St Kevin's seek Leinster breakthrough against Offaly champions
St Kevin's Manager Philip Casey.
Following their opening round win over Kilkenny’s Muckalee, looks ahead to St Kevin’s AIB Leinster Junior Football Quarter Final against St Brigid’s of Croghan from Offaly on Saturday.
IF you’re thinking the name St Brigid’s of Croghan looks familiar it could be for one of two reasons.
Reason one: it may be because Grangenolvin came up against the same opponents at the same stage of the Leinster Junior competition a year ago and no doubt St Kevin’s manager Philip Casey will be putting a call into his Grange counterpart David Conway to get the inside track on the Offaly side.
It’s pretty unusual for a team to get a second crack at the same provincial grade two years in a row but having qualified by finishing runners-up to Tullamore’s ineligible second team in the Offaly Intermediate (tier 3) competition last year, St Brigid’s went one step further this year, taking their local title with a 5-10 to 0-8 win over Edenderry.
Reason two: perhaps it’s because the only other time St Kevins featured in Leinster club competitions, in the Intermediate championship of 2008, their one and only game was against…none other than St Brigid’s of Croghan.
On a dirty, miserable November day in Geashill, the Offaly side slogged it out to win 1-8 to 0-6 after extra-time with St Kevin’s failing to score from play over the eighty minutes. They’ll hope for better conditions and a better outcome at the weekend.
One man who didn’t feature for St Brigids against Grange last year, but who St Kevin’s will need to keep under wrap is Ben Kennedy, a former Offaly underage player who suffered a badly broken leg in a work accident a couple of years ago. Pushed up from defence in the second half against Edenderry he weighed in with an astonishing 3-2 as they ran out convincing winners that day.
They were comfortable against Laois side Timahoe in the opening round in Leinster as well, with midfielder Dan Molloy the star man this time in a 1-20 to 2-4 stroll.
St Kevin’s won’t fear them, though. They emerged unbeaten through a tough Kildare championship and know that our junior champions have produced two of the last three winners of this grade in Leinster.
That said, two Offaly teams, Clonbullogue and Ballinagar, have triumphed in the last five years as well, so whoever comes out on top on Saturday will fancy their chances of going all the way.
St Kevin’s were comfortable, as would be expected, against a Muckalee team who hadn’t seen action for five months in Kilkenny, running out sixteen-point winners on a day when they fielded without star forwards Conor Murray and Barry Noone. Both are expected to return and they will be needed.
They’ll need to avoid the concession of sloppy goals that afflicted them in the 4-20 to 2-10 win over a very young Muckalee team while, despite the scoreline, they were not as accurate in front of the posts as they would have wanted.
Improvement needed, but if they can get back to the form that saw them deservedly take the Kildare crown, St Kevin’s can continue Kildare’s good recent record in this competition.
