Eglish
An Eaglais, Co. Tyrone

The name means the church. The thing that runs the place is the football.

Eglish is a small village six kilometres north-west of Dungannon, on the road toward Omagh. Five hundred and fifteen people on the 2021 census. A church, a GAA ground, a primary school, and a handful of houses where the village proper begins and ends. It does not advertise itself. The flat mid-Tyrone land around it is good agricultural country - drumlins, hedgerows, farms running down toward the Blackwater - and the village sits in it without demanding attention.

What Eglish does have is the GAC, and the GAC is worth the trip on its own. Eglish St Patrick's reformed in 1955 and had a Tyrone Senior Football Championship to their name by 1970. The camogie club was serially dominant for three decades - 32 Tyrone senior titles in 33 years, four Ulster Club titles (1985, 1986, 1987, 1991). The football side has stayed at senior level in the county for fifty years. For a village of five hundred, that is a serious record.

The larger weight the parish carries is Cormac McAnallen. He was from Eglish, won Tyrone Minor Championships with the club, captained the county minor team to an All-Ireland in 1998, and was part of the Tyrone team that won Sam Maguire for the first time in 2003. He died suddenly in his sleep in March 2004 at twenty-four years old. The grief reached far beyond the parish. The Cormac McAnallen Trust, set up in his name to fund cardiac screening for young people, has tested tens of thousands since. The ground is still here. People still come.