By John Harrington

At the age of 42, and 23 years after he first played in a Tyrone SFC Final, Conor Gormley will lace up his boots again when Carrickmore play Errigal Ciaran in the 2022 senior final on Sunday.

He’ll start on the bench, but such is the competitive fire that still burns within him he’ll believe he can make a big impact if he’s he called into the fray.

Even though he’s a three-time All-Ireland winner and three-time All-Star, Gormley’s appetite for football remains undiminished.

Earlier this year he captained the Tyrone Masters (over 40s) to All-Ireland Final victory over Dublin, and he still can’t quite imagine a life that doesn’t revolve around the game.

“It's just a pure love of it,” he explains. “That's what we do up here. We don't give up too easily. There's probably a bit of ignorance in there too to just keep going and keep going. To prove that you're good enough to be still playing. The craic is good and you enjoy the social aspect of it.

“But it's all about winning too. You just want to win everything you go into whether it be a training game or anything at all. You just want to win. That's the driving force for myself personally and within this Carrickmore squad as a whole. We want to win as much as we can when we're able to do it.

“We were brought up living on the stories of past teams and our fathers and stuff like that. It's just in the blood. We live and breathe it up here. The kids nowadays are all excited for it now too. It's just the habit of a lifetime.

“This is what we've been at our whole lives and we don't want to stop now, we just want to keep going and keep going and hopefully we can top it off with a victory on Sunday. It would be amazing end to the journey if you want to put it like that.”

Gormley isn’t the only former Tyrone star still going strong at club level with Carrickmore. Martin Penrose and Mark Donnelly, both 38, also remain key members of the squad.

“They are surely, they're doing very well,” says Gormley. “Marty has been consistently doing very, very well. He's been playing all year. Mark has been coming in as a sub these last couple of championship games and has done excellent as well.

“We have a couple more older boys as well like Barry Daly, Rory Grimes, Benny McLaughlin who are all still soldiering away into their thirties which is good to see. That experience could be vital come Sunday. It'll be a first county final for a lot of the younger boys so hopefully that wee bit of experience will rub off and help get the boys over the line.”

Gormley still has vivid memories of his own first county final with Carrickmore back in 1999 when they defeated Killyclogher by four points.

“Raymond Monroe was manager at that time and I just remember nearly the spot on the field where he told me I was starting on Sunday for the County Final,” he says.

“The memory is that vivid. I was just pure excited looking forward to the final. Performance wise I didn't play that well myself. I was playing left half-back and didn't perform very well. It was one of those games where the occasion maybe bypassed me. I got a bit too caught up in it and was a bit nervous and all the rest and didn't play that well.

“Thankfully we got over the line that day and I learned from that day big time. I really settled in and enjoyed my football after that, but it was a great learning curve and getting over the line that day and winning it definitely helped in that regard.”

Those were halcyon days for Carrickmore as a club because in the eight years from 1999 to 2006 they contested six finals, winning four of them.

“Aye, it was unbelievable,” says Gormley. “We went on to play Errigal in the 2000 Final when they beat us after a replay. That year I was marking Eoin Gormley who was a big county player at that time.

“Then in 2001 we beat Errigal and I was marking Peter Canavan. Those were big baptisms of fire for a cub of 19 or 20 to be marking those players. It was a great learning curve for me personally and it really pushed me on and helped me develop. They were great times.

“We went on to do back to back titles in '04 and '05 and then lost again after a replay to Errigal in '06 which I missed because of a broken leg.

“But they were great days, it was great to be involved in them and to play both with and against some great players. Hopefully we can get over the line and get back to winning ways on Sunday.”

Carrickmore remain top of the roll of honour in Tyrone club football by a comfortable enough margin, but they’ve fallen on relatively hard times of late.

Their last county title win came in 2005, and they’ve lost the last four they’ve contested in ’06, ’10, ’13 and ’14. Sunday’s clash with old rivals Errigal Ciaran is being viewed as a great opportunity to reassert the club’s traditional role as one of the power-houses of Tyrone football.

“This has been the longest period in the club's history we've gone without winning a championship,” says Gormley.

"We’ve a great bunch of lads now with great potential. Sunday will be a tough game surely, but I think we have a great shout of doing it and hopefully that would inspire the next generation to come along again and win county titles in the future.

"It would be massive if we could do it because we’ve had years of real disappointment where you get so close in finals and have it snatched away from you or don’t play well in finals.

"It would be massive, a real lift for the whole community, especially after these last two or three years with Covid and all the rest and local people passing away and different wee things like that.

“It would give a massive boost to all generations, both young and old. It would just mean an awful lot to get our club back at the top level again and add another wee one onto the role of honour to keep ourselves at the top of the tree.”