‘Any day you pull on a Crossmaglen jersey is a privilege...’ Caolan Dillon minding the house as Rangers seek 48th Armagh title

IT was little Lily Dillon’s first game and if she lives to be 100 she might not be at a better one.

Crossmaglen were 14 points behind at the break against a star-studded Clann Eireann team in the Armagh championship semi-final. They’d scored just four points in the first half and their much-vaunted forward unit hadn’t put a dent in the Lurgan side’s defence.

But by the time 10-day old Lily and her mum joined the action Cross, with her dad Caolan Dillon at full-back, were right in the mix.

They cut the deficit to two with 12 points in-a-row and although Clann Eireann rallied Oisin O’Neill’s injury-time two-pointer sealed an unforgettable comeback win for the indomitable Rangers.

“It was an interesting one for Lily,” says Dillon, a science teacher at St Paul’s in Bessbrook.

“My girlfriend took her in for the last 10 minutes so she got all the drama but she slept through the whole thing!”

Further drama is guaranteed on Sunday when Crossmaglen take on near-neighbours Killeavy in the Orchard County showpiece.

Cross return to the final after a two-season gap chasing their 48th title while their St Moninna’s rivals are chasing a fourth Gerry Fegan Cup and haven’t been in the final since 1988 when Gareth O’Neill, father of Oisin, Rian and Aaron, was in their ranks.

“I’m buzzing for it,” says Dillon.

“All the boys are really looking forward to it.”

He deserves to be buzzing because he knows what it’s like to miss out and he’s had to put in a lot of extra work to stay fit enough to function at this level. Dillon has been around the senior team for almost 10 seasons now and most of them have been plagued by injury issues.

He made his debut in the league in 2016 and after a couple of games he tore his cruciate for the first time.

“I did the right cruciate three times,” he explains.

“So I missed a fair few years with injuries. There were days when I wondered would I play again, there were dark days but my team-mates were great at keeping me positive.

“Tony Kernan gave me a book written by Jim Stynes (My Journey by the former Dublin and Aussie Rules star) and he talked about his cancer diagnosis in it.

“That was a big thing, it reframed things for me because you think you have it bad and then you see somebody who’s really going through it.

“There’s been other things around our own community since that and you realise that, yes, injuries are soul-destroying but there’s people dealing with a lot worse. That keeps you positive and none of us take things for granted, any day you get to pull on a Cross jersey is a privilege.”

After several start-stop years he started afresh in 2021. It hasn’t all been plain sailing for him since, he had surgeries in 2023 and 2024 and an ankle injury kept him out of last season’s semi-final (a loss to Cullyhanna) but, thankfully, this season – thanks to a lot of extra, unseen work in the gym - he’s been able to stay on the grass and establish himself in the number three jersey.

“Yeah, I’m committed but it’s just part-and-parcel of where I’m from,” he says.

“Football is such a massive thing in Cross. It’s religion. It’s a big commitment but we’re all accustomed to it and we would have seen it from older fellas growing up. When I was coming onto the senior team a lot of the older boys would have set the standard for the work that needs to go in.

“As students we would have been coming up and down from Belfast with Tony Kernan and the work he did to keep his body on the pitch was phenomenal. Aaron and Stephen would have been the same. They’d all do savage work to keep themselves right.

“Nowadays a lot of our boys are absolutely committed to doing whatever they can to keep themselves on the pitch and fully functioning.”

If all goes to plan for Crossmaglen on Sunday, Dillon will win his fifth county medal with the club.

It’ll be only his second start in a final and he explains how he didn’t come through the “traditional route”.

“I don’t come from a family of footballers,” he says.

“My interest in football started in school because of my friends. When we were growing up I would have been best friends with Oisin (O’Neill) and any time you were going to his house you’d be playing football.

“Other boys in our class like Cian McConville would have been mad into it too so playing football was a social thing in school and then it developed that way.”

He started off as a half-back and it was St Mary’s University coaches Paddy Tally and Gavin McGilly who spotted his potential as a full-back during his time at ‘The Ranch’. He wore number three in the Sigerson Cup final in 2019 and his club followed suit.

