EMOTIONAL NIGHT AHEAD FOR RED HAND AS REMEMBER LATE CASEY

THEY

a win’. It was pretty nice.

“But you couldn’t. You just couldn’t walk away, with everybody having been through that together as a team last year. And we were a close side.

“You want to try and do whatever you can now. The legs mightn’t be fit for much more, but if I can give whatever to help at training, just to try and push the thing on.

Pushing

“See if we could get a good, positive season in Division Two.

“We are all there pushing on, which is good. We are all in it together that way, which is a good sign. Everybody is back.

“It’s a mark of Damian that it doesn’t have to be reinforced. Everybody just knows why we are doing it.

“With what happened ‘D’, it’s always going to be that wee bit different. In the camp everybody seems to be determined to try and represent Tyrone on behalf of Damian as best we can.

“I think there is a good bit of determination to try and do ourselves justice and Damian.”

Grogan was standing on the line at club training last summer, injured, when he received a phone call he will never forget.

“I just ran out and stopped club training,” he says. “The manager and the boys were, ‘What are you on about?’

‘Just stop training.’

Disbelief

“I told everybody about Damian and everybody just literally walked away to their cars. It was disbelief at the time.

“It just hits you every now and again. It’s not that you forget. Just something comes up or a picture, or you see something, and you start thinking about the good times you had, and how unfair it is.

“Damian was a supremely talented hurler and all the accolades are completely deserved, but he was just a nice lad too. A good personality and really easy going. It’s just awful it happened to him.”

Tyrone were playing a challenge match a few nights back. Another fleeting trigger.

“It was just seeing somebody lining up to hit the frees, wee things like that,” says Grogan. “It was always Damian on them.”

Michael McShane, the Tyrone manager, says the main reason he ended up in the job was through conversations with Casey.

“It was his passion for Tyrone hurling that really enticed me,” says McShane.

“When he talked about Tyrone hurling he talked about it with a serious passion.

“I am a very passionate hurling man myself. I love my game. I would have known a bit about club hurling in Tyrone.

“Damian would have confirmed it for me, that they were probably punching below their weight and there was talent in the county that could be harnessed.

Potential

“They weren’t realising their potential. It was a challenge and there’s nothing I like more than a challenge.

“I got to know him very, very well. He was the captain for the