Off-Broadway and away from the glare of the mainstream, Saturday's Division 2B hurling league semi-final between Donegal and Tyrone will take place in Letterkenny.
There won’t be traffic jams, nor queues at the gate, nor will there be catering vans to feed the masses.
But for the hurlers of Tyrone, Saturday’s semi-final is another quiet step on a significant journey.
Last Saturday, Aidan Kelly hit 0-18 for the county when they beat Wicklow. Kelly started hurling when Tyrone were in the lowest division, playing Lory Meagher Cup and not going anywhere fast.
This weekend, he will be part of a team trying to reach the 2B league final.
And next season, Kelly will be on the side that plays at the highest level in the history of the county. No matter what happens against Donegal, Tyrone have already qualified for the newly restructured Division 2 next year, where they will play with counties such as Meath, Kildare and Kerry.
This progress comes only months after Cavan, Fermanagh, Leitrim, Longford and Louth – teams that Tyrone would meet often in recent seasons – earned a reprieve when a proposal to remove them from the 2025 Allianz League was referred to the new hurling development taskforce.
Those counties draw from small playing pools and for Tyrone to reach their current level is impressive, considering the huge turnover of players from last season.
"With travel, retirement and players lost to football, we were down 13 players at the start of this season, which made progress an even bigger challenge for us," said Tyrone hurling manager and Antrim native Stephen McGarry, who was previously on Michael McShane’s coaching team over the last three seasons.
In that time the team achieved promotion to Allianz League Division 2B and won the Nicky Rackard Cup in 2022.
They haven’t stopped working hard on their development since then, as McGarry explained.
"When we lost those 13 players, I spent a lot of time knocking on doors or ringing players looking to get them to commit," he revealed.
"But it was credit to the work previously done that people saw it as being attractive and we managed to get a few lads.
"In the past few seasons, we had focused a lot on strength and conditioning and a big thing was that our players had to start treating themselves like inter-county players, which they did.
"They bought into the lifestyle aspect and on maximising preparation away from training, in the gym, with their diet and nutrition.
"That is the way now and with there being so many dual players at club level in the county, we were able to attract hurlers from football clubs who play to a real high standard."
Perhaps the key development since McGarry took charge is the creation of an underage pathway.
"Over the past few years, we had all done so much work and got to a certain point," he reflected.
"But we pushed on and put structures in place to bring on the Under-20s too. As well as the senior hurling panel, we now have 30 Under-20 players out training two or three nights a week. And they are in the gym with the seniors. There is a wee pathway emerging.
"Crucially, our county board has backed them and now we see quality coming through. In two to three years, they will be ready to step up and play for us. If we can keep them away from football," he quipped.
"Any Tyrone football panel is a hard one to break into, so our job is to make the hurling camps as attractive as possible.
"When we played at Lory Meaghar level it was not hugely attractive, but full credit to Aidan Maguire and Martin Sludden, they backed the vision.
"Our players get everything the footballers get. It’s a professional set-up."
Ninety percent of the Tyrone hurling panel is composed of players from Eire Og, Carrickmore and Eoghan Ruadh Hurling Club Dungannon. Clubs such as Omagh and Naomh Colum Cille provide players too.
Part of the GAA’s vision when they debated confining five lower tier counties to championship-only was to grow participation at club level and develop from there.
But McGarry feels that there needs to be exposure first and to work backwards from there.
"It really concerned me that those counties were in the spotlight because we had played against them all the time," he said.
"If we were not successful in recent seasons, and if the county board was not backing us, we might have had to worry about it too.
"And that would be alarming because hurling is a way of life for us, and we have a serious hurling community here.
"Games are limited and there is a great attraction to football in Tyrone, which I fully understand.
"But we played against Derry hurlers in the Christy Ring Cup last year. It was a fantastic game, 2-20 apiece, and because it was before the Tyrone-Monaghan football game there were almost 15,000 people there for the second half.
"Our lads had never experienced support like it and they grew an inch taller.
"We may never reach those heights, but exposure is the key. No doubt about it.
"Lower tier hurling counties have to deal with an inferiority complex. It’s a tiered system. But we must give lower leagues exposure. Players must want to play for their county.
"On TV, I don’t see any coverage of Divisions 2A, 2B, or 3B. We are missing a trick – from Joe McDonagh Cup all the way down, the levels of competition are incredible.
"The more exposure, the better. Playing in Croke park, creating a drive within the county, having a county board willing to support you.
"We have been lucky here for the last three years and no matter what Saturday brings, or what happens in the Christy Ring, you can start to see the dividends."
To reap a harvest of any kind is notable. To do so without the incredible talents of their greatest player, Damian Casey, who sadly passed away in 2022, is even more significant.
The Eoghan Ruadh clubman first lined out for the Tyrone seniors in 2012 and started every game for his county following his debut, making 100 appearances in total and scoring in every game, racking up 39 goals and 908 points for his county.
"Damian is with us all the time," McGarry added. "He's inspiring a lot of what we are doing. The lads know that. We want to make Damian proud every time we take to the field."
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