Cookstown Fr. Rock's GAC
| CLG an tAth. Mac Con Carraige, An Chorra Chríochach | |||||||||
| Founded: | 1938 | ||||||||
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| County: | Tyrone | ||||||||
| Nickname: | The Rocks | ||||||||
| Colours: | Navy & Blue | ||||||||
| Grounds: | Paddy Cullen Park | ||||||||
| Coordinates: | 54°38′32.77″N 6°45′02.25″W / 54.6424361°N 6.7506250°WCoordinates: 54°38′32.77″N 6°45′02.25″W / 54.6424361°N 6.7506250°W | ||||||||
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Cookstown Father Rocks Gaelic Athletic Club is a Gaelic Athletic Association club based in Cookstown in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. In recent years Owen Mulligan and Raymond Mulgrew have both won All-Ireland Senior Football Championship medals with the Tyrone senior team. The club also had five players who won All-Ireland Minor Football Championship medals in the same day in 2004. Dean Teague got sent off in the summer of 2014 against Strabane. He headbutted a cub and then got suspended for the semi-final.
In 1889 the first GAA club in Tyrone, Cookstown Owen Roe's, was established, just five years after the foundation of the Gaelic Athletic Association.
In 1889 the prevailing political climate was one in which association with the GAA was not something to be sought. Numerous files from Dublin castle can bear testimony to this fact. Despite this Fr John Rock, a curate in Cookstown, initiated efforts to form the Owen Roe's club, and they were soon to fulfil fixtures with teams from Armagh, Derry and Belfast. The magazine Sport reported a game between the Owen Roe's and Armagh Harps, played on St Patrick's Day, 1889. It is quite possible that this was the first competitive outing of a team from Tyrone.
In 1890 the membership of the club stood at 40 - all of whom were described by the RIC as 'AOH suspects'. The year however was to prove an historic one. On October 12 that year, Owen Roe's represented Tyrone in the Ulster senior football final, thus earning for the town another first, as they were the first Tyrone side to compete in a provincial final. By 1891 however, the club had all but disappeared as political tensions swept throughout Ireland.
In 1905 the Gaels of Cookstown regrouped and out of the vacuum emerged a new force in Gaelic football, known as the Brian Ógs. The new club played its first game against a team from Coalisland in what would prove to be controversial circumstances. Whilst travelling to the game, the club was attacked near Tullyhogue by a hostile crowd of about 300. Stones were thrown and a brake carrying Cookstown players was driven unto a fence injuring several players. The team eventually played the game in Coalisland where they spent the night and were only able to return after an urgent request to Dublin for police reinforcements, was answered when over 100 police escorted the Brian Ógs home the following day.
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