Thompson hopeful Tigers can consolidate their place in the top ranks this time around

Tigers head coach, Mick Thompson is hopeful his players can consolidate their place in DLBB Division One at the second time of asking, as they gear up for a return to the top ranks of the league later this year.

The Maynooth side open up their campaign against Meteors on October 8th, hoping to better their top-flight run of 2024/25 which saw them relegated back to Division Two only a year after they had secured promotion.

Their return to Division One has been just as swift in coming, and Thompson is confident they will be better equipped to take on the top sides this time around, thanks both to the experience of having previously competed at the highest level, before also coming through a battle-hardening Division Two campaign that saw them clinch that title in their closing game of the season.

Certainly the Tigers boss believes the disappointment of not having secured their Division One status last year fuelled the desire of his players to make a quick return to the top ranks.

“I guess the starting point really was the disappointment that we had gotten relegated the year before and we did feel that we had let ourselves down,” he said.

“We lost a lot of close games in Division One. We had a number of injuries and it was a step-up as well. We just needed a little while to adjust to the pace, but unfortunately we were relegated.

“There was definitely a mind-set of we need to right this. That was the theme for the year really, to fix that, and they did.

“We lost just one game all season against Tolka Rovers. And the last game of the season, interestingly, was against Tolka which meant that whoever won that game, would effectively win the league.

“We won that game by two, so it was an exciting finish to the league, because Éanna were in the mix as well. They’re connected to Griffith College, so they had an American player in via that connection and they were very strong as well.

“We had played them a couple of weeks before [the final game against Tolka] and we beat them in triple overtime.

“It really was a very exciting league, and our players worked really hard throughout the whole season, there's no doubt about that,” he stressed.

Landing the Division Two title is not the only source of encouragement for this Tigers outfit, who will also by buoyed by their first ever foray into the NICC National Intermediate Cup that saw them progress all the way through to the quarter finals where they eventually came undone against near neighbours and former champions, Liffey Celtics.

“The thing that we did last year, which I think made a huge difference, was that we entered the National Intermediate Cup when we were in Division Two,” insisted Thompson.

“Tigers had never entered that before. It was little unusual maybe, but that's where we had our mind-set.

“We made the quarter-finals of that and we had two good wins. We beat Maigh Cuilinn away, we beat Brunell and then we eventually lost to Liffey Celtics in the quarter-final” he recalled.

Now poised to reacquaint themselves with Celtics and other top sides in DLBB, Thompson is looking forward to leading his team into another Division One campaign, remarking “We feel good and we feel confident that we're going to be very competitive this season.

“All of the players from last year have stayed on, and there are also a couple of Under 18s from the club who are with the team at the moment.

“We have 12 at training, which is great. We ran a smaller squad last year when we had just eight or nine at times, so that's why we have room to build now,” he said.