Donnelly’s Down ladies on the road again

By Shaun Casey

FOR the third week on the trot, Colm Donnelly’s Down ladies are heading south as they look to build on their impressive start to the Division Three league campaign. Having already travelled to Louth and Laois, Down are off to Clare this Sunday afternoon.

The opening round tie with the Wee County was supposed to be played on home turf, but given the weather that week, the game was moved to Louth, while back-to-back weekends in Laois and Clare were already part of the schedule.

The Mourne ladies earned a share of the spoils against Louth in round one and returned home with maximum points in their back pockets versus Laois last weekend, and they’re keen to keep their unbeaten run intact.

“We’re happy with how we’ve started the first two games,” said Donnelly, who is now in his second year in charge of Down. “We’re unbeaten after two games and we’ve had a very tough start to the league.

“Our first three games are against some of the best teams in the competition so we’re happy with how we’ve got on in the last two weeks. This is our third away game in a row because we lost home advantage to Louth in the first game due to the weather.

“Clare this weekend, it’s going to be a very tricky assignment. I don’t think their results are a true reflection on the Clare team or the Clare panel because over the last number of years, they’ve been one of the stronger teams in Division Two and the Intermediate Championship.”

Donnelly admits his side don’t have any recent knowledge of facing the Banner County as the two teams haven’t crossed paths in the last few years but knows they’ll get nothing soft on their way to Munster.

“We haven’t played them in a number of years so we’re kind of going in a wee bit blind to this one so for us, it’ll be about concentrating on ourselves and fixing any errors or mistakes we’ve made over the last two weeks.

“We’ll be looking to get a good performance through our work rate and intensity this week in training going into the weekend’s game.”

Donnelly is well aware that his side have some huge challenges coming down the tracks, none more so than the Ulster derbies against Antrim and Fermanagh, but is hopeful they can push for promotion.

“Down are in Division Three since 2014 and every year, we’ve been trying to get out of it, which is a very hard thing to do. But we’re just concentrating on these first three games and if we can get positive results, it puts us in a good place going into the second half of the league.

“We’re just taking it step by step because Division Three is very tough. There’s a lot of good teams there and everyone is at the same level; there’s no real weak teams.”