ourselves.”

St Macartan’s came out second best the last team they came up against Carrickmore in the county final, back in 2021, though they made amends the following season with a resounding win over Sperrin Og. County final days are nothing new to them, but O’Hagan is as excited as ever about the blue ribbon event.

“These are the days we relish, the atmosphere and crowd really drives us on and we can’t wait for Saturday.

“It’ll be a big challenge, Carrickmore are a great side. When we played them in the league, we won by a point. They have the likes of Sorcha Gormley, Gemma Begley is back, it’s a huge challenge but these are the games that we want to be playing in and they’re the players that we want to be playing against as well.”