ARMAGH get their Nickey Rackard Cup campaign underway this weekend and a good start is vital according to goalkeeper Simon Doherty.
Roscommon are no strangers to the Orchard County as Sunday’s clash will be the third meeting between the sides in five weeks.
“We had two incredible battles with Roscommon both in the league group stage and then the league semi-final.” Said Doherty. “Roscommon beat us at the end of the league game and then we had a really strong last five or six minutes to beat Roscommon in the semi-final.
“We’re well aware of the qualities that Roscommon have, and they’ll bring to the game because we’ve played them twice already this season and they were two really titanic games.
“We’re under no illusion, the importance of this Sunday’s game as well. It’s really, really important to start your championship campaign well and hopefully get two points on the board.
“You have two teams who have played against each other within the last number of weeks and two teams who would have studied each other as well. It’s going to be a puck of the ball between the two teams.”
It’s a stacked Nickey Rackard Cup and Doherty, a two-time Champions 15 Allstar, believes there are four teams with realistic ambitions of winning the competition.
“You’ve got I suppose in reality, four teams that would say they fancy themselves to get to Croke Park, to get to the final. I would suggest Roscommon, Donegal, Tyrone and ourselves all would have realistic ambitions of winning the competition.
“There wouldn’t really be anything between those four teams and then you have Fermanagh who have come up from the Lory Meagher Cup last year and winning Division 3B as well.
“And you’ve Warwickshire who are back in the competition, so it’s a very competitive competition.”
The Orchardmen, led by Terence McNaughton, will hope to get back to winning ways following the disappointed of losing to Tyrone in the Division 3A final last weekend.
“Our first half, we’d be very disappointed with our performance level as a team. For whatever reason we just didn’t get things going at the start and I suppose the goal that Tyrone got straight away probably knocked a little bit of stuffing out of us immediately and it took us a bit of time to reset ourselves.
“The goal that we got from Dean (Gaffney) just before half time certainly breathed a bit of life into us and definitely half time came at a good time in terms of trying to reset things and trying to throw caution to the wind and go for it.
“The game was there to be won. Even though we were seven points behind, we felt the game was there to be won. Our second half performance level was much better in terms of scoring efficiency and defence tackling and structure as well.
“If we’d have taken a couple of chances towards the end of the game, we might have got over the line. We have to go again now this Sunday.”
