By Staff Reporter Shengas McGlumphie

Tyrone stepped onto the international sports stage yesterday as the Northern Ireland Commonwealth Games Council (NICGC) announced that its team for the newly created ‘Benefit Fraud’ sport at the 2014 Commonwealth Games comes almost exclusively from Drumquin.

Drumquin, in practise.

“It’s amazing”, said Roland Quinn of the NICGC, “we scoured the whole of Northern Ireland for the very best to compete on the world stage, and by a remarkable coincidence we found them all in Drumquin. We have to hand it to them – they’ve got some of the best chancers in the world”.

Benefit Fraud will be new to the 2014 Commonwealth Games to be held in Glasgow next year, starting in July. It has has enjoyed increasing popularity across much of Europe with many hundreds of thousands of amateurs taking up the event, and has now been recognised as an official sport.

Frank Cassidy, an unemployed painter from ‘somewhere near the Dooish mountain’ has been selected for the demanding ‘Doing the Double’ pentathlon event which centres on five discrete disciplines completed over a 3 day period, combining signing on at the Social, going for a job interview and failing, working at a chicken factory, clearing glasses in a bar, and helping to lamb sheep.

“The training’s been exhausting” said Cassidy, “but I’ve been preparing for this for two years and I’m nearly ready. And if anyone asks, you haven’t seen me”.

The gruelling ‘Form Filling’ hurdle event is likely to draw some stiff competition but Martina McCluskey, an unemployed shop assistant of Claragh Road, is ready for it.

“I’ve filled out some of the hardest forms in the whole of the DHS. Have you seen the Benefits for Occupational Diseases form? Jaysus, it’s a belter. It would make your eyes water. But I’m ready for it, even though we know the Jocks are going to be difficult to beat in front of a home crowd”.

“You could say I’ve been training for this event most of my adult life” said Kiernan Donnelly, an unemployed fork lift driver of Baronscourt Road. “Bring it on!” Donnelly has been selected to compete in the arduous marathon event, which is a 26 mile walk undertaken whilst pretending to have a limp.