The 37-year-old, a two-time Ulster Championship winner with Tyrone, admits that it was difficult to envisage reaching this stage of the competition given the competitive nature of not only their county championship but also the provincial one.

“When you’re young at 16, 17 or 18 you don’t have the experiences to say how hard this might; you’re looking and you’re going ‘we could do that’,” McCrory explained.

“When you start playing championship football you realise how tough it is and you start to think less you might ever get there but it’s just been a dream.”

All-Ireland success has been the impossible dream for club sides from Tyrone as no team from the county has ever reached the final before, never mind lifted the Andy Merrigan Cup.

In recent years, there has been Ulster success in the showpiece finale to the club football season with Down’s Kilcoo (2022) and Derry’s Glen (2024) taking home All-Ireland honours.

For Errigal Ciaran to make history, they will have to get passed Cuala, who won the Dublin and Leinster football titles for the first time this year and are also bidding for a maiden All-Ireland club football title.

“You can look at opposition, but we’ve never played them, so you don’t know and that’s the beauty of it,” McCrory told BBC Sport NI.

“You get a bit of looking at them, but you don’t know what it feels like to be in against them and how they really play football, so we’re hoping, we’re living off hope.”