Jason O’Connor has delivered in his first year in charge of Aghadrumsee.
The Clones man has led the club to the Junior Championship and a reserve league and championship double.
“It’s unbelievable,” he said looking into the sea of Magpies supporters at Shamrock Park. “It's fully what the boys deserve this year.
"They’ve put in the work from the middle of January, to where we are now, the middle of October and still going, so, it’s just deserved for the work they’ve put in.
"We knew we would probably get a good start and both teams, we knew, would have purple patches.
"We got the first purple patch in the first 10-15 minutes and didn’t really push on from it.
"I suppose it wasn’t until the last 10 minutes of the second half we pushed on but the start was key for us alright.”
Aghadrumsee led by five points midway into the first-half but went into halftime just a point ahead after letting Newtownbutler back into the game, but that wasn’t a concern for O’Connor: “No, we were happy enough at halftime.
"I said to the boys at halftime, if we were a point up before the game, we’d have took it. But it was our own messiness that allowed them to get back into it.
"Kinda overcomplicating things that allowed them back in it, but other than that, I thought we were by far the better team.”
It was a much-improved from last year’s final where Lisnaskea ran riot but O’Connor admitted that may have been the turning point for his players.
“As I said before, I think we were fed up getting beat,” he added. “We were fed up losing championship finals.
"If you lose two in a row, maybe losing three in a row, Donagh is coming down now, you’d never know when you’d win one. So, I think they just got the heads up and knew they had to push on this year to drive on.”
It was a difficult start to the season for Aghadrumsee who lost all five Club Players’ Competition games before turning the fortunes around to win three league games on the bounce and finish sixth in Division Two.
“It’s nothing I’ve done, honest to God,” O’Connor continued. “The boys have bought into everything they’ve been asked of.
"They’ve trained at 7 o’clock in the morning, 8 o’clock in the morning, 9 o’clock in the morning, they’ve trained late in the evenings, Tuesdays and Thursdays, they’ve bought into it, I’m only setting out cones and having a talk before the game, they’ve bought into it and it’s down to them solely.”
Aghadrumsee will now look forward to an Ulster championship game: “I’m a Monaghan man, so we play the winners of the Monaghan championship, it’s another step for the boys and it’s another milestone for them to look forward to.
"It’ll be drink hard for the next three or four days and then back to work on maybe Sunday.”
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