Preparing for battle

AT last the dress rehearsals are over and the Dacia Cars Senior Hurling Championship moves on to the business end of the competition where a defeat will mean something more than numbers on a scoreboard.

From here on, in the sparsely populated landscape of Senior hurling in Wicklow, every match matters, every ball must be played with vigour and passion and mistakes will no longer be fixable. Defeat from here on in means your championship is over, victory earns the right to face the top dogs in the last four.

Those top dogs are defending champions Glenealy and last year’s beaten finalists Bray Emmets who await the winners of the quarter-final battles between Carnew Emmets and Kiltegan and St Patrick’s and Éire Óg Greystones. And what battles they promise to be.

All the teams have shown improvement with each passing week as more and more hurling is being done. To be able to hurl you have to be hurling and that basic law of the game is there for all to see with Carnew Emmets toppling Bray Emmets and Pat’s requiring something of a magician’s performance to get past a tough and determined Kiltegan side.

In Pearse’s Park in Arklow, Éire Óg Greystones pushed the defending champions hard and will be a major obstacle for Michael Neary’s men in the last-eight battle.

The Greystones men will want to follow last year’s achievement of reaching a county semi-final and to go further if at all possible but to do that they will have to come up with a plan to handle Andy O’Brien. Michael Arrigan lined out at number three against Glenealy but the services of Stephen Kelly to combat the scoring power of his county colleague might be utilised.

The danger for Éire Óg is that they focus too much on O’Brien and neglect the potential of George O’Brien, Patrick Murphy and Terry Healy. The chances of that happening are slim.

Michael Neary’s headaches come in the form of Andy Walsh who has been tormenting defences in his last few games and he will give John Connors plenty to worry about not to mention the likes of Peter Keane, James Cranley and Anto Byrne.

The other mouthwatering clash sees James Hickey’s Carnew go head to head with Nigel Byrne’s Kiltegan. This is a game that promises much. Kiltegan’s scalping of the Wexford border side did not go down well over there and they will see this as a huge chance to redeem themselves and prove that they are still a power in the world of Wicklow hurling. Defensively they can have few doubters. It’s at the other end where they can lack a cutting edge, but Enda Donohue continues to lead the charge for Hickey’s soldiers while Timmy Collins was looking very sharp in their victory over Bray at the weekend.

Nigel Byrne’s men will have no fear of Carnew and will be hoping that Seanie Germaine can maintain his super form and that Padraig O’Toole, Rory Finn, Mark Murphy, Liam Keogh, Ronan Byrne and Eoin O’Neill can move to another level to get a second victory over Carnew in the one championship.