Young guns star as Down storm through to final

Young guns star as Down storm through to final

1 January 2019

DOWN booked their place in the McGurk final on January 29 with a comprehensive win against Fermanagh at the Dub just before Christmas.

Ronan Sheehan’s new-look side are most definitely heading in the right direction and he is delighted with the progress being made. 

Anytime you get to a final is good, particularly for Down hurling. We don’t win things that often, we’re the poor relation,” Sheehan said.

“We are delighted to be in the final, particularly because it gives us another game. It gives us the opportunity to try things out, to try lads out and build towards our National League fixture against Derry on January 27.

“We are very pleased with young Mark Patterson, who had an excellent game at wing back, really happy with him,” he added.

The Newry Shamrocks club man also praised Paul Sheehan and ‘old hands’ Conor Woods and Eoin Sands.

“We’re happy with how Conor Woods has integrated himself back into the team. Paul Sheehan showed a lot of leadership up front for us, along with Eoin Sands, as you would expect.

“We are just delighted that the three young lads — Tim Prenter, and the two Ronans, Blair and Costello — got on the scoresheet again because that’s great for their confidence,” he continued.

Down still don’t know who they will be facing in the final, but the Down manager remains totally focused on the National League opener.

“We’re fairly clear that we want to get back to the league final. We’ve been in three of the last four finals and not won any. We are targeting a return to the final and will take it from there,” he said.

“It’s very difficult to turn round and say we definitely want to get promotion or we definitely want to win the Christy Ring Cup. We’ve a very young team, we’ve four or five starters in Australia for the next period of time, lads who would have been starting last year.

“It’s going to take a bit of time for some of these young lads to blend in, but we are very clear that we see a return to the league final as our priority this year. If we get to the final we’ll take it from there.”

Down 3-24

Fermanagh 2-8

McGURK CUP GROUP B