McCool, acting the lig

Following the news that mid-Ulster has been identified as a “giant hotspot” by scientists studying a gene defect which causes people to grow abnormally tall, a local long-standing old wives’ tale that Finn McCool spent a drunken night with a woman from Cookstown may actually be 100% true.

The gene can result in too much growth hormone, which is produced and released by the pituitary gland, a pea-sized gland just below the brain. It is believed that half the county have the gene though in most cases it’s rarely activated, going by the size of the Tyrone GAA team over the years.

Cookstown shopkeeper Benjamin Sheehy admitted that the development was not news to him:

“This part of the country is full of long, lanky bolloxes. See that man over there browsing around the magazine section, you should see the legs on his wife. Apparently they go the who way up.”

The Finn McCool tale was often passed off as a piece of local fiction but the news from the London School of Medicine Queen Mary appears to verify the story that he had a bit of luck with a local woman a few thousand years ago. Sheehy added:

“I’m not surprised, going by the calibre of men our women tackle outside the Greenvale on Saturday night . Anything goes it seems. McCool knew what he was at when he stopped off here. We’ve a bit of a reputation. Anyway, that’s why the Tall Ships never come here. They’re just normal ships to a lot of us.”

The Tyrone County Board have contacted as many carriers of the gene who are single at present in order to match them up so they may produce a couple of towering midfielders for 2034.