Preparations had been ongoing for months and the day before the sports, as help started to arrive in preparation for the final the rain made an uninvited appearance in more than abundant quantities! All help however remained, not prepared to let anything stand in the way of success and so all was set up.

Saturday arrived and as last minute touches were completed teams from all corners of Ireland started to gather. These were teams who had been successful at regional, provincial and diocesan finals.

The day opened with a welcome from Magherafelt town council chairman, Patsy Groogan and Cookstown regional chairman Raymond Devlin. This was followed by a minute silence for the victims of Belarus and the September 11th atrocity in New York. Games were then ready to commence and competitors battled it out in basketball, badminton, gaelic football and soccer. This year we had competitors as young as 9 and a few more than welcome senior pioneers. Competitions ran smoothly with only a few delays - mainly due to rain - which players seemed to welcome!

This year the Ulster youth committee had taken the decision not to award medals until the very end of competitions as this is an all-Ireland event and in other events of similar prestige the presentation is the highlight of the day, and indeed a great honour. A large crowd waited to hear Pioneer president Sean Coll and National Youth chairperson, Dermot Fagan address them with words of encouragement and praise for the day. Fr Mc Greil and the pioneer rose Marie Ward joined them to present winners and runners up with their all-Ireland medals.

As teams then made their trip home the clean up began. St Pius X High School had provided us with first class facilities and the Ulster Youth Committee received praise from start to finish on the organisation and execution of the event and the facilities provided.

The Ulster Youth Committee had once again pulled off a successful event, with the help of Cookstown region, which will hopefully stay in the memory of our participants and their supporters.

The only disappointment of the day was the drop out of teams without prior warning, meaning teams who had travelled in some cases hundreds of miles had no competition, which could easily have been prevented. We therefore call on all organisers to bear this in mind when sending teams forward in the future.

We hope that Irelands young pioneers gained as much from the All-Ireland Pioneer sports final as we did in organising it.