By Shaun Casey

DOWN defender Caolan Taggart says his side can play with freedom when they head south this weekend in their Division 1B league clash with 2024 All-Ireland winners Clare.

Ronan Sheehan’s side have lost both their opening round ties, against Leinster opposition in Carlow and Wexford, but are excited by the prospect of challenging themselves against a team of Clare’s standing.

The Mourne men are currently without Tom McGrattan, who suffered an ACL injury last year while they’ve been minus a number of other key players in the early stages of the season. Tim Prenter, Marc Fisher and Finn Turpin are all currently on the sidelines as well.

“You slog it out in the lower divisions, and this is what you do it for, to get up and play teams like Clare,” explained the Portaferry clubman. “We’re excited about it and we have nothing to lose.

“We’re going out there with no expectations so we can go out to play with a bit of freedom. If it goes right, it goes right, if it goes wrong then it goes wrong and that’s the way we’re looking at it.”

While Down have zero points on the board and nothing to show for their efforts, Taggart is encouraged by their performances so far at the top level. They came so close to getting off the mark in round two, only losing to Wexford by two in the end in what would have been a huge shock.

“We had never played against Wexford who have been a Division One team for I don’t know how many years and I don’t think they were ever in Ballycran before.

“We’d dealt with Carlow before and we knew what we were facing against them, but we’d never played Wexford and Clare are going to be another step up again this weekend.

“I think a lot of people expected us to do worse than what we’re doing. I know that Wexford beat us by two points last weekend, but we left a lot of chances behind and I think people are surprised with the standard we are playing at.

“Obviously we’re not the finished article yet and we have a lot of work to do but I think we have handled the step up very well. In our own group, we know what we can do but it’s just trying to convince everyone else what we can do as well.”