CARRYDUFF look set to be without two key men ahead of their winner-takes-all championship rematch with county kingpins Kilcoo on Sunday.
Influential half-back John McGeough was shown a straight red card in the dying moments of Monday night’s dramatic back door win over Loughinisland, while key forward Ronan Beatty picked up an injury and is not expected to feature against the Magpies.
With regular goalkeeper Mark Hynes, Daniel Coogan and Eoghan McCabe also on the long-term injured list, boss Finnian Moriarty is under no illusions about the size of the task facing his men as they prepare to do championship battle with Kilcoo for the second time in three weeks.
In the first outing, an unanswered 1-3 just before half-time opened up a gap that Carryduff couldn’t close, Karl Lacey’s men laying down an early marker in their defence of the Frank O’Hare Cup.
Having since eased beyond Mayobridge to seal their spot in Sunday’s quarter-final, the Magpies remain the ones to beat as they eye up an 11th county crown in 12 years.
- Kilcoo lay down early marker as first-half burst kills Carryduff hope
Moriarty could have been forgiven for cursing his luck when the same pairing was pulled for the hat moments after the elation of Monday night’s victory, but the former Armagh ace knows the onus is on the city men to close the gap at the second time of asking.
“Nothing really,” he said when asked what he felt about the draw.
“When you look at the other side of the draw there’s Burren, Clonduff, Glenn there who we played last year in the championship…
“It’s typical having played Kilcoo in the first round that you end up playing them again in the quarter-final, but I suppose everybody’s objective is to try and meet Kilcoo at some stage. We’re just lucky enough to get them twice.
“You’d assume it’s the same as when the likes of Dublin were winning all the time, they prepared the same for every match, it wouldn’t really have mattered to Kilcoo if they pulled Carryduff out of the hat, or Mayobridge or somebody they hadn’t played yet, they’d still have gone about it the same way.
“It’s maybe the team that’s defeated the first day that ends up with more homework to do, more thinking to do, tactics to adapt.”
And that is the position in which Carryduff find themselves.
Despite going toe-to-toe in the early stages of the opening encounter, a couple of loose passes and a few costly turnovers ultimately put paid to their hopes of delivering a first round shock.
The addition of young blood like Callum Rodgers and Jack Devlin has brought extra impetus to the Kilcoo set-up and, as both Carryduff and Mayobridge have found to their cost so far, trying to reel the Magpies in from behind is an increasingly tough ask.
“They’re brilliant at managing the game when they get in front because they have so many athletic players, they’re hard to get the ball off,” said Moriarty.
“If you chase around the pitch after them, they’ll pick holes in you, if you sit off you’re not being aggressive enough, trying to win the ball back…
“The first game, we tried to prepare as well as we could for it, then you get a punch in the face just before half-time, they’re five up and you’re trying to claw it back. When you give the ball away as much as we did, that’s always going to be the case. You’re always going to get hurt.
“We were disappointed with it, but the Down championship lets you get back on the horse very quick. You only really have time to fix a few things before you’re onto the next game, otherwise you’re out of the championship inside six or seven days, whereas in other counties you have group games.
“We’ve just been trying to improve on the things we didn’t do that well against Kilcoo, we maybe have got slightly better at them, but the acid test will come on Sunday.”