Slaughtneil feel the heat as drive for double coup is stepped up

SUCCESS continues to breed success for Dublin at the highest level but it still continues to prove a driving force within the Slaughtneil club.

Yet to achieve it on an ongoing basis requires ferocious commitment, driving ambition and robust self-belief.

Slaughtneil could be said to have these qualities in spades but what they don’t have is an unlimited supply of players.

Instead, it’s because they just happen to have so many competitors who are equally at home in either football or hurling that they are currently in the running for their sixth successive Derry hurling crown and fifth football title on the trot.

From time to time in recent years, Slaughtneil’s talent factory has been forced to work overtime and this will certainly be the case between Sunday and Wednesday.

With several players including Conor McAllister, Meehaul McGrath, Chrissy McKaigue (above), Cormac O’Doherty, Se McGuigan and Francis McEldowney ready to do duty against Banagher in Sunday’s hurling decider, they also face the pressure of recovering in time for Wednesday’s Senior Football Championship quarter-final replay against Eoghan Rua Coleraine.

With Brendan Rodgers, one of the club’s stellar players, forced to miss both games because of an ongoing injury problem it underlines just how much the reigning champions in both codes will be tested.