Small margins for lesser lights on final furlong

TOMORROW afternoon’s final round of games in the National Football League creates the annual complex set of promotion and relegation permutations.

But the spotlight is not just trained on the top flight, with action at the basement level just as compelling.

For Clare, Waterford and Limerick, it’s going to be a nerve-shredding days with two teams destined to receive the boost of promotion at the close of play while one reflects on the agony of another near-miss.

“It’s going to be very tight (against Leitrim),” says Limerick manager Mickey Ned O’Sullivan. “I feel it’s been a very competitive and intense league. We’ve won most of our games by narrow margins. Bar Kilkenny and London, all the other games have been incredibly tight and competitive. It has been tough to deal with all the players we’ve had out injured.

“But the silver lining is in that all the lads have come up trumps. Necessity is the mother of invention and you could see that last week with Eoghan O’Connor, a player not even on our panel earlier this season, coming on as a sub and scoring three points.”

Waterford have travelled down this road of challenging for promotion before only to suffer the dejection of missing out at the final hurdle. This campaign constitutes John Owens’ first in charge of the Déise but he detects a keen desire to succeed this time amongst his players.

“They have gone to this position before and it’s the pain of losing out then before is driving them on.They know what the other side of the coin is. We’re in a very good position and home advantage is a help, but I’ve learnt in this division that teams are very capable of winning away.

“We travelled to Limerick and won, while Clare won in Longford. Clare will have no fears coming to Dungarvan.

“We’re very happy with the additions we’ve made to our squad this year. In defence Kieran Connery was away last year but he’s come back to fit in very well.

“He’s a very accomplished footballer for us. Then in attack the likes of Conor McGrath and Michael Donnelly are scoring excellently, while the return of Gary Hurney, and the kind of experience that he has, is just invaluable.”

Both managers are pleased that tomorrow they have the opportunity to shape their own destiny and do not to rely on favours from others to bale them out.

“We have to perform and that’s the bottom line,” says O’Sullivan.

“It’s up to ourselves now and we can’t be looking over our shoulder. It’s great for Munster football to have three teams in contention and probably a knock-on effect of the open draw. It proves there’s light at the end of the tunnel for Waterford, Clare and ourselves.”

“It’s in everyone’s hands and it’s great we do not have to depend on everyone else”, states Owens.

“We’ve treated every game as a championship match and it’s worked for us.

“We’ve felt that it’s very important for the championship that you’ve performed well in the league, and hopefully that will be shown later on.”