By Shaun Casey

PORTAFERRY have been so close and yet so far in recent years. Gerard McGrattan’s side are the team to beat in Down but it’s on the provincial path where they have failed to leave their mark in the last few years, although they are aiming to change that according to captain Matthew Conlan.

This season, they captured the Jeremiah McVeagh Cup for the fourth year on the trot and for the fifth time in six years. Now they are still eyeing up a first win in the Ulster Championship since 2014, the one and only time they were crowned kings of Ulster.

Conlan has a provincial medal from way back then but is still searching for another. Portaferry have come so close to breaking that particular duck in the past two seasons but have just come up short.

Cushendall knocked them out in a classic back in 2023, after extra-time, while last season, they let Sleacht Néill, their opponents in this Sunday’s Ulster Senior Championship semi-final, back into the game when the Mounre County representatives looked set to end their famine.

Reflecting on those two near misses, Conlan said. “As you progress through the county and then the province, those fine margins get smaller and smaller.

“It’s just about managing that and from the last couple of years, we’ve pinpointed that our own game management has let us down.

“Two years ago, against Cushendall, I think Neil (McManus) scored a penalty at the end of the game to bring it to extra-time. We could have managed that situation better and it was the same last year.

“I think we were up by seven or eight and then two goals within two minutes for them just switched the momentum. It’s our own game management that we need to improve on and that’s what we’ve been working on and hopefully it works.”

Portaferry head into the Ulster campaign without Tom McGrattan and Paudie Doran, who are both sidelined with knee injuries, but there won’t be any excuses in their changing room come Sunday evening, no matter how the game pans out.

The reigning Ulster champions Sleacht Néill are no strangers to winter hurling, and this will be Portaferry’s third meeting with the Derry champions in the last four years, with the men in maroon coming out on top in the previous two battles.

“We know how good a team they are and they’re so experienced now,” Conlan added of Paul McCormack’s men. “They have 13 Derry Championships in a row so that’s 13 goes at Ulster and they’ve probably had a few different teams in that journey.

“They probably have boys that have been there since the first one as well. From playing them last year and in 2021 as well, we’re familiar with each other so we know how hard it’ll be, but it was always going to be that way.”