Dungannon

We all know the price of diesel and so on.

I was in Dungannon yesterday.

I was very pleased with myself.

I found a petrol station in Dungannon.

It was 175.9 in Sainsbury's.

On the way out of Dungannon, I saw another station, 185.9.

I kind of went, yeah, right? So we know the price.

But missionaries need to put fuel in their tank as well.

We're like,

where did they get that from? You know, so an intro, like in my hometown, Dungannon, there is like 16,000 people and over 3,000 of them work in meat processing.

So like, you know, and like, honest to God, when I was growing up, the concept of vegetarianism, I had never heard of it until I came to college in Dublin.

I know people don't believe me because I actually remember meeting my first vegetarian and being like... what do you do? You know, what do you eat? Like, because I just, it was absolutely the most alien thing I could absolutely imagine.

Though the southern and midland districts had not yet recovered from the exhaustion consequent upon the suppression of the Geraldine League, and the abortive insurrection of Silk and Thomas, the northern tribes were still unbroken and undismayed.

they had deputed George Paris, a kinsman of the Kildare Fitzgeralds, as their agent to the French king, in the latter days of Henry VIII., and had received two ambassadors on his behalf at Donegal and Dungannon.

These ambassadors, the Baron de Fourchevaux and the Sieur de Montluc, who subsequently became Bishop of Valence, crossing over from the west of Scotland, entered into a league, offensive and defensive, with the princes of Tyrconnel and Tyroen, by which the latter bound themselves to recognize, on certain conditions, whoever was King of France as King of Ireland likewise.

This alliance, though prolonged into the reign of Edward, led to nothing definitive, and we shall see in the next reign how the hopes then turned towards France were naturally transferred to Spain.

The only native name which rises into historic importance at this period is that of Shane, or John O'Neill, the Proud.

He was the legitimate son of that Con O'Neill who had been girt with the earls Baldrick by the hands of Henry VIII.

His father had procured at the same time for an illegitimate son, Faradoc, or Matthew of Dundalk, the title of Baron of Dungannon, with the reversion of the earldom.

When, however, John the Proud came of age, he centred upon himself the hopes of his clansmen, deposed his father, subdued the baron, and assumed the title of O'Neill.

Like we look at Stuart McCluskey.

Stu played a year at Dungannon before he was picked up by Ulster.

And then he's now, you know, he's obviously one of the best rugby players in the world currently.

He's not the only one.

You've got that amount of boys.

We talk about different schools, for instance, maybe that don't have the same sort of exposures.

How do we get good, meaningful fixtures for those guys? Because spitballing off the top of my head like a Royal School Dungannon for example what for them to be able to develop and there's a hotbed of rugby in around that area obviously might be a little difficult if they're going out and playing against Blackrock and stuff is it getting them opportunities maybe to play against your guys a little bit more on a regular basis again I don't know or maybe even second 15 games or whatever is there a way around that just to try to upskill the entire game within Ulster I know that's a big question but you know what I mean I know we're

talking about Campbell but that's just me just it's Thinking out loud.

Been to a couple of really tough venues.

I look at Dungannon first game of the season.

Carrick, never an easy place to go as well and Portadown.

So, navigate out those three with three wins and then obviously a draw at home to learn and then we beat Crusaders on Saturday so yeah been a good start plenty of goals going in as well and not too many going in at the other end so yeah everyone's good so far and hopefully long may it continue

We've had the big result.

We've had difficult matchups since then.

And look, you can see what happens if we don't have... that real killer edge they could have killed off banger and they didn't early on and uh for banger it's just gets them up and running you look at the other teams around that part of the table and uh limavady's there obviously like you can see in some of the interviews after the game that paul owens the manager of limavady is already starting to feel a bit like frustrated with it all like everyone's somewhat tussling their hair saying ah you know the results will come he says I want the results now like 2-0 against Dungannon who themselves are on a nice little run hardly the worst result in the world but at home points are gonna have to come somewhere and even at this early stage they can feel the pinch

Yeah, look, obviously I'd be close enough to Limmel Valley because half their team used to play for Corian and their manager used to be a coach and play for us.

Trillic are due to play Ergo Ciarán in the quarterfinal.

But there's a replay, an actual replay, for Locke McCrory, last year's champions, who played out an epic draw with Dungannon, 119-410.

So, look, the football on Ulster is off the charts.

But I will just note, Cross McLean putting on a show on TGK yesterday, 527, Kim McConville, Rhian O'Neill, and O'Shane O'Neill, all sensational.

My Uncle Paddy, he played for Tyrone for nine, 10 years, goalkeeper.

He's two, uh, O'Neill cup medals, one with Cavan and one with Dungannon.

So he'd be Christopher Roberts' s- s-

Splenda.

Oh way back into, uh m- my footballing career in the Fianna wouldn't have been great.

Um, it was all Leo Quinn's fault.

I was actually living in Dungannon when Leo joined the academy and no matter do but Leo got me out to play for Killane so yeah, that was a, that was fun time.

Living in Dungannon and playing for Killane especially when they played Dungannon.