Footballing sides
and came through a tough encounter with Annacurra to get their campaign up and running in impressive fashion.
The Sugarloaf side are a young and talented side who can hit teams hard from all directions. They have pace, creativity, physical strength, height in places and are a major force.
Mark King’s side followed this with significant wins over Ballymanus (1-10 to 0-9), Ballinacor (2-13 to 2-7), Laragh (2-15 to 0-8), and Coolkenno (2-10 to 0-10.
Four majors got past Niall King over the course of the championship, two against Ballinacor, but what was most impressive in terms of defence was their performance against Coolkenno where Cian Rafferty announced himself to the defensive world of Wicklow GAA as a serious contender as a full-back after nullifying the threat of Don Jackman and company.
Dunlavin will ask questions of the Kilmacanogue defence in different ways. The lightning fast Cian O’Sullivan will need serious minding while the creative and talented Shane Carthy will look for any weaknesses and attempt to exploit these with his impressive footballing intelligence. If Carthy fires on Sunday it will be a major boost to Dunlavin’s chances.
Neither Daniel Dawson or Gary Allen started against Kilcoole, that may very well change as Jonathan Daniels looks to make a major impression early in this game and not allow the likes of simon Doyle or Niall Meldon get a grip on proceedings and start feeding ball to the lethal Sam O’Callaghan inside.
There are huge clashes to be anticipated in the middle third with the likes of Eoin Murtagh, AAron Phelan, Mark Reid and Paul Murtagh coming up against Robert Conan, Andrew Molloy, Gavan Burke and Ben O’Callaghan. Who proves dominant in this area will have a major bearing on proceedings.
The heartache and pain from the 2017 final defeat to Hollywood is a thing of the past for this Dunlavin side.
Both teams can dream of making serious and realistic inroads at Senior level if they are successful on Sunday as both have youth and ambition on their side.
May the best team win.