By Shaun Casey

ST MARY’S, Magherafelt are hoping to win their first-ever Hogan Cup game this weekend as they take on St Brendan’s of Kerry this weekend.

The MacRory Cup winners enjoyed their success with the 2017 trail blazers, and manager John McElholm describes how his side have turned their attention to this Saturday.

“We had a good night (of celebrations). The 2017 team joined us later on, the players headed off to do their own thing and the lads that won it in 2017, the trail blazers, they joined us,” he said.

“The two teams actually got together in a different place, so all the boys were together that had won the two titles which I thought was nice.

“We were back at training then on Wednesday morning, we were off last week so we were in on midterm. We trained Wednesday, we trained Saturday, so we got a good block of work done last week.

“We’ve never won a Hogan match; we’ve only played one before in 2017 so it’s a real big target for us to go and win a Hogan match and go and give a good account of ourselves on the national stage.”

Magherafelt are under no illusions of the task they have ahead of them, but McElholm is also excited about the element of the unknown that comes with facing a new team.

“Any team from Kerry and any team from that school, it’s a real nursery of footballing talent. That’s where the ‘Gooch’ (Colm Cooper), Seamus Moynihan, (David) Clifford, those boys went. They’ve some serious tradition behind them,” McElholm added.

“We’ve had a good look at them, it’s like our games being streamed on the BBC, their games were streamed as well.

“It’s going to be a real good challenge and obviously we don’t know them as well as we knew the Holy Trinity team or as well as we knew the Omagh team, we knew them really well. My son was playing for Omagh for crying out loud.

“We don’t have the same sort of knowledge about these boys. You get to know their flair players and you get to know the guys who are putting the scores on the board, but you’ll find with these teams the sum of their parts is always better than the individual.

“It’s going to be the same for them as well. They’ll be looking at who’s been doing the scoring for us, but they mightn’t be able to pick up the way we play, or the roles people play.

“We know these St Brendan’s lads, know their names and know their reputations. There’s a lot of them would have played for Kerry minors and would have played against that Derry team the year before last when Derry won the All-Ireland.

“But I think it definitely makes it a wee bit more unique and a wee bit more exciting when you’re going in and you haven’t got the same in-depth knowledge that you would have of Tyrone lads or other lads from Derry or neighbouring counties.”