VIDEO: How one Monaghan GAA club picked itself off the floor to reach All-Ireland semi-final

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Rockcorry GAA club had never known a year like 2014. A chronic spate of injuries saw their senior football team decimated. The Monaghan men had to concede games and concede their intermediate status following relegation.

But they ended 2015 as Monaghan and Ulster junior club football champions. They stand on the cusp of history, prepared to face Mayo’s Ardnaree Sarsfields in Carrick-on-Shannon this Sunday in an AIB GAA All-Ireland Junior Club Championship semi-final.

How they effected this miraculous turnaround is a tale of perseverance, a tale of grit, a tale of determination. It is the sort of tale on which the GAA is built.

Club PRO Michael Carroll describes how, out of desperation, long-retired stalwarts had to be cajoled from retirement to field teams in 2014.

But the club survived and is now flourishing, with convoys of young men travelling up and down from Dublin twice a week to train for 90 minutes before having a quick cup of tea and getting back on the road.

That level of dedication has secured “two lovely cups” already and the Monaghan men are just two games away from a third – an All-Ireland title.

“Rockcorry GAA and All-Ireland semi-final, put them in the same sentence, it is just unreal,” says Carroll.

Unreal indeed.