Dr Kieran Deeny, the one real surprise breakthrough candidate in the Assembly election, has always been a bit of a rebel.
As a medical student in UCD he played soccer in the League of Ireland, while at the same time playing Gaelic football in the Co Down GAA minor team.
"It was the time of the ban on foreign games in the GAA and you weren't meant to play soccer if you played Gaelic. Our team won the Down minors championship and then the other team complained about me and the championship was taken off us," he laughs.
"It won't happen this time though," he says rubbing his hands together.
Sitting in the coffee shop of the Omagh Leisure Centre, where the count for West Tyrone was being completed yesterday, Dr Deeny (49), says the ticket he was elected on - to stop the removal of acute services from Tyrone County Hospital in Omagh - is one "people across the community feel very strongly about. This is what we're fighting for. This is the main prize and it won't be taken away from us.
"People this morning are so so happy. They are on a high. This has given people a real boost that at last something is going to be done about this ."
His campaign grew out of the rationalisation of hospital services which has seen services closed in Tyrone County Hospital and in the main transferred to the Erne Hospital in Co Fermanagh.
Dr Deeny, won 6,158 first preference votes and was the first candidate elected, ahead even of the sitting MP, Mr Pat Doherty of Sinn Féin, who got 6,019 first preferences.
"The non-elected quangos making decisions about our services will have to listen now." He will be in contact with the Monaghan-based "hospital" TD for Cavan/Monaghan, Mr Paudge Connolly, to seek advice and, he hopes, a working relationship.
"I think it would be a very good idea for us to sit down and talk to each other. A lot of people from north Monaghan use the marvellous ENT facilities in Omagh. It is in the people of Monaghan's interests as well that the hospital here is protected."
He would not be drawn on how he will designate himself in the Assembly, or on how he would vote on the agreement. A Catholic, he says he is "taking advice" on the issue. Dr Deeny is based in the small town of Carrickmore and is married with three children.
