Dromore’s Energia Junior Cup Bid Fuelled By Last Year’s Disappointment

The winter light hangs low over Barban Hill, the home of Dromore Rugby Club. That thin Ulster grey that makes floodlights feel brighter and breath look heavier.

The cold rolls through Dromore the way it always does on match week in December, pushing every player in their senior squad a little closer to the mood they live for – that edge, that tension, that sense that something that matters is coming.

Ryan Hughes feels it before he even reaches the ground. He grew up in this place, wore these colours as a boy, and even now as captain – older, wiser, steadier – the cold still carries the same pulse in it. It reminds him that he is home, and that Dromore RFC has a chance once again to make history.

Last December they lost 11-7 to Bective Rangers in a home semi-final of the Energia Men’s All-Ireland Junior Cup. But this year they are back with another chance to make it to their first final since January 2020.

Dromore have been so close so often that the whole town remembers the near misses as vividly as the victories. Hughes does too. You can hear it in him when he reflects on their journey back to this stage.

“Obviously we had a real gut-wrenching performance last year against Bective Rangers, so to get there again this year and to beat Enniskillen to get there has probably given us a bit of a boost,” he told IrishRugby.ie, speaking ahead of Saturday’s semi-final trip to Creggs.

“Obviously Creggs is going to be a tough place to go and travel down there to get our preparations right, but I think we’re all looking forward to it.

“We’re ready to go, we’re putting the preparations in now so that we can give ourselves the best opportunity to get to the final.”

There is a rhythm to Dromore’s history in the Energia Men’s All-Ireland Junior Cup. Hope, heartbreak, resurrection. They have circled the summit so many times that the mountain has become familiar, and that familiarity carries its own weight.

“I think we’ve been relatively unlucky in this competition over the years. We’ve got so far, we’ve got to the semi-finals, we’ve got to the final before.

“I think last year, getting beaten by Bective, knowing that they were going to be that top team in Leinster and we were pushing for being that top team in Ulster.

“Getting beaten by them really was disheartening, and it’s a bit of fuel to the fire to then go and get over the line this year and try and get one better than last year.”

There is a lineage of nearly moments, the final in the 2019/20 edition of the All-Ireland Junior Cup, the four-point loss to Kilfeacle & District is another one that stings.

Watching the likes of Clogher Valley and the rise of Ballyclare, both winning this competition and moving on to play in the Energia All-Ireland League – all signposts that mark what Dromore have been chasing. The club has learned from each of them, even if those lessons were not always pleasant.

This year Enniskillen arrived early in the draw and brought with them exactly the sort of sting Dromore have sometimes needed.

“I think having Enniskillen was almost a blessing in disguise, having them so early in the competition,” admitted flanker Hughes, who previously played with Banbridge in Division 1B of the All-Ireland League.

“Because I think playing them in the league early on in the year, and we were beaten by them, was sort of that pinch-me moment that helped us say, ‘Right, if we beat them here now, you know, that’s going to bode well for us, moving on in the competition and giving us that belief’.

“Obviously ‘Skins’ got to the final of the Junior Cup last year, even though we had beaten them in the league twice and then it almost flipped this year where they beat us in the league earlier in the season and then we beat them in this competition.

“So, we’re hoping now that beating them and beating them well, we kept them to no score (23-0), Skins were probably not far off being a favourite in the competition this year. To keep them scoreless has really given us the confidence, I think, to go and get a job done hopefully.”

It is that blend – belief and memory, hunger and history – that frames the County Down side’s drive this season. They are carrying not just their own ambition but the accumulated weight of years of ‘almost’. Hughes never pretends otherwise.

“I think to be honest with you, we’ve been so close and so far so many times and it would just mean everything to get over that line, make the final and try bring this big All-Ireland competition back to Dromore.”

Nothing in rugby lasts forever, not form, not windows of opportunity, not squads that feel tight and complete one year and scattered or injured the next.

Last season Dromore claimed 18 wins out of 18 matches in the Ulster Championship’s top division. They made history and still had their All-Ireland League promotion dreams dashed by Thomond.

That is the reality of this level. Largely successful seasons have no guarantee of a joyous ending, which is why this competition matters so much. Silverware is something a club can hold onto, even when the sport refuses to let anyone stand still.

“We were very fortunate last year to win the Ulster Championship, but then miss out in the promotion play-offs (losing 17-10 to Thomond at the semi-final stage),” explained the Dromore skipper.

“So to be able to then set a marker down and again do something that the club hasn’t done ever or in so long, to be able to bring that Ulster title home again for two years on the bounce would be spectacular.

“We made history last year by winning the league and going 18 from 18. So, to be able to then this year have a chance to go and win the All-Ireland Cup, it would mean the world.”

Every season brings its own version of the unknown, but this one feels different because Creggs, the next obstacle, exist at a distance, a team Dromore do not know intimately.

The two semi-final opponents both made the All-Ireland League promotion play-offs last year, had vastly different campaigns in this competition, and Creggs’ history of making the last-four is limited. There is danger in that, but also liberation.

