Tyrone fans have a busload of faith to keep their hopes alive

Nigel McCullagh’s specially designed popemobile can lately be seen whizzing through the streets of Omagh as Tyrone supporters like him hope their prayers are answered in the All-Ireland football final on Sunday.

The open-top white Ford Ranger even comes with a replica Sam Maguire but, with Dublin the odds-on favourite to win, he might need a little more than divine intervention for Tyrone to bring the real thing home.

“I was nearly calling it the hopemobile,” laughs McCullagh. “I like to come up with quirky ideas and when I saw the pope in Dublin I thought, that’s it. There has been a great buzz about the town with it.”

There is an optimism in Tyrone, but particularly in Omagh, where the streets have become a sea of red and white and where fans of all ages young and old are showing their support for the Red Hands.

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“Sport unites people, especially here,” says freelance journalist Paddy Hunter, who says that two weeks after the 20th anniversary of the Omagh bomb, the town needs a boost.

“It has been a long road for so many people, and this year was all that more difficult because it was a significant anniversary. But this match is giving people a lift and you can really feel the enthusiasm when you go out and about.

“That’s the nature of Tyrone people, you build a reliance, you get hardened and the All-Ireland final is keeping people focused,” he says.

Great lengths

Supporters have been going to great lengths to support their team. Some have been getting tattoos spelling out Tír Eoghain on various body parts while, in Strabane, teddy bears with each of the players’ faces attached sit on a row of chairs outside a house painted red and white.

But Barry McKenna from Augher really has gone the extra mile – over 10,000 in fact – after travelling all the way from Sydney, where he has lived for seven years, just so he could be at Croke Park.

“I was never going to miss it, I had to get on that plane and come home. I was thinking about it during the flight, it and surprising my mother and father,” he says.

“There was no way I was going to be in Australia if we won. I couldn’t think of anything worse than being in a pub over there if it went our way and missing the craic. There’s a slight chance we could win it too, but it’s a chance regardless. We are the dark horses and we relish that.”

It will be a proud moment for Brian Quinn when he watches his 10-year-old son Jack, one of the flag bearers, welcoming the teams onto the pitch. Jack hadn’t yet been born the last time his father watched Tyrone in an All-Ireland final.

‘Extra-special’

“It is going to be an extra-special trip to Dublin this time around as I’m delighted to be able to bring Jack with me,” he says. “He made the decision to follow his dad’s team and not Fermanagh like his mum, because early on he realised that supporting Tyrone would see him getting more big days out than following the Erne men.”

Taxi driver Eamonn Garrity says Tyrone thrives on being the underdog. He has painted one of his cars in his team’s colours and will head to Dublin in it with his wife Natalie and son Charlie. “It’s only a wee Rover, there’s only 50,000 miles on her. I wanted something different to go to Croke Park in.”

“If we win I’ll be down on the pitch afterwards,” laughs wheelchair user Dermott Devlin from Omagh who suffers from Morquio syndrome, a rare metabolic disorder. “I can’t wait, I’ll have the Tyrone top on, the baseball hat on, the armbands on and I am tying red and white flags to the wheelchair. You have to do what you can to support the boys.”

There’s that optimism again in a community that comes together and is united by sport.