Armagh where they want to be says Devlin

By Shaun Casey

FOR a while, Armagh have known they were going to compete in the semi-finals of the Premier Junior All-Ireland Championship and now that they are here, they want to make the most of it, says goalkeeper Ciarrai Devlin.

Convincing wins over Roscommon, this weekend’s opponents, and Louth in the opening two rounds guaranteed the Orchard County a top four finish. From there, it was just about seeing how far up the table they could get.

In the end, they finished the group stage series in second place, finishing behind the only unbeaten team in the competition, Laois, in top spot. Laois are also the only team to have got one over PJ O’Mullan’s side during the campaign, and that was two weeks ago.

“It was a massive target for us to progress to this stage,” said Devlin. “Obviously, we had secured a place early on in the championship, but every game was important for us, everyone is fighting for places and we’re really looking forward to the semi-final.”

Despite losing to the O’Moore County the last day out, with six-points the margin in the end, Devlin has been encouraged by the form that her side have shown this season in winning four of their five championship outings.

Their time spent in Division Two of the league has really brought them on this year, although they suffered relegation back to the third tier. Six defeats on the bounce weren’t ideal preparation for championship, but Armagh were competitive in most their outings.

Carlow only beat them by the minimum of margins while Derry rattled off a couple of goals to make the scoreline larger than the actual game itself. Armagh also took the Oak Leaf County to extra time in their Ulster Championship meeting and plying their trade at that higher grade has stood to them, Devlin continues.

“I think the league has really stood to us, playing at that higher level in Division Two. We didn’t have a good game against Laois, but we have loads to work on and loads to build on and that’s really encouraging heading into the Roscommon game.”

Roscommon offer a difficult test at Kingspan Breffni Park this weekend and Armagh are well aware of the challenge they pose. The sides locked horns in the first round of the campaign, with Armagh winning by 11 points on the day.

Roscommon have had a decent season to date and contested the Division Three league final, losing just once in the league before the decider. They came up against a strong Laois side in the showpiece and lost out by three in the end.

Likewise, the Rossies have won three of their five championship clashes to date, losing to the top two in the pack, Laois and Armagh. They did post some impressive scoring tallies in their last two matches, hitting a combined 6-47 against Louth and Tyrone.

Rachel Fitzmaurice was on fire against the Wee County and posted an individual haul of 3-8 while Sara Dooley (0-9) and Tara Naughton (1-5) were other notable scorers. The accurate Naughton followed it up with a haul of 0-10 against the Red Hands in the final round of the league.

“The conditions the first day against Roscommon were horrendous,” the Granemore shot stopper added. “There was a gale force breeze as well so we can’t really read too much into that result.

“We’re not going to take them for granted at all, they’re going to be a real tough opposition, and we need to be firing on all cylinders to get over the line.”

A huge part of Armagh’s success this season has been their strike rate in front of the goals, and they’ve accumulated 17 goals so far. They failed to raise a green flag the last day out however against Laois, a large reason why they came out on the wrong side of the result.

“We went down to 14 players quite early on against Laois, so they were able to implement a sweeper which made it a challenge in getting goals, but our forward line has been working really well together.

“Sinead (Quinn) has been on fire, Rachael (Merry) and Niamh Forker have been playing really well as well so hopefully that form continues for the girls.”