Down Senior Football Championship
WHILE Jim McCorry took many reasons to be content from Monday night’s nine-point win over Glenn, the Burren boss is convinced improvements must be made if his side are to make a real impact on this year’s Down Senior Football Championship.
The comfortable round two win at Páirc Esler, where the likes of Shay McArdle and Ronan McGrath starred, guaranteed the Burren a spot in the quarter-finals of the county championship and gives former Kilcoo manager McCorry a precious fortnight with which to work with his squad.
“There were a lot of good things that came out of Monday night, but there were also an awful lot of things to be improved upon,” said McCorry.
“To be honest, that type of performance wouldn’t really stack up in the latter stages of the championship, so there’s work still be done. While it’s nice to get through we know we’re still at the early stages and it’s do or die now. We’ve two weeks now to fine tune for whoever we’re going to meet in the quarter-finals.”
One of the standout features of Burren in this year’s championship has been the prominence McCorry has been prepared to give to an exciting batch of young players – four of his starting 15 on Monday night were members of Conor Laverty’s Down U20 team – but he isn’t placing all his hopes on fresh faces.
“One of the positives that has come out of our games to date is that we’ve been able to blood a fairly young squad – we’d four of the U20 county panel in our starting line-up against Glenn and I was able to bring two under 19s on later in the game as well,” the former Armagh assistant manager added.
“But we’ve a nice balance in the team. The likes of Gerard McGovern, Donal O’Hare, Shay McArdle sway the pendulum back the other way with the load of experience they bring. I like to say it’s a symbiotic relationship we have in the camp: we have the young fellas pushing hard, they’re energetic, they have a massive will to learn and you have our veterans who are more than willing to help them in that development.”
With both Burren and champions Kilcoo both safely in last eight berths, any meeting between the sides will have to wait till further down the line, but it’s not a prospect that daunts McCorry.
“Kilcoo simply aren’t in our thought process at the minute. We have a quarter-final to prepare for against an unknown quantity at this stage and that’s the only thing we’re focused on.
“If it does happen at a later stage, it’d be nice to meet them and given that it’s championship football, anything can happen.”
