Nicky Rackard Cup final Armagh v Mayo (today, Croke Park, 3.30pm, live TG4)
ARMAGH manager Sylvester McConnell will lead his team out onto Croke Park this afternoon hoping to continue what has already been a successful year for the Orchard hurlers.
Victory over neighbours Down in the 2B final in March showed what strides are being made to promote the caman code within the county, and winning the Nicky Rackard Cup for a third time would be another terrific boost.
McConnell and his team are certainly looking forward to the challenge.
“It’s something to really get your teeth into,” he declared.
“Mayo are a good team and we feel if both teams play to form it could be a real dinger of a game which is something you look forward to in hurling – really being tested.
“There’s not much between us. Mayo were trying to break that Christy Ring for three or four years and they have come down. They’re a very, very good team.
“They are also a very well coached team – I would have to say that, and they’re a very credible team because they try and play hurling and they try and play their own style of a game.”
The sides have met twice this year with the score standing at one apiece. Armagh won the league encounter at the Athletic Grounds 1-17 to 1-10 but the Westerners were triumphant in Round 2A of the Rackard Cup - the game finishing 0-22 to 1-11 in Ballina.
The bookies make Mayo 8/13 favourites to lift the Cup, but, as McConnell points out, “bookies don’t play hurling.”
His side are a strong, physically powerful outfit, who have a number of very talented hurlers back- boning them. McConnell paid tribute to that quality and said he hopes that that ability, allied to a bond he sees between the players on a weekly basis will see them over the line today.
“Ryan Gaffney seems to have played a lot of hurling, but being truthful – there’s still a lot of hurling left in Ryan,” insisted McConnell.
“He’s a very big player and hasn’t played at the pinnacle of his game yet. He is well fit for the next level and maybe even the level after that because he has a very high quality of skill.
“And so have a lot of those other boys that have been soldiering on like Decky Coulter as well – another level would really shine him up. Conor Corvan the same, Cahal Carvill, Nathan Curry, John Corvan.
“The friendship within the group, which sometimes you don’t get within a team environment and especially a county is kinda unreal and boys will mix with each other and mix in different places.
“These boys like to be tested – there was a time where no-one thought that Armagh would have beaten Down or Armagh could have got out of that Division.
“We were struggling to get two points in that Division for three or four years there, so there’s an improvement in the team and the team want to improve.”
If Armagh are to be successful, they will need all their big guns firing and firing with regularity. They will also have to try and limit the amount of frees they concede as Mayo top scorer Kenny Feeney will punish indiscretions.
Mayo are undoubtedly a very decent side and have reached this stage with little trouble. As well as Feeney, they also have capable performers such as dual star Keith Higgins, Eoghan Collins, Sean Regan, Joseph McManus and Fergal Boland in their side.
The contest should be open and entertaining but at the same time tenaciously fought out.
Take Armagh to heal the wounds of their painful one point loss to Roscommon at the same stage last year.
