St. Joseph's Miltown senior side get their 2010 championship underway this Saturday in Quilty at 4pm with Rory Hickey as referee. Miltown have been plagued with injuries in the run up to the game with definitely Graham Kelly and probably Gordon Kelly both our inter-county players likely to miss the game.
The third member of the Kelly clan Barry has a major milestone in his refereeing career on Saturday when he takes a charge of his first senior championship game betwen Cratloe and St. Josephs Doora Barefield also at 4pm on Saturday in Cusack Park.
Miltown will enter the game against Liscannor as underdogs but all within the club are hoping that the effort put in is reflected in the performance on the day and a winning start is secured.
The following is the preview from this week's Clare Champion of the game:
Liscannor v Miltown, St Joseph’s
LISCANNOR’S defeat of Cooraclare in their last Cusack Cup game came at the perfect time. Defeat would have relegated them to Garry Cup, while the win means that they could escape demotion. Even if they don’t, winning that game set Liscannor up nicely for this weekend’s game against Miltown. Although short of a number or regulars, St Joseph’s recorded an impressive win away to Clondegad to given themselves a morale boost, similar to Liscannor.
Liscannor manager Martin Guerin is focusing purely on Miltown and is hopeful that his team’s form has picked up at the right time.
“It would be foolish to be thinking past the first game. That’s going to be a real battle against our neighbours who beat us in the Cusack Cup but we’ll give it 110% and hopefully the result will be in our favour,” the former Liscannor footballer said.
“Everybody seems to think that this is the group of death but at the same time people would fancy Kilmurry and Kilkee to come out of the group. But you have to take every game as it comes and just see what happens,” he added.
His Miltown counterpart, Michael Neylon feels that a win this weekend would set his team up for a good eight weeks, before the second round of the championship on August 7.
“The focus from the beginning would always have been to try and get off to a good start, particularly given there’s a lay-off of eight weeks. It’s a long time to dwell on a defeat,” he reflected.
“There’s a lot to play for in the group and there’s local derbies all round. Liscannor and ourselves were actually linked up for a 21 campaign some years back,” the Miltown manager noted.
Miltown have a solid goalkeeper in Conor O’Loughlin and good defenders in Enda Malone and Gordon Kelly, if he is fit to play. His brother, Graham, is very unlikely to have recovered from an arm injury in time.
Elsewhere, they will need big performances from Dessie Molohan if he is recovered from injury, Seán Meade, Micheál Malone and Eoin Curtin if they are to get the better of Liscannor.
The 2002 and 2008 county finalists will once again turn to players like Brian and Niall Considine, Kieran Considine, Ronan Slattery, Alan Clohessy and Darragh Blake to steer them to what should be a narrow victory.
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