Maguire confident ahead of final test

JFC final build-up

Five years after storming to the Junior Championship title, Templeport are back in the decider. The St Aidan’s were expected back then, given their age profile, to kick on at the higher grade but for a variety of reasons, it didn’t happen.

Now, though, they are back and according to joint-captain Donal Maguire, the injection of youth and the return of a couple of players who hadn’t been involved has been crucial.

"There's a great blend of youth and aul fellas, like myself, but the young lads give you an awful confidence boost. All young lads give confidence but these give serious confidence. It's all built-in with them and they bring everybody on.

"We were very unlucky the year we went up that we went down in a play-off. We probably should have pushed ourselves on more that year but we were unlucky, too. Three teams got relegated that year and we lost a few players and being honest, we've only started getting them back this year,” the full-back told The Anglo-Celt.

“If anything, lockdown was a massive benefit to us, we got lads back from Australia. Oran Duffy there playing centre-back came back from Canada. A few lads who hadn't been playing in a couple of years came back out.

“We've 35 or 36 players coming out - I've never seen that. Lockdown has been massive to us. Declan and Martin and the management team kept us going through the whole thing.”

The Bawnboy men had a close semi-final against Knockbride but Maguire was always confident that their experience could see them through.

"We’re definitely back where we wanted to be. We made hard work of it at the end - it went to the last kick of the game - but we are where we wanted to be at the start of the year, thankfully.

"We expected a close game but we knew we'd been here before and they hadn't done any of this before so we were very confident going in. If anything, we've a far stronger panel than we had five years ago and our subs that came on today have done it all year. They've scored umpteen amount of scores. They're brilliant.

“We didn't have that five years ago and that's why I think we're going to give it everything for this final and I'd be very confident going into it. If it's like this [semi-final], we're not going to be given much of a hope but we'll give it socks.”

Maguire singled out Eoin McCaffrey, who missed out for the run-in last year due to an unfortunate accident, for special praise.

"Eoin McCaffrey there, after what he went through last year, the man is absolutely on fire this year and you've young lads there like Conor Galligan who came on as a sub and is only a first or second-year senior, James Murphy and lads like that and Dillon Raythorne is after coming back from last year and is as strong as a house.

“We've great lads in there. I've been around a long time and it definitely doesn't happen every year so we'll make the most of it while we can."

Denn will come into the final as favourites but Maguire is bullish about his side’s chances.

"I've watched a couple of Denn matches and their forwards are very good but if you don't give forwards space they can't play and that's what we'd be hoping to do.

“Before this, everybody was talking about Knockbride's great forwards but we got in and around them today and put pressure on them. So, that's what we'd be hoping to do on the next day, open them up and play well.”