BREDAGH’S Ulster aspirations go no further than the first game says midfielder Mark Patterson as the club aim to grab their first win in the provincial series since 2019, when they reached the last four.
This year is the fourth time the Down club will compete in the competition. Of the previous three occasions, Bredagh have only picked up one victory and so their only goal is to improve on that record.
They face a stiff challenge in the opening round as they take on Donegal champs Burt, who defeated last year’s Ulster Intermediate champions Setanta in the county final, and Patterson knows they’re in for a massive test at Páirc Esler on Sunday.
“This our fourth time in the Ulster series and we’ve only got one win to our name,” described Patterson, who captains the team alongside Michael Woods. “We got beat by the Antrim champions in our last two years, by Creggan last year and St Enda’s in the semi-final (2019).
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“I think our ambition is to just get one win under our belt and you can’t really look too much past that. It’s a formidable outfit first up in Burt so can’t wait for it and we won’t be taking them lightly at all.
“They seem to be a big physical team from all I’ve seen so far, and I think with any team in Ulster, it’s going to be a tight match anyway so we can’t look past them at all and I think it’s going to be a big, big battle.
“The Donegal champions won Ulster last year and Burt turned them over in the county final, so I think it’ll be a very tight contest. We’ve won two finals in Páirc Esler in the past two years, we just missed out against Creggan last year by a point.
“I think we’re well used to the Páirc Esler pitch and we like playing there. It’s not a home advantage, but it’s a nice pitch, we’ve played great games on it. Every team in the Intermediate, it’s all very tight but it’s always nice to be playing this time of year.”
Bredagh contested the Senior Championship group stages in the Mourne County this season but finished bottom of the table and dropped down into Intermediate. Patterson hopes that experience of playing at the higher grade will stand to them.
“The bottom two drop down, so we shipped maybe one or two tanking’s from the Ards teams and then we got one win over Liatroim in Cherryville and then Carryduff beat us in the round robin,” explained Patterson.
“It’s good preparation too, there’s probably not a lot of teams in the Intermediate Championship who are playing senior teams for the past month or so, so it is really good preparation.
“We’re well seasoned now; we’ve been doing that for the past four or five years and hopefully it stands to us a bit. We’re a seasoned team and there’s a good bit of youth coming in too.
“We were looking at our forwards and there are six different forwards there now from this time last year, so guys are leaving and stuff like that but we’re still staying at the same level.
“I think we want a bit more success in Intermediate because we are playing senior a bit more regularly in the county and that’s where our ambitions are at the minute anyway.”