‘We didn’t get relegated today’
ASSUMPTIONS will have no place at Dr. Hickey Park on Saturday when Navan come to town. Greystones RFC captain Andrew Kealy feels that although his side may not deserve to be in the play-off, they cannot afford to take their opponents lightly if they want to remain in Division 2A.
Kealy was the victim of defeat on such an occasion five years ago when Naas RFC (currently in Division 1 B) came to Greystones and relegated the hosts to seal their own promotion.
He believes his side have already proven themselves this season and will do so again against the Co. Meath outfit.
“We were just saying that in the huddle there that we shouldn’t get doom and gloom. We didn’t get relegated today. We’ve two big games in the next two weeks. It’s hard after a loss to stay positive particularly when we weren’t too far away. I don’t think Armagh were that much better than us but that’s how tight this league is and it’s a sign of a great league that they can go on now and maybe end up in 1B next year.
“Here today, we were maybe a bounce of the ball or a couple of bad penalties given away by us away from not even having this conversation.
“We’ll try and regroup. It is hard when you’ve lost and you’ve put so much work into the season and now we’re looking at two extra weeks. Now we have to face the play-offs and everyone is talking about relegation when we were so close to being solid this season.
“It’s a great group of lads. We’ve come back in games and we’ll come back from this. People wrote us off before Christmas - I think we were zero (wins) from five at the start of the league but we beat Corinthians last week to give ourselves a chance today. I’d be very hopeful that we’ll get the job done.”
Should ‘Stones best Navan, they will then face either Rainey OB or MU Barnhall, who will also meet this weekend to battle for the honour of meeting Greystones or Navan. Greystones would have home advantage for both ties should they come to fruition but Kealy won’t be carried away by that fact.
“We haven’t had a great home record in the last couple of seasons. It used to be a great fortress for us but we haven’t had a decent home record for a while.
“We’ve lost games that we never should have lost and I actually played against Naas here in a play-off in 2011 or 2012. We were thinking “we’re at home, we’re playing a team a league below us (this should be straightforward)’ but Naas pipped us that day and we went down. It’s a factor but not one you can focus on.
“If you think about it, we’re ninth in this league and the team we’re playing are third in the bottom league so we’re the 29th best team in Ireland and they’re 33rd - there’s nothing between the teams. That’s how we’ll approach it.”