ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING 14TH DECEMBER 2015

Secretary’s Report

2015 will go down in the history of the club as one of consolidation on the field of play and one of tremendous progress with the facilities that we have in place. Our Senior Team have once again retained their Intermediate rank and despite the best efforts of some of our County Board administrators. At U16 Level we were very unlucky not to secure a County Championship this year. Away from the field of play, we now officially have the best facilities in the County. So we have a sound foundation, we have facilities and we have talent contesting at the highest level that the county can offer. So now, as in every year, we need to work even harder and smarter in order to secure a return to Senior ranks.

On the field of play under the guidance of Eamonn Cavanagh, Tiffy Quinn, Mickey McCullagh and Paddy McDonald the season began with really good numbers at training. There were nights this year when we had over 40 players at training. There was a very positive feeling among the team and its mentors early in the year. But no one thought that the battle to secure our Intermediate Status would be easy and as we have seen though the year, and especially at the end of the year, that was certainly not the case.

The Senior’s got their season off to a solid start with an away victory to Urney on a score line of Urney 1-5 to Loughmacrory’s 0-13 on Sunday the 12th of April. No one could have foreseen at this point that we would still be playing in mid-November. Next up came a home game to Eskra which we lost out in a game that we should have won. And those results set the scene for a very inconsistent season. Next up we were away to a strongly fancied Edendork side and that was another game we had the winning of but we really fell away in the second half to run out losers by 4 points. Next up came one of the low points of the year when we entertained Galbally on a Thursday evening and ended up on the wrong side of a 1-8 to 2-12 score line. 4 games gone and we had only two league points to show for our efforts and still had not won a game at home. On Sunday the 24th of May we faced Pomeroy at home and put up a good battle to secure a late draw but we still had not won at home. Our next home game was against Stewartstown in mid-June and this was a game that we should have won but we let a point slip by conceding a late goal. Confidence at this point was low and we were starting to slip into relegation troubles with only 4 points to show for 6 games played and with that worry we travelled to Cookstown. That trip did little to improve confidence or our points tally. We had to wait then until early July to face Killeeshill away in a crunch game for both sides in which we run out eventual winners on a score line of 0-8 to 1-11. We followed that away win with a first home victory of the season over a strong Derrylaughlan team 2-9 to 3-5. It seemed that our troubles were over and that we were back on track. Then at the start of August we had a good victory at home over the Rock. Next up we had two crunch away games to Derrytresk and Gortin, two victories would more or less see us safe for the year. But things did not turn out that way, both games were lost and in both games we were not able to show …contd