By Niall Gartland

KNOCKBRIDE have borne the brunt of two significant disappointments over the course of the last 12 months, but manager Aidan McCabe says they aren’t looking in the rearview mirror ahead of tonight’s (Thursday) Junior Championship quarter-final against Munterconnaught.

This time last year, Knockbride could have no complaints when they were beaten by eventual All-Ireland champions Arva in the Cavan Junior Championship final.

More recently, they were desperately unlucky to be relegated out of Division One as an unfortunate consequence of an unforgiving format – they finished eighth out of 13 in the main section but fell victim to the play-offs.

But they’ve set that aside for now and are motoring along nicely in the championship, finishing top of the table ahead of the knock-out rounds.

Manager McCabe commented: “We lost last year’s final but Division One is no place for feeling sorry for yourself so we had to get back on the wagon.

“We were down a lot in terms of numbers in the start, but when we found our groove in the second half of the league we found ourselves playing well and we beat Kingscourt on the last day, a victory we could pin our hat on.

“We lost two play-off games and were relegated and that’s naturally disappointing but we had to move on as the championship was only a fortnight away. We had to switch our focus to championship very quickly”.

Knockbride only mustered a draw on their first day out against Drung, a game they really should have won, but they’ve claimed three successive victories ahead of tonight’s quarter-final and they’re the favourites to go all the way in the competition.

McCabe said: “We blew a seven-point lead against Drung and then went ahead again in injury time after conceding a goal. We won the next kick-out but still managed to give up a scoreable free.

“I don’t want to oversell it but we’ve responded well to that result, we’ve had three good performances and managed to finish top of the group. That’s something we targeted so we’re glad to have done that.”

Knockbride’s reward for finishing at the summit of their group is that they’ve been pitted against Munterconnaught who slipped into the quarter-finals by virtue of finishing eighth. It’s not as straightforward as it sounds though, insists McCabe.

“Normally you could point to the formlines and say, well it’s first versus eighth, but it’s been fairly even this year.

“We finished with seven points, they have four so it’s not a massive gap. With respect to the bottom three times, there were nine teams playing for eight spots. Drung ended up extremely unlucky to finish ninth on score difference, it’s been very tight.”