Kingscourt eye a better Ulster return

By Michael McMullan

BARRY Tully picked up his third Cavan senior medal as they ended a 10-year gap to land this year’s title.

The Kingscourt skipper admits Ulster is a step up but the Stars are aiming to give a better account of themselves.

They welcome Erne Gaels to Kingspan Breffni for their opener on Saturday but will be without key player Padraig Faulkner who has gone travelling after the Cavan campaign.

“It’s been a great couple of weeks since we got over the line,” Tully told Gaelic Life.

Before a ball was kicked, Crosserlough, Ramor United and Gowna were tipped by many, but Kingscourt came with a consistent run to win a 12th title, joining Mullahoran on the roll of honour.

“To be honest, it’s a cliche with us, but we always believe we can win it,” Tully added.

“We didn’t start off well,” he said of an early spell that saw them with a win and a draw from their first six league games.

“We were competitive in them to be fair but results weren’t going well,” Tully added.

“We started picking up the results then and we’ve only lost one game since going into the championship.

“We were in a good place and we knew if we kept improving and kept performing, we wouldn’t be far away.”

There were injuries, players on county duty and holidays all factored into the early part of the season but momentum became their friend as the weeks passed.

Coming into the final, much of the chat was around Gowna and their 17-point winning margin against the Stars in the 2023 decider.

“We’re not just saying it, we have full confidence in ourselves and belief that we can compete with them and that we can beat them,” Tully said of their mentality going into the final.

“Thankfully we showed it and did ourselves it justice. We proved to ourselves what we’re saying was right and that we are at their level.”

Looking ahead to Saturday, it’s a first taste of Ulster since 2015 and an hour to forget against a Kilcoo team beginning their climb towards the All-Ireland conversation.

“We have the scars from 10 years ago,” Tully said. “I don’t know what we lost by in the end, it was 20 points, give or take.

“It was a bad day out and we definitely don’t want it to happen again. We know the level that we’re coming into and it’s going to be a massive step up from what we’re used to.

“We’ll give it a rattle. We’re confident, like we were through the Cavan championship. We have confidence in ourselves, confidence in the management that they’ll have us set up right, so we’ll give it a good go.”

Tully also spoke about the banter and the closeness of the Kingscourt group. He was also full of praise for the level of support they’ve received from the local community.

“We get on well,” he said of the squad. “We all have the one goal. It wasn’t a crisis meeting but we had a meeting in the summer.

“We just said to ourselves we’re better than this,” he said of their thoughts going into the championship.

“We were all on the same page and we all rowed behind each other. We all had the one goal and we all set our minds to it and thankfully we’ve achieved our goals now.”

That was then. This is now. Ulster calls on Saturday. It’s Erne Gaels this time and Kingscourt will be hoping for a better return than 2015.