By Shaun Casey

THE MacRory Cup returned this year having been cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021 and St Patrick’s, Maghera boss Paul Hughes, who takes the team alongside Derry legend Sean Marty Lockhart, is delighted to see the competition back.

“It’s always great to have schools’ football going, school sport. That’s a big part of what makes the season special for cubs and makes the school experience special, for cubs that get the opportunity to take part with their friends.

“It’s a different sort of competition because boys are normally playing against each other with their clubs and here they are together. They’re in school together, some of them have been there seven years together and MacRory is a big thing for them.”

The competition was halted at the final stage in 2020, when Maghera were due to play St Colman’s, before being cancelled last year. The two colleges shared the trophy that season, but Hughes insists his side don’t feel like defending champions.

“It wasn’t the ideal situation but just the way things panned out, we didn’t have a choice in it and it’ll always be one of those that’ll be marked with an asterisk unfortunately,” he said.

“What we’re hoping is that the absence of it for a couple of years maybe makes people realise just what it means to the youngsters. Youngsters can operate on a very short-term view, they go off and they get club and some of them get county football and it can become easy for them to move away from school sport and we still want school sport to be relevant for them.

“You want them to enjoy it, you want to give them the best experiences. The record books will say that we are the defending champions but it is that one with an asterisk beside it.”

The 16-time winners meet St Patrick’s, Cavan in the quarter-final having topped their group with wins over St Colman’s and St Ronan’s, Lurgan, and the Derry men will be up for the challenge against their old foes.

“St Colman’s didn’t play a full strength team against us in that second game because both teams had already qualified. In a three-team group, we both managed to beat St Ronan’s, Lurgan. In terms of playing Cavan, we have to go back into the previous years of this particular year group and Cavan have very much had the Indian sign over us.

“We beat them in the second year final with this year group but in third year they added a number of players to their ranks and they quite literally beat us out the gate. They beat us by 20 points or more and were good value for it on the day too.

“Fourth year they beat us again so although this year group won a Rannafast, we didn’t actually play Cavan in that campaign. It’s a very, very tough draw for us. Historically Cavan have one over on us and they’ve come into the competition, it would appear, in pretty good form as well.”