By Shaun Casey

ARMAGH begin their All-Ireland Premier Junior charge with a home tie against Kildare this Saturday and PJ O’Mullan’s side will be aiming to go one step further in the competition than last season.

They reached the final at Croke Park in 2025 but just came up short on the day against Laois. Armagh won’t have any thoughts just yet on going all the way as there’s a lot of Camogie to be played.

Not only that, but a lot of Camogie in a short space of time. The Orchard County have three games on the trot and five matches in six weeks. A “tough schedule” says O’Mullan.

“I think everybody is looking forward to it and it’s a tough schedule once we get started. We have three weeks on the bounce and five games in six weekends which is a heavy, heavy load.

“It’s a big commitment and it’s a lot to ask for and we’re going to need our squad during this period; the panel depth is going to be very important.

“We played Down five weeks ago so it’s a right break, but we’ve had a couple of challenge games in there. We played Derry and a few other games that we needed so that has helped us, but we’ve been knuckling down these last couple of weeks.”

Armagh do have a few injury concerns heading into the campaign but have welcomed back star forward Ciara Geoghegan to the panel for the All-Ireland series.

“There’s club games in Armagh as well going on and the players have been released to play the club games,” he added. “It’s not easy for anyone but since the load has increased with the club games, we’ve picked up a couple of injuries.

“They aren’t bad injuries, but they are injuries that are preventing the girls from playing and injuries to girls who, if they were fit, they would be playing on the team but it’s just one of those things.”

Armagh defeated Kildare by seven-points when they clashed in the league, which Armagh went on to win, and O’Mullan is expecting a testing encounter on Saturday.

“To me, Kildare are a good team. They’re big, they’re physical and they’re strong. They have a lot of good players and playing in the league and playing in the championship are two different things.

“You’re going from heavy pitches to dryer, fast pitches and it’s a much faster game at this time of the year. We’d be hoping that we can improve from the league, we had a good league campaign.”

Indeed, Armagh claimed a fine victory over Roscommon in the Division 3A title to ensure a swift return to Division Two.

O’Mullan commented: “We won the league; we got promoted and that should give the girls confidence going forward. We’ve had a couple of additions to the squad as well which will bring a bit of freshness to it.

“We’re in a good place bar those couple of injuries and that’s the bottom line. If the injuries could clear up, then it’d be brilliant but they’re not going to be cleared up by next weekend, so we’ll just have to live with it.”