I think obviously coming up against a team like Creggs, that we don’t know much about, actually, the way I look at it, it is probably a benefit to us because it means that we have to only focus on ourselves.

“We have very much the belief that if we perform the way we want to perform and we’re on form there, it doesn’t matter who we come up against. We should be able to go and do the job, and also the same thing for them.

“They don’t really know anything about us and what we’re doing down in Ulster. So, they’re having to worry about what we’re doing and how we’re preparing, as well as what they’re doing and how they’re preparing. It’s kind of a double-edged sword.

“We can look at what we’re doing and how we’re going to get the job done and they have to be wary of that, but also it gives us the benefit of we only have to focus on ourselves because we don’t know much about them, which is great.”

Having a steely focus has been one of Dromore’s strengths this year. Not just playing well, but playing with consistency and clarity.

When a team has those painful memories that last a long time, it grows that sense of belief, and they are using that belief to keep a keen concentration on their own game going into this weekend.

“I think you have to be positive and I think you have to focus on yourself. If you get too bogged down in how other teams are performing and what they’re doing and what they’re doing differently, you add more pressure on yourself to perform a certain way.

“Whereas if you’re only worried about your own game and you’re not worried about their game, at least that’s something that you can control. We can’t control how they play, whereas we can certainly control how we play.

“So, I think knowing that and knowing that if we stick to our game-plan and what we have been doing all year hasn’t really let us down yet. If we just keep doing what we’re doing, we’re sure to hopefully get over the line.”

Winning, Hughes says, is a habit, something reinforced, repeated, rehearsed until it becomes instinct. Dromore are not reckless with that idea, they respect it.

A team that never lost in their provincial league last year, but suffered two painful semi-final defeats on the national stage. Last week’s 40-0 win over Randalstown fed that habit, so did the weeks before it against Ballymoney and CIYMS, along with overcoming both Bandon and Enniskillen to react this point.

The grind, the small moments, the hard-earned tries, the defensive sets that told them more about themselves than any scoreboard.

“I’ve always said that winning is a habit as much as losing is a habit. If you get into the habit of winning, you’ll always find a way, whether it goes your way or not. There’s always that wee thing that gets into your head that gets you over that line.

“I think having that win last weekend and also picking up a few really good results as of recent going into this weekend, hopefully you have the mentality of just getting over the line no matter what way it looks.

“Whether it looks pretty or whether it doesn’t. To us, winning is a mentality thing and if we’re in the right mentality, we should be able to get the job done.”

Dromore is a club at the heartbeat of their town’s community not a place where players pass through on the way to somewhere else. It is stitched into the identity of the people who wear the jersey, and nowhere is that more visible than in their captain.

“I was a Dromore boy growing up. I played Dromore youth the whole way through and I sort of, for a while, went away and got a taste of the All-Ireland League for a short window there. Then as of recent, the past sort of five years, I’ve come back.

“Because I always said Dromore was my home club, and that I would always start and finish my career at Dromore no matter where it took me.”

The ground he walks on while training ahead of a big away trip this weekend is the same ground he trained on as a youngster cutting his teeth in the sport. The same dressing room smells, the same pitch where he first learned what it meant to win and lose with people who care about you.

The stakes, then, are not just sporting. They are personal. Emotional. Generational. Dromore stand again on the threshold of something they have chased for years, with a captain who carries both the memories of the past and the ambition of the present.

The cold wind across Barban Hill feels familiar, the pressure feels familiar, and the opportunity feels familiar. But this time, maybe, the ending will be different.

Maybe all the almosts, all the near misses, all the bruises that lingered just a little longer than expected, have brought them to the moment where they finish the story. Hughes believes that. The whole squad believes that.

Perhaps, after all these years, belief might finally be enough. The semi-final hurdle was one they fell at twelve months ago, and this year the hope is that with all the support behind them, they can continue this special journey.

“It’s nice being home and I’ve been back at Dromore now for four or five years, and to be able to obviously lead them last year to lift the Ulster Championship and try qualify them for AIL.

“To hopefully be in with the opportunity to lift an All-Ireland Cup this season with them would be something really, really special to me.

“Knowing that I’m a Dromore boy, I grew up here and I’ve played for Dromore pretty much all my life apart from that short window in the All-Ireland League, you know. That’s what it means to me. Dromore has always been my home club and it always will be.

“That is what we’re about, that’s what Dromore Rugby Club is about, we are a family-orientated club. The guys that are playing at Dromore are Dromore through and through, have played for Dromore, have lived in Dromore, or they’re in the local area and that is their club.

“That’s everything about Dromore, the family orientation of it and to be able to bring something as big as this back to Dromore would be really, really special. I know the whole town will be behind us.

“They were certainly behind us last year in our league-winning campaign. The whole town was fantastic in supporting us and the whole local area, so I know the same thing would be this year with the Junior Cup.

“The whole town will get behind us and I think that is what’s so special about us. All local boys just want to come back and play for their local club, which is something special,” he added.

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