Sheehan hoping Down hurlers start on the front foot

WHILE Down’s league fate won’t be determined on Saturday, Ronan Sheehan says his men are keen to start on the front foot as they take on familiar foes Kildare in the opening round of their Division Two league campaign.

The two teams know each other quite well at this stage and the Mourne men are looking forward to getting up and running.

Down just missed out on promotion to Division One last season, suffering a heavy defeat to Laois at the semi-final stage.

Promotion will once again be the ambition, but Sheehan’s side won’t be casting their minds much further than this weekend just yet.

“This year, the reality is that you’ll have four or five teams that will see themselves in with a chance of going up,” said Sheehan.

“Kildare and Kerry are clearly two of those teams and I think ourselves and Derry, if we got a good run of games, we would also be in the mix to go up.

“The game against Kildare is a big game in that context, if you lose it then it puts you slightly on the back foot.

“It’s not fatal because I still think that four or five wins will probably put you into a league final, which would get you promoted.

“But clearly if you lose your first game then you’re immediately under a bit of pressure.

“There’s nothing between ourselves and Kildare and we’ve seen that over the last number of years. It’ll come down to those small margins and small breaks and the team that makes the least mistakes at this time of the year is probably going to be the one to push on.”

Down will be without the injured Darragh Mallon for the majority of the season while Conor Cassidy and Ruairi McCrickard are also on the mend but will miss the opening couple of rounds of the league.

There hasn’t been that much turnover in Sheehan’s squad from last season, although he has called a couple of All-Ireland winning u-20 players into the panel for the year ahead.

“Thankfully we haven’t picked up any injuries during a fairly rushed pre-season so we’re looking forward to getting started on Saturday and it’s a big match to get us started against Kildare,” added Sheehan.

“We’re not too bad, we have a couple of delayed returns rather than guys not returning at all.

“We have a couple of new additions there too, Gerard Hughes is back home from Australia, which is great news.

“Ronan Beattie has actually moved to us from the footballers, we’re looking forward to seeing how Ronan performs this year, and we have a few of the u-20s coming through to the senior panel as well.

“The likes of Shea Pucci, Michael Dorrian and Ben Taggart and players like that.

“The panel is probably relatively consistent with a few changed faces.”