A little unusually for a defender, he enjoys the one-on-one challenge the new rules have ushered in.

“I enjoy playing full-back and I enjoy it a lot more since the new rules have come in,” he says.

“The three-up and three-back makes it more enjoyable for forwards, and everyone talks about the forwards, but I think it’s more enjoyable for a defender.

“There would have been times in the old rules when there would have been a packed defence and it could have been boring for everybody. Nobody would have got a touch! It’s more of a challenge with the new rules but it’s also more enjoyable.

“It’s more of a man-on-man battle but that’s why you play the sport. It’s a more simple game now, you know what you have to do and there’s a lot more onus on your ability to defend and try to win your individual battles.

“In Cross we like to play very attacking football, we don’t like to set back at any stage which I suppose does leave us open to conceding a bit more. But we have quality defenders like Chris Crowley, as tight a man-marker as you would get, and Callum Cumiskey and Stephen Morris and young fellas like Ryan Martin and Gene McEntee.”

THE Armagh championship began with a four-team group stage and after a single win over new boys Tullysarran and losses to Dromintee and Madden, Crossmaglen were not being touted as possible championship winners.

They scraped through to the preliminary quarter-finals after a third-place finish but the narrative changed completely when the men and black and amber found that familiar swagger and put Clan na Gael to the sword at the Athletic Grounds.

With Rian O’Neill back in the starting line-up, Cian McConville scored 2-4 and Aaron O’Neill weighed in with 2-2 as Shane McConville’s side marched on to a last eight clash with Culloville.

That game was nip-and-tuck until the final 10 minutes when Crossmaglen pulled away. Oisin O’Neill scored 2-10 in that quarter-final and he added a match-winning 10 points in that incredible semi-final win.

“He’s playing great football at the minute,” says Dillon.

“Everybody in Ireland knows the quality Rian has but Oisin has been unfortunate with injuries over the years. He hasn’t played just as much for Armagh but his quality is second-to-none. On his day he’s one of the best footballers in Ireland and Aaron is phenomenal too.

“Those boys would constantly be pushing things on and driving the standards in the group but it’s not just the three fellas, there’s a cohort of other boys. We have lads all over the pitch including a lot of the younger boys who have put their hands up and tried to drive the ship forward.

“Against Clann Eireann we were 14 points down but there was a strong breeze and we have the quality of Oisin, Rian and Aaron up front and Pearse (Blessing) hit a wonder-score too. We’ve a lot of boys who can hit two-pointers for fun and with a bit of breeze at their back they are just unbelievable quality.

“That Clann Eireann game was a rollercoaster and we had been on the wrong end of it last year in the semi-final against Cullyhanna. We had quite a lead built up and we let it slip, that’s the lottery the new rules bring so it was nice to be on the right side of it this time.”

What will Sunday bring? Killeavy have gone 78 years without winning a county title but they have been making steady progress for a number of seasons under the management of local hero Steven McDonnell.

“They’re a quality side,” says Dillon.

“We’ve all seen what they’ve been doing in the league this past few years, they won it last year and were runners-up this year so they’ve a great consistency about them. “We’ve had plenty of battles with them over the years in the championship and some tough games against them so we know what we’re going to face with them.

“Even the type of football they play, Steven McDonnell is a very attack-minded coach too so he’ll want them to go out and play attacking, front-foot football. It’s what he did as a player and it’s the style that Killeavy like.”

One of his former pupils at St Paul’s will take a bit of watching on Sunday. Fergal Boylan has been cutting swathes through defences on Killeavy’s march to the final and the talented forward has amassed 4-16 in five championship games so far including 1-7 in the quarter-final win over Carrickcruppen and 2-1 against Dromintee in the semi-final.

“They’re a very well-balanced side,” said Caolan.

“Fergal was a great lad at school and he’s scoring heavily for them, he’s doing really well. But they’re not a one-man show up front, they have boys chipping in with scores from all over the pitch and defensively they’re very sound too, they haven’t been conceding much so we know we’ll have a battle on our hands.

“We’d be very familiar with them, we’d have grown up playing against a lot of them at underage and the whole way up.

“Our focus is on going out and performing as best we can and hopefully we’ll put our best foot forward.”