Lacken youngsters can take inspiration from All-Star duo

HAVING two All-Stars in the club has the potential to invigorate and inspire Lacken’s young players, according to their senior men’s manager Micheál O’Rourke.

Cavan captain and goalkeeper Raymond Galligan and his all-action cousin Thomas Galligan were honoured with All-Star awards recently, and O’Rourke hopes their colleagues at club level will take their lead and replicate their hard work on the training pitch.

They’ve only won one Senior Championship in their history – back in 1908, a fair old time ago – and they haven’t so much as made another final at that level in the last 100-odd years.

O’Rourke, who is entering his second season in charge of Lacken, sees reason for optimism, however.

“There seems to be a good buzz around the place at the moment and having two All-Stars will obviously do that for a club.

“The younger players look up to Raymond and Thomas, and they’ll also see that hard work pays off because they’re two players who put in a phenomenal effort for both club and county.

“They would be the first at training, they demand a big effort from everybody. If we all put in that effort then anything’s possible.”

Elaborating on their two All-Star winners, he said: “Thomas is a phenomenal talent – there’s no airs and graces about him, and he listens to what everyone has to say. Raymond is a fantastic organiser, he bleeds Lacken football.

“You have to say they’re desperate for Lacken to succeed, and I would imagine it would definitely be as big a deal for them as the success they’ve had with Cavan.”

Lacken won the league title in 2016, but it proved something of a false dawn as they’ve struggled to make any sort of mark in the intervening seasons. They had a really tough group last year in fairness, but O’Rourke, himself a native of reigning champions Crosserlough, accepts that inconsistency has been a problem in Lacken.

“From my own knowledge of Lacken, they can always raise themselves to play a big team, but consistency has been an issue. They’d a great battle last year with Castlerahan in the championship and were unlucky to come out on the wrong side of it, but it’s just having that consistency to do it four or five times in the championship.

“I get the feeling no-one wants to play Lacken, but they need to be able to perform to their best on a regular basis.”

While the current hiatus isn’t ideal, O’Rourke also says they’re trying to make good use of the lockdown. Last year was a new experience for everyone, so it’s a little more structured this time around.

“That was just when I came in – we were kind of going from week-to-week thinking about what to do next, whereas now it’s more structured in terms of running schedules and so on. There’s more flow to what we’re doing in our programmes whereas last year you were going into the unknown. Last year was guess-work for a lot of teams probably, but I think we’ve learnt from the experience.”