After guiding Dungannon to their first-ever Irish Cup success last season, plus securing a top-six place in the league and European football, Swifts manager Rodney McAree does not give the impression of a man who is happy to rest on his laurels.

The Stangmore club's 4-3 penalty shootout win over Cliftonville in the showpiece decider at Windsor Park last May sparked huge celebrations among all connected with the county Tyrone outfit.

Now the Dungannon boss is eyeing a possible retention of the trophy as his side prepare to begin the defence of the cup at home to Championship side Ards on Saturday.

"It's exciting, it's strange times for Dungannon Swifts to be going in as holders of the cup," said McAree.

"We look forward to it, it's going to be a challenging game, a difficult match, but one that we believe we can win, and we want to progress and we want to try and start to dream again.

"We'll embrace the challenge. To win it last year was unbelievable, remarkable, but we want to try and do it again.

"Once you taste that level of success then you want to taste it a lot more than we have done in the past. We won the League Cup in 2018 and when you achieved that the next thing you wanted to win was the Irish Cup."

McAree's second spell as Dungannon manager has seen the club achieve a greater level of consistency in the Irish Premiership and they presently occupy fifth place in the table, just one place worse off than the position they achieved at the end of the 2024-25 campaign.

The current season started poorly for the Swifts as they lost six of their first seven league matches, but 11 wins from their subsequent 16 games has revived their fortunes.

December was a good month for the Swifts as they went unbeaten, with league victories over Ballymena United, Portadown, Bangor and Glenavon helping McAree to win the Northern Ireland Football Writers' Association Manager of the Month award.

"We started the season poorly after the exploits of last season, but we managed to get ourselves going and we climbed the table, and we're sitting very comfortably at this moment in time, so it's very pleasing," added McAree.

"We had a good month in December. We won four and drew one. When we find ourselves in the position we are in coming into the second half of the season we may as well target something.

"We want to try and stay in and around where we are. We want to finish in the top six at this stage and if we can push for European football that has to be an objective.

"Once we start running out of ambitions, out of targets, then we're on a slippery slope, so we always have to challenge ourselves."

Despite the busy schedule of matches over the festive season, McAree took the opportunity to reflect with family on the memories made during 2025 and wants to make more in 2026.

"It was nice to sit down and watch different little bits of coverage. Myself and my wife watched the whole game again and watched the celebrations at the end.

"It was a lovely occasion for us as a family and it was nice to be able to celebrate together. They have supported me massively.

"It was nice but we have to move on, we have to try and do it again, we have to make more memories."

McAree says a 2-0 defeat by Crusaders last weekend should illustrate the need to eradicate any degree of complacency in the camp.

"We're coming off the back of a poor result at the weekend so we're just looking forward to our next match at the weekend, albeit it's an Irish Cup game.

"We have to work extremely hard to get the success that we have so if we stop working as hard as we do at this moment in time we'll start spiralling and going in the opposite direction.

"We have to keep to those standards, remain positive, remain confident that we can deliver success and go about our own business."