No shocks as quest for Senior football honours kicks off

THIS weekend finally saw the start of the Senior Football Championship.

Some interesting games and results but no great shocks. The two standout games of the first round were the St. Pat’s v. Eire Og and the champions Rathnew v. Kiltegan.

As a result of the wedding of one of their players St. Pat’s were missing a few regulars, however, they showed their credentials with an impressive victory and marched straight into the comfort of the winners group.

Kiltegan pushed Rathnew all the way but alas now head into the losers group where they, along with Eire Og, will be the two teams the others in the losers group will want to avoid.

If reports are correct that both Leighton and Seanie are heading Stateside to play I am sure Rathnew will be delighted to have advanced in this potentially tricky encounter and their place in the winners group will afford some of their missing players some time.

With 2-4 to his name against Rathnew Seanie Furlong would be a major loss should be unavailable for Kiltegan’s next game.

Tommy Kelly’s two goal salvo sealed the deal for St. Pat’s and Eire Og will wonder “what if” Stephen Kelly was available to mark him.

No doubt all teams have to be prepared for injuries and the extra games that Eire Og have to face in the SFC will enable them address his loss.

There were difficult games for the Group teams and Aughrim and all three suffered big defeats.

Of all the new managerial appointments this year I felt that whoever took the Aughrim position had one of the biggest challenges on their hands. Fair play to Trevor Doyle who took over this role.

He knew from the outset that they weren’t going to win the championship and that success for him and his team would be to retain their senior status.

This is a difficult job especially trying to keep numbers up at training while also trying to introduce new young players to not just adult football but senior football.

Aughrim had done really well to retain their senior status last year but it was a struggle and now that they find themselves this time round in the losers group. It will be a huge achievement to stay up and I wish them well in their attempts.

Despite failing miserably over the last couple of years to reduce the number of teams in the senior championship to 12 another attempt will be made again this year and hopefully for the sake of improving standards at senior level they will be successful this time round.

I find it a crazy scenario that senior club teams can be relegated while group teams can just simply reapply to participate. That surely is not fair to the smaller clubs.

The local derby in the north of the county saw Bray Emmets and the North District meet in Ashford last Saturday. The scoreline wasn’t really a true reflection on the game.

However, with Aaron Murphy running the show Bray were worthy winners and with the benefit of a good draw could be contenders for the semi-finals at least.

It’s interesting to see the amount of dual players on the Bray football team this year. I believe that there are at least ten involved in both teams and I know from my time in Carnew what a significant challenge this can be.

From accounts it appears, for various reasons, that the North District team didn’t have the same preparation as last year.

This year they are only picking from Kilmac, Enniskerry, Kilcoole and An Tochar.

I did think that picking from six clubs last year was pushing it a bit even when taking into consideration that Fergal Ogs didn’t have a player making the team.

When you look at the pick the North District has compared to the small clubs like Aughrim or Coolkenno it is startling.

Newcastle are not involved this year with the group team as they have decided to concentrate on their own championship and that is fair enough.

They could ill afford to lose one of their top players to injury. Also An Tochar have been badly hit this year by injuries and players emigrating and in fact only had one player on the starting fifteen against Bray - Peter Byrne in goal.

Their number of representatives is well down on the six players who had starting roles in 2015.

The North District manager, Philip McGillycuddy, will be delighted with the performances of Stephen Morgan, Luke O’Callaghan, Ronan Keddy, Dan Kelly and Gavin Barton and with a kind draw and more time together they will be hopeful of advancing from the losers’ group.

With Kilmac and Kilcoole very strong contenders this year respectively for the Intermediate and Junior “A” Championships I am sure it has been very difficult for the management to get the North District players together as often as they would have liked.

That is one of the many challenges with group teams and you have to have strong people at the helm and players willing to go the extra yard to make it work.

So no great surprises to date and we now know our eight teams in the losers group. This is where it gets serious and four teams will very soon know that they are in choppy waters with their senior status hanging by a thread. May the best teams survive.

Great win for Tyrone in Ulster and they could very well go on to dominate Ulster again.

The Dubs with six Leinster titles in a row matched the great Heffo’s team of the 70s and 80s and strolled into another quarter-final where they will probably face their first test of the year.

With Mayo in the Qualifiers it could be more interesting for the Dubs.

Sad times for Roscommon. I would say Kevin McStay is sorry now that they didn’t try to win the game the first day when they should at least have tried to generate a shot when in the Galway half.

That defeat for Roscommon will be hard to return from and I don’t expect them to figure from here on in.