The 37th running of The Gary Murray U12 Football tournament took place on Saturday 7th July 2012 in Clonduff Park. Gary and his mother Lily must have been looking down on Hilltown and the 22 teams that participated – it was a glorious day despite the atrocious weather forecast and the conditions in neighbouring counties and even in other South Down areas.
It was a wonderful festival of Gaelic Football which got under way at 10.30am and concluded at 3.45pm. The format changed for the first time since its inception to a 3-tier tournament. Teams were placed into four groups and after playing each other they went into a knock-out phase with the top two in each group competing for the original Gary Murray Trophy (Cup); the middle two in each group competed for the new Gary Murray Shield and bottom two competed for the new Gary Murray Plate. Defending Champions Burren 1 were defeated by neighbours Warrenpoint in the Cup Final by a single point; Bryansford defeated the home team Clonduff Shamrocks in the Shield Final and Kilcoo defeated Burren 2 in the Plate Final. A young Warrenpoint player received the Lily Murray ‘Player of the Tournament’ Cup. All teams received a ‘goodie bag’ following their elimination.
Following the presentations, Cathal Murray thanked the legions of Clonduff people who made the event happen – Anita Brannigan for the Trojan work in organising, P J McGreevy for setting up the pitches, all the participating clubs from Down, Tyrone, Armagh and Belfast, the Young (Shane Milligan, Mark Devlin, Sarah Bloomfield, Stephen McConville) and not so young Clonduff Referees (Ben Brennan, Thomas Murnin, Paula Cairns, PJ McGreevy) who took charge of the games throughout the day, runners and timers, the Clonduff children’s parents for supplying enough sandwiches to feed the legions of visitors and supporters, those who cooked burgers, and his own family – wife, son, daughter, father, brothers, aunts, cousins, inlaws and their friends for their help and support in the day’s events.
Many of the Clubs who have been participating regularly from 1976 and those those who were participating for the first time were high in their praise and cannot wait for next year’s tournament
