Coulter: Atticall’s attention is on the championship

SEEING out the remaining league fixtures and getting into championship mode is the main focus for Atticall right now, according to their manager Benny Coulter.

His side can’t get promoted to Division Two nor can they slip down to the basement division, so floating around midtable in Division Three has given them a chance to turn their attention towards the business end of the season.

After travelling to Liatroim on Thursday night and then hosting St John’s on Monday evening, the league will be wrapped up and all eyes will be on Tullylish in the first round of the Intermediate Championship.

“It’s a wee bit different from when I was playing and managing Mayobridge where everything was geared towards the championship,” explained the Down legend.

“With Atticall it’s slightly different because first and foremost, the league is your bread and butter and Division Three is not one bit easy. You could find yourself at the bottom very easily so our number one goal was getting survival as soon as possible.

“Once that’s done, you can focus on the championship and we’ve been safe the last four or five weeks, we couldn’t go up or down so our main focus has definitely been championship.”

Coulter, an All-Star winner with the Mourne County in 2010, has enjoyed the campaign so far with Attical in his second season in charge. Last year, they reached the championship quarter-finals but lost out to St John’s after a replay.

“We’ve had a great season because for every team in Division Three, maybe bar Drumgath (league leaders), survival was the first thing and with six or seven games to go we had done that, so we’ve had a brilliant season to date,” Coulter continued.

“We have competed with every team in the division. Drumgath beat us by three points, Liatroim beat us by two points, but we beat Darragh Cross and then they beat us by two in the reverse game. We’ve been competitive in every game which is great.

“We played Newry Shamrocks last Friday and we had nine boys away on holidays and that probably gave us a chance to look at different players.

“But for the last two games, we’ll be trying to get out best team out that’s going to take the field against Tullylish in a couple of weeks in the first round of the championship.

“We’re still missing a few players so we can give other boys game time but on Monday, it’s the last game before the championship, I’ll be hoping to go with the team that’ll be playing against Tullylish on Thursday fortnight.”