UPWARDLY MOBILE
Carlow boss Carew has high hopes for new term
“It is time we started getting up the table”
IT CAN be taken as a measure of Niall Carew’s service to Carlow that he is now the fourth longest serving manager in Gaelic football.
The only three ahead of him in that list are Kieran McGeeney, Dessie Farrell and Pádraic Joyce, all of whom have carried their teams into deep summer and the hope of the biggest prize in recent seasons.
No such prospect for Carew, who took over from Turlough O’Brien in mid-summer 2020, and now heads out into yet another Division 4 League campaign.
Having served previously with Waterford and Sligo, he is into a very different kind of glory game.
‘Obviously every manager wants to win as many trophies as he can but my biggest thing going into teams in Division 3 and Division 4 is to make sure that we can improve the whole set-up and improve the whole culture of it and in time then you can get to see the results,’ explained Carew.
‘Last year, we were lucky enough to win a few games in the Tailteann Cup, we had big wins over Longford, Wicklow and New York, so we got three championship wins in the one year and that was very good for our lads.
‘That is the sort of progress that keeps the likes of myself going.’
It is six years since Carlow, with the wind at their sails and O’Brien at the helm, last made it out of Division 4 but Carew (left) believes that something is building again. Laois and Longford are the favourites this time, but football’s bottom tier is never a safe place to make an investment on those earmarked as favourites and it may be
no different this time around. ‘You have Longford, Laois, Tipperary, Wexford, Leitrim, you could throw a blanket over the whole lot of us.
‘Going to London or even when they travel over here is never easy either, while Waterford can be a tricky team so I think you can throw a blanket over all of Division 4 and you will find that everyone can beat one another and 10 points will probably get you promoted,’ suggested Carew, who is confident his own team can be in the mix to go up.
‘We should be over the building stage and it is time that we started getting up the table.
‘I know you can say that I am five years with Carlow but it is probably my third year with this group of players so we feel we have developed really well and they are improving every year.
‘Keeping them together was the key over the last two years and now they are in their third year and we have the experience.
‘We had to build a completely new team from when Turlough finished up because a lot of those boys were in their 30s and they could not go on forever.
‘The only one left from that time is Darragh Foley so this is a brand new team but I think they are in a good place and our aspirations will be as high as everyone else in Division 4.’
In many ways, the advent of the
Tailteann Cup has doubled the stakes for bottom-tier counties, ensuring that they now have two competitions in which they believe they can be a genuine contender,
However, much as it was accepted as a foolproof observation — until Dublin blew it apart last year — that a Division 2 team could not win the All-Ireland, the same argument is now being made about the Tailteann Cup being out of the reach of Division 4 teams.
In the two years it has been in place, it has been won by Division 2 and 3 counties in Meath and Westmeath respectively.
However, while conceding that playing in a higher division would be an advantage, Carew believes that a bottom-tier team can still be credible challengers for the Tailteann Cup.
‘I do think it is quite tangible for any Division 4 team to win the Tailteann Cup. The gap is obviously not near as big as trying to win the Sam Maguire so lads know they have something to play for.
‘In fairness, the media and the GAA have done a good job promoting the Tailteann Cup and it is something that is tangible for us. That is a big carrot for all teams in Division 4.
‘Westmeath would have beaten us in the quarter-final two years ago. I would have felt that we could have sneaked that game even though Westmeath were full value for the win at the end of it.
‘When it gets to a quarter-final stage, you just don’t know. I do believe a Division 4 team will win the Tailteann Cup, whether it is next year or the year after but I can see that happening sooner rather than later,’ predicted Carew.
“Tailteann Cup is a big carrot for us”