Last season’s hurt can be source of motivation for rugby seniors

HAVING narrowly avoided relegation at the conclusion of the 2015/16 season, few would have expected Sligo RFC to challenge for the title, and indeed promotion in the 2016/17 season from the Ulster Bank AIL 2C.

But winning the title was their aim last year, and having coming up short in just the final two weeks, Ross Mannion’s charges had to make do with a play-off.

They were unable to overcome Rainey, however, and forced to make do with another year in Division 2C. This year, though, Mannion and his men have their eyes firmly on the prize.

That hurt from not winning the league is still there, but they can use this as motivation, says Mannion.

Tommy Craddock and Stuart O’Brien have been working with the players on strength and conditioning, too.

“I still think we needed to win, unfortunately I think we left the league behind us last year. The lads know that. That’s our motivation going into this season. From when I met Tommy Craddock in relation to fitness, he would have been at a few games last year and he would have seen the work put in.

“Realistically we fell short last year and we have to be honest. You have to look at what went wrong so when I met him (Tommy) and spoke to him, he said he wants us to blow the league away and not be looking like ‘oh we can allow ourselves four losses and x amount of bonus points’. I do think the league will be a little bit more competitive this year. There’s four strong teams coming into it, the two that have come down, Thomond and Bective and the two that have come up in Omagh and Malahide.”

Pre-season is in full flow at the moment, with four weeks now under their belt.

“This is week four of our pre-season now and we kind of go into a low load week next week. So far it’s really good. We have Tommy Craddock and Stuart O’Brien doing the strength and conditioning so the lads will be very much on form come that first game in September in terms of fitness and in terms of strength. There should be no excuses,” he told The Sligo Champion.

“We’re probably back in a week ahead of where we are and a week ahead of other clubs from what I’m looking at. I’d be hoping that it will be a big factor along with the brand of rugby we’re trying to play,” he added.

In terms of personnel. There won’t be too many unfamiliar faces lining out for the club this year. Although, with over six weeks to go until the season kicks off, there is still time.

“We’ve retained pretty much the whole squad from last year bar three. Three lads have moved on, travel etc and one has retired.” Mannion said.

“We have two local lads coming back in James Wilson and Mark Butler, he was travelling for a few years. He will be a big addition. We have a couple of young lads coming up from the Under 18s, we have Ross Hickey coming up, Graham Kerr was part of the squad last year along with Kuba (Wojtkowicz). Niall Gray as well is coming up from the 18.5s and Philip Carr so there’s a few there. There’s a natural progression of local lads coming into the squad.

“There’s two or three other guys who will be potentially coming into the squad, we know they’re coming to Sligo trough work and travel so we have to wait and see what standard they are at and where they fit in.”

Matthew Cosgrove, who missed out last season due to injury, is back in the fold.

“Matty is nearly full on. He’s pretty much back to full training. He’s done really well. He’s ahead of schedule with the injury, looking really promising for him. It’s just making sure he’s 1005 on 16th of September, it could be a bit later.”

Planning for the season ahead isn’t helped, however, by the fact that the fixture lists have not yet been released.

That is due to the ongoing discussions over whether or not two South African teams will join the PRO12. This would have a knock on effect for AIL clubs.

“The dates are released but the fixtures aren’t. It could be brought a week forward or moved a week back. We don’t know. The league is following the same format. It’s a bit scattered at the minute, we haven’t got the fixtures yet because of this whole thing with the two South African teams potentially joining the PRO12. If they join it will affect the fixtures at a PRO level which then in turn will have a knock on effect to the Eagles squads which will then affect us. The first game is down for September 16th, for the AIL team and the Development team.

They’ve move up to J1 in Connacht so that will be a big challenge as well. It’s what we need, if we have our development team at the highest level they can play at then it will help our AIL squad and our goal is to get up to 2A in the next two seasons.”

The aim for the Senior team is to win the 2C. Nothing less will do Mannion this year,

Our aim is to win 2C and get up to 2B. And with the development team it’s to try and consolidate. We have to be realistic with the junior league with our depth. If everyone stays injury free, which is part of what we’ve looked at, monitoring players and their wellness then we should be well able to compete in J1 and AIL 2C.”

Sligo RFC’s first outing this season will be the Connacht Senior League pre the AIL where they face Galwegians at home on August 19th.