KILCOO were without county stars Darragh O’Hanlon, Paul Devlin (knee injuries) and Dylan Ward (shoulder) when they overcame a determined challenge from Mayobridge in the first round of the Down Championship on Sunday. S
Two goals from Jerome Johnston and second half majors from Ryan Johnston and Micheal Rooney meant ‘The Magpies’ progressed with a six-point win and assistant-manager Conleith Gilligan says Devlin and Ward are both “on the way back”.
However, neither will be rushed into action and luckless O’Hanlon and Chrissy Rooney face longer on the sidelines as they recover from knee injuries. With the second round coming up this weekend, Gilligan says that keeping players fit is an ongoing challenge for all clubs.
“It was a condensed league campaign and the big thing with all the teams now is that the championship is so short and it’s about how many of your players you can keep fit,” he said.
“We had really bad luck during the league – Darragh O’Hanlon, Paul Devlin, Dylan Ward and Chrissy Rooney all got injured. Darragh hurt his knee again. It was the same knee he needed the ACL operation on, this time the ACL was intact but he needed another operation. He has had terrible luck with injuries but he is working his way through the rehab again.
“Chrissy had an operation to fix the meniscus in his knee, Dylan has a shoulder problem and Paul came down on his knee jumping for a ball in a league game.
“Dylan is on the way back but it’s hard to know the timeframe and Paul is on the way back as well but you just can’t rush it. All the protocols have to be followed and you have to hit all the markers before you can even think of looking at them.”
Despite the absence of the injured quartet, the big-game experience in the Kilcoo ranks was evident again in the championship opener against Mayobridge. Mickey Moran’s side have won eight of the last nine Down titles, are the reigning Ulster club champions (the competition wasn’t played last year) and reached the All-Ireland final in 2019.
The Eoghan Rua outfit trailed by two points at half-time on Sunday but controlled the second half and although Rooney’s last-minute goal gave the scoreline a one-sided look that was harsh on Mayobridge, the reigning champions deserved their victory.
“At half-time we didn’t say too much,” said Gilligan.
“A lot of the stuff we were working on was just that ass too short and our execution in front of goal was poor – we were snatching at shots. So we just told them to relax and once the boys got into their groove we played well in patches.
“Mayobridge are a brilliant team and they’re well set up. In fairness to Ciaran (McKeever) he has them motoring really well and we knew going into today that we would have to be good to get a result.
“In any championship match, goals tend to be the difference. Every time we were under the cosh a bit we broke through and we got one and that was massive.”
Mayobridge manager McKeever was bitterly disappointed with the final result on Sunday. He felt his players had played into Kilcoo’s hands during the second half when they failed recapture the cohesion and fluency that had been so impressive in the first half.
“We helped them massively because we were going down the other end and giving them the ball,” said McKeever, whose side will regroup for the qualifiers this weekend.
“We weren’t as clinical as we were in the first half. We weren’t getting the ball dead, we weren’t using the ball smartly, we were going into contact and we were taking pot-shots and forcing long kicks inside that they were reading.
“So we made the job easy for them because we gave them energy, we gave them the ball and we allowed them to come at us by doing that. A lot of it was down to our own failings by not using the ball smartly the way we did in the first half.”
