DON’T WRITE OFF THE MAC

Mcgovern warns rivals that Amateur League’s serial winners will still be a threat in the hunt for trophies this season

KEVIN MCGOVERN is confident Immaculata have the quality to hunt down the best in the chase for Amateur League honours this season.

The West Belfast outfit, champions just three years ago, sent out a reminder of their class on Saturday with an 8-1 Border Cup dismantling of Ballywalter Rec, with Mcgovern and his brother Sean both on the scoresheet alongside hat-tricks apiece from James Mcnally and Brian “Bru” Mccaul.

Their biggest win of the season aside, however, Immaculata have already lost four games in all competitions this campaign, all of which came in just over a fortnight with backto-back league losses and exits in both the Irish and Steel Cups.

For some, their struggles back in August were more evidence that the Mac, once beyond question the finest team in the Amateur League, are a fading force.

But Mcgovern, whose strike on Saturday took his tally to six for the new campaign, begs to differ.

He is adamant that the Grosvenor Road men remain a “force to be reckoned with”, once they get all their key men back.

And certainly he has a point. The likes of “Bru”, Ciaran Murray, James Haughey, Collie O’riordan and Mcgovern’s brother Sean would walk into almost every other team in the Premier Division.

But they are no use on the sidelines, with Murray (suspended) and Haughey (ankle) unavailable, O’riordan only fit enough for a place on the bench on Saturday, while the likes of Adrian Oliver (knee) and Joe Mcclenaghan (Achilles) are still some way off a return.

So for Mcgovern, himself set to undergo surgery on his knee next month, and manager Tony Heagney, who has been forced into playing himself over recent weeks, getting them out onto the pitch at the same time is key.

“It has been shocking here with injuries, it’s been very, very bad, I’ve never seen anything like it, so we’ve just been struggling,” explained Mcgovern.

“But we’re just going to try and knuckle down in the league and see what we can do in it and the Border.

“We’ve never really had a good run in the Border so it’d be nice to do well in that, and in the league, Crumlin Star are looking well but if we can get our full squad out, we’ll be scary, we really will be.

“But it’s just getting everybody back. Maybe next year we’ll be back, maybe after Christmas when Ciaran is back, his goals could maybe make all the difference.”

Into his second season as manager after he was handpicked by Kevin Lawlor as his successor, Heagney added a few reinforcements over the summer, with James Begley and Emmett Templeton bolstering the midfield, while Begley’s brother Eddie has slotted in at centre back.

Like Mcgovern, the Mac chief is excited about the potential of his squad but is even more exasperated than his forward about the setbacks his club have had to contend with, chief among them the ban dished out to former Cliftonville ace Murray who won’t be available until after Christmas.

Even so, it says much about the strength of his squad that he can turn to a player of Mccaul’s calibre to deputise.

“Bru was at centre half at the start of the season and we’ve had to put him up at centre forward and he’s been playing brilliant,” said Heagney.

“He scored a hat-trick on Saturday and he scored a hat-trick a few weeks back as well so he’s been very, very good.

“But we’re going to lose him too, he’s going to Australia, but hopefully Ciaran Murray will be back around that time and hopefully he can step in.”

Assessing the season ahead, Heagney agrees reigning champions Crumlin Star are setting the standards these days in the Amateur League.

He admits he envies how settled Paul Trainor’s team appears to be, but feels the Mac are a match for them or anyone else for that matter on their day.

“Crumlin Star are the best team in the league, no doubt, and they seem to have the same squad of players, the same starting XI, which is what we did when we won the league and the cup,” said Heagney.

“It’s a great thing to have, if you know who’s going to be there every week, so they’re the team everyone has to catch.

“If you’re asking me if we can challenge them, I think yes we can if we get everyone back. We’ve been unlucky in the games we have been beaten, in those games we have been on top, but with being so short up top, we just couldn’t take our chances to kill them off.

“But once we get those players back, yeah, why not, of course we have a chance, we wouldn’t be in football if we didn’t think that.”

In seasons gone by, Immaculata have revelled in their reputation as the Amateur League’s most feared giantkillers, clearly relishing the chance to claim the scalps of the big boys in the Irish Cup and Steel & Sons.

But early exits in both competitions mean new targets have been identified, with Heagney now setting his sights on breaking the club’s duck in the Border Cup.

“To be totally honest, it wasn’t one of the cups we targeted, but now that we are out of the Steel & Sons we need other targets and in the Border Cup we’ve been given a home draw

[against Comber],” said the Mac boss.

“Comber put us out of the Irish Cup, and that is one of the worst performances

I’ve ever seen from a

Mac team, no lie, there were words said after it, but hopefully we have turned a corner from then.

“Comber have signed a few players. The big lad [Aaron] Mckinney who was doing the damage for St Luke’s, they’ve signed him plus a couple of other players who are dangerous, so it will be a difficult game, but we’re at home, and we always fancy ourselves at home no matter who we play.”

NEWCASTLE chief Paddy Baker watched his team climb into third place in the league on Saturday with a 4-2 derby win over Kilmore – then insisted promotion is not on the radar.Baker, the new man in charge at Shimna after replacing Ciaran Brannigan over the summer, endured a baptism of fire at the start of the season, losing five of his first six games in charge of a team he served loyally as a goalkeeper for some 15 years.But just recently, with back-to-back victories in the league, things have begun to settle down, with their weekend win dragging them joint level with second-placed Larne Tech on nine points.Nevertheless, Baker admits that at the outset, the signs were ominous for Newcastle who seemed to be following a depressing pattern of clubs who unravel spectacularly after losing their manager.An 8-1 drubbing by Larne Tech on the opening day of the season set alarm bells ringing, with another 13 goals shipped in back-to-back games against Killyleagh appearing to confirm a club in crisis.The new Newcastle chief, who spent all his playing days between the sticks for the club before serving for four years as second team boss, always felt those heavy defeats skewed the picture, with the Tech and Killyleagh heavily tipped for promotion.And in any case, he feels is it the games against teams on a par with his own, like this Saturday’s trip to an in-form Orangefield, which will make or break their season. “The first four games we played, we had Killyleagh twice and away to Larne Tech, and I said to the boys, games against them aren’t going to determine our season,” said Baker.“Those two teams will be in the top three at the end of the season, so I said it’s games against teams in and around ourselves, teams like Rosario, St Pat’s, Malachians, Sirocco – playing against teams like that is going to determine our season.“From what I have seen, Killyleagh and Larne Tech are above anybody else we have played.“They are two good sides, so it’s against the other teams where we really need to pick up points.”Indeed, as his squad finally