SLAUGHTNEIL'S attack for Saturday's All-Ireland Club SFC semi-final could be boosted by the availability of Se McGuigan.
The young full-forward missed the club hurlers' recent last four loss to Na Piarsaigh due to a hamstring problem but is in contention to take on Cork and Munster champions Nemo Rangers.
The south Derry side's assistant manager John Joe Kearney is quietly optimistic that McGuigan can play a part in Portlaoise, and that boss Mickey Moran can pick from an almost full hand:
"Everybody's in fairly good shape and hopefully on the day they'll do the business.
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"Se McGuigan was the only concern, he twinged a hamstring in a challenge game with the hurling and that'll only be five weeks now come Saturday – you know yourself, that's more or less the time it takes for a hamstring to heal.
"Having said that, he played half an hour of a game on Sunday and he'll be there or thereabouts.
"He has done everything that's possible to be done to try to get back into shape and, for the half hour on Sunday, he was looking reasonably sharp. He'll be in the frame."
Also in contention for starting slots will be two attackers who missed the comfortable Ulster Final triumph against Cavan Gaels - Cormac O'Doherty and Meehaul McGrath both lined out for the hurlers and Kearney confirmed that "both are back to full fitness, they're both grand."
The only absentee remains Paul Bradley, who, although he "is back in training, doing a bit of light work, after he had an operation on his back" to repair the damage done in the Derry Final, "has a long way to go to peak fitness."
To Kearney's relief, their many dual players emerged unscathed from the hurling semi-final: "Everybody came it through it well, which we're grateful for…; everybody's injury-free from that.
"It was a difficult loss to take, and I'm sure they know in their hearts that the scores they missed in the first half could have left them comfortable…"
However, he insisted he and Moran did not have to 'lift' the players after that devastating defeat against 13 men: "Not really, no. They seem to be up for it. The heads never went down for too long."
Slaughtneil should be confident, after posting 2-17 in their Ulster semi-final against Donegal champs Kilcar and 1-15 in the provincial decider versus Cavan Gaels.
The Emmets' efficiency was impressive in those games, especially the semi-final, and Kearney also pointed proudly to another aspect of their attacking prowess:
"We're not dependent totally on the forwards, the half-back line at times, the likes of Karl McKaigue, can come through and score for us. We've a fair spread of scorers – over any game, maybe eight or nine people are taking scores for us, which is good."
Nemo's attack has been racking up high scores even more consistently, averaging 2-16 over their nine Championships games in county and province.
That culminated with 0-16 scored in shocking Dr Croke's of Killarney, who won last year's All-Ireland Final against Slaughtneil.
Kearney admitted he admired a few of their forwards, commenting: "I'm not too familiar with them, or their names, I had a wee bit of a look at them the other night.
"Their number 13 [Luke Connolly] is big, useful player, who can play out around midfield; he's pacy and he has good feet, and he's a good dead ball kicker.
"[Paul] Kerrigan always carries a bit of threat, he's very direct in his running.
"The fella [Paddy] Gumley at full-forward, he might have grey hair but it hasn't slowed him up and he's very accurate with the left foot, he's a useful player.
"We hope we have the men that will contain them a bit better than they were contained the last day, against Dr Croke's."
Kearney has confidence that his goalkeeper and defence can do that, having only conceded just over 11 points on average in Derry and Ulster, including keeping clean sheets in all four provincial matches:
"We would pride ourselves on having a good defence. The six lads have picked themselves there for this last few years, that has been near enough of a constant in the team, the defence hasn't changed – we've had no need to change it.
"We would be hoping to cut down their scoring ability and the men that will have to do man-marking jobs, sort out who goes to who, and hope that it works out for us".
