Confidence is sky high, says Miley
Midfielder in joyous mood
THERE’S no real secret to Wicklow’s success in the Lidl Ladies National Football League this season.
Nine wins from nine games only happens because a group of players buy into the managers ideas, work their butts off and do everything they can to improve.
Midfielder isn’t a flashy position. You’re not going to be the hero too often, it’s about doing the correct thing with the utmost efficiency, time and time again.
Sarah Miley’s performance epitomized everything it takes to be a great teammate in Birr on Sunday.
The Clara clubwoman ran, tackled, kept the ball moving and ran some more.
While teams can take on the personality of their manager, these players seem to have no problem injecting personality into things themselves, with the beaming Miley a perfect poster child for a joyous bunch.
Spontaneous chuckles break off Miley’s face as she’s lumbered with press duty while her teammates celebrate without her but she was only too happy to share the details of the bond within the squad that has Wicklow moving in the right direction.
‘We have 26 players and any of the 26 could start on the day,’ states Miley.
‘It’s been really, really tough pushing each other for places but in saying that everyone has been so supportive of each other and fighting for each.
‘Everyone supports who actually gets the jersey on the day and we know if you’re not up to scratch there’s someone just as good on the line coming on to do a job after you so that makes us work harder.’
Escaping the depressing confines of Division 4 was the first goal for the season but the manner in which it has been achieved has even caught Miley by surprise.
She said: ‘Our confidence is sky high at the moment, we’ve had an exceptional league campaign, even better than we could have imagined, we wanted to do it, we set out and wanted to win all our nine games and thankfully we managed to do it.
‘I think we’ve been there thereabouts the last few years so it’s nice to finally get ourselves over the line. It’s really, really important, we are an intermediate team and that’s where we want to be, it will be so much better for us to play more competitive games in Division 3 to lead into the intermediate championship, it will stand to us massively.’
Before Wicklow can take advantage of a run of tough spring games, there’s the immediate business of this season’s championship opener at home to Meath on June 3rd.
The result is no foregone conclusion, Miley is sure of it, it’s a fixture her side have had one eye on for a while.
‘It’s a target we’ve set ourselves,’ explained Miley. ‘That’s the standard we want to get to and we are most definitely on the way to it. I think we are going to really push on and give Meath a good battle hopefully.’