Derry champions Steelstown hoping for Ulster luck at long last!

Ciara McGurk is hoping that this can finally be Steelstown Brian Ogs’ year in Ulster after knocking on the door for the past few seasons.

Sunday’s 3-11, 1-5 win over Ballymaguigan in the Derry Senior final at Glen brought Steelstown a third successive County title and with it, entry once again into the Ulster Championship, a title the club has been striving for without success as yet.

Last year, they came agonizingly close to getting their hands on it only to be defeated by a single point by Fermanagh champions Kinawley. That defeat has been driving the girls of Brian Ogs’ on ever since.

“Our goal at the start of the season was obviously to try and win county and now we’ve got that hopefully we can go on and give Ulster a rattle,” Ciara said after Sunday’s win. “We had heartache last year when we were beaten by a point so hopefully, we can go one better this year and get an Ulster.

“The year of Covid we were definitely flying and I would say we could have done really well that year, only for it to be called off, and then we got to the final last year and got beaten by a point so hopefully it’s third time lucky as they say.”

Ciara is no stranger to success with Steelstown, but she revels in each title win, understanding just how special this olden period is for the club.

“It’s unbelievable,” she agreed. “When anyone tells you you’re going for your second title or your third title, obviously you have a bit of nerves and excitement at the same time. At the end of the day, you always want to win, so to get three in a row is absolutely unbelievable. The girls just worked so hard and we really deserved it.”

Steelstown did not have it all their own way in Sunday’s final, and were stunned when Ballymaguigan scored a goal after just 27 seconds. It was a daunting way to start any senior final, but Ciara was not as shocked as some.  

“I don’t know what it is but it always seems to take us a minute to settle into the games,” she explained. “When we have our team talk before, we go out we always say ‘Girls, if they score in the first 10 seconds we settle, we go again, we get our composure and we don’t let our heads drop’. That’s exactly what we did, we went up and counterattacked and we scored a goal ourselves and we just kept going after that. They then didn’t score for the rest of the first half.”

Despite the dominance, Steelstown couldn’t put their opponents away as they missed several chances to kill the game off in the second half, giving Ballymaguigan some hope that they could get back onto the game. That ended when two goals in two minutes from Aoife Collins and Orla McGeough finally made the win secure.

“That was to be expected because we had the wind in the first half,” Ciara elaborated. “We expected it to be a bit more nervous, we expected them to come at us more and we expected them to start taking their shots. But it was the same thing again because we knew even when our shots were going wide, we just had to settle, compose ourselves, retain possession until the shot was on again. That’s what we did – the girls started settling down more, and played the ball around until we got another chance.”

One thing Steelstown have in abundance is experience, and, heading into Ulster, that could give them the edge to get their hands on a title they ae wanted for so long.

“The likes of me, Emma, Katie and Enya have all been around,” Ciara added. “We are experienced and we have been in finals and we have won and we have lost. We know the importance of keeping possession of the ball and holding the ball because sometimes if you kick a ball and it drops short, they can counterattack very quickly, but if that happens, we know we just have to drop back and fall in and hopefully try to turn the ball over and go again. We’ve won three county titles so hopefully now we can get our Ulster this year.”