MICHAEL Warnock says that Glen must reset and aim to push for an All-Ireland title after the Derry champions toppled Kilcoo on Sunday to win their first Ulster crown.
The south Derry men will face Galway and first-time Connacht champions Moycullen in an All-Ireland semi-final on the weekend of January 7/8.
The experienced Glen defender said: “Our ambitions have to go further again. We can’t rest on our laurels and say Ulster is good enough. You’re potentially two games away from an All-Ireland, and we have an All-Ireland semi-final against a great outfit in Galway. We’ll try and soak this in, enjoy the next few days and go at it again.”
Glen have now won back-to-back county championships and claimed a provincial title at the second time of asking – and there appears a feeling they are fit for the All-Ireland stage given that they just knocked out the defending champions on Sunday.
“We were extremely disappointed losing last year [to Kilcoo in the Ulster semi-finals], but we knew we had the potential to come back and give it another rattle. We said in the past that we had to beat Slaughtneil to be the best team in Derry and thankfully we’ve done that the last two years. And to win Ulster, you had to beat Kilcoo and thankfully we’ve done that now.”
Glen’s sprint start, where they raced into a 0-5 to no score lead after 11 minutes of Sunday’s Ulster final, laid the foundations for an historic victory.
“We knew what we were going to come up against after last year,” said 29-year-old Warnock who made his championship debut in 2010 against Coleraine.
“One mistake cost us the game and that was going to be no different in this game. I thought for the first 15 minutes we were absolutely awesome, we went after their kick-out and managed to put them under serious pressure, which we tried to do last year. In fairness, they got away last year. But to get over the line is very, very special.”
