Ballyduff’s firepower to see them through

COUNTY SHC ROUND 1

HERE we go again, for the second year in succession Abbeydorney and Ballyduff meet in the first round of the championship.

Last year the eventual champions edged O’Dorney by the minimum – 0-13 to 0-12 – and we could be in store for another tight and tense encounter on the John Joe Sheehy Road this Saturday evening.

Abbeydorney will be quietly fancying their chances of causing an upset here. Ballyduff are notoriously slow starters in this competition and this year there’s a good chance that’ll be exacerbated by the earlier start.

To us this looks a game Abbeydorney have to be winning. Ballyduff we think can probably cope with an early defeat, but for O’Dorney there’s a need to start this championship as they mean to go on.

It’s a shame Abbeydorney are set to be without Michael O’Leary for this weekend’s game – he’s on holiday according to his manager Ian Maunsell – as O’Dorney will probably need all the fire-power they can muster against the green and white.

If O’Dorney are to triumph they’ll need big games from the likes of Nigel Roche and Brendan O’Leary, who might not even feature in the forwards (he started on the half-back line in the first round last year). O’Leary’s form for the Kingdom suggests, however, that it would be well worth Abbeydorney’s while starting him up front or in the middle of the park.

All the same it’s very hard to look past Ballyduff. They’re missing two of their starting full-back line for the county final last year – Ally O’Connor and Cathal Kearney – but even so they retain the core of a team that went close to beating eventual All Ireland intermediate champions Kanturk.

At the back they still have Eoin Ross and Paud Costello. At midfield they can field Daniel and Anthony O’Carroll, while up front they have three Boyles available to them as well as Jack O’Sullivan (a year older and more experienced) and Jack Goulding.

There’s a reason Ballyduff are county champions. They’re a very good team. Abbeydorney must hope they start as slow as they traditionally have done and that they play to their best themselves.

It’s more than possible, but we’d still expect that little bit of extra Ballyduff magic up front – Goulding scored 1-1 for Kerry last weekend – to prove the difference

Verdict: Ballyduff