Last weekend was a weekend that Maguiresbridge, Fermanagh and St Marys University Belfast footballer Ciaran Corrigan will not forget in a hurry.
The 21 year old played a hugely influential part in St Marys University Belfast winning a first Sigerson Cup since 1989.
Corrigan perfomed superbly well with a goal in the Semi Final victory on Friday against UCC, while scoring 0-1 and assisting in 0-4 in the Final win over favourites UCD, 0-13 to 2-6 at the Connacht Centre of GAA Excellence in Ballyhaunis.
Corrigan said afterwards that moments like this need to be cherished for a very long time, “It’s been completely surreal, just mental. It hasn’t really sunk in yet and it probably won’t until all the celebrations die down and I am preparing a lesson to teach in school.”
The trainee School teacher who is based at St Fanchea’ s, Enniskillen admitted that his family with him at the final whistle was a special moment, “Having the family and everyone at the game, and getting a photo with them after, things like that are special, and something that I will always remember. The only one missing was Sean who was playing for the Fermanagh hurlers on Saturday, so the first thing he done after the game was check the score and text me straight away.”
He continued, “It’s actually funny, after the game we had everyone getting a photo with all the one county players, all the Down, Armagh and Tyrone men in groups. And I was on my own from Fermanagh, but it’s just great. Pat Blake, a former rancher and a real Gael, would be a great contributor to team funding for us and after the game we stopped in Enniskillen for Blake’s. I honestly never imagined walking into Blake’s with an All-Ireland Cup, and hopefully it happens again. The whole weekend was class. It’s mental to be playing the biggest game of your career so fatigued and sore from the day before, but all that makes the Sigerson what it is.”
St Marys are not like every other University, they only have a population of just 300 men and Corrigan is adamant they wanted to really do something this year from the very start, “We are unlike effectively every other college, in the sense that, we are all so close. We all come in on first year, and we have to work on it to achieve something. We sat down at start of year in a team meeting and discussed at length how we are sick of always being the 5th or 6th best University team in Ireland. We said we would give everything to get to number 4 and make the weekend, we did that and from there everything was unreal.”
The talented Corrigan heads off from Brewster Park this Saturday afternoon with the Fermanagh Senior footballers for a NFL round 3 trip against Cork and there is every possibility he will still be smiling from cheek to cheek.
