By Shaun Casey

A THREE-WEEK break between championship games in a round-robin format may not sound ideal, but Carrickmacross are happy with the bit of downtime says manager Andy Callan ahead of their final two games.

Carrickmacross have beaten both Toome and Drumhowan so far in Group One of the Intermediate Championship and have two huge battles with Donaghmoyne and Doohamlet over the next few weeks.

The team are in the second of their three-week break and Callan says he has had to tailor training to suit the schedule, but things will be ramped up again in preparation for their third-round clash.

“After the last game we tailored training off a bit and then we can ramp it this week and bring it back down next week so the proof will be in the pudding,” said Callan. “We had a three-week break before the league semi-final, and we managed that fairly well.

“We had a lot of injuries at the start of the year, we had a bad run, but we nearly have everyone back. Cian Conlon is ruled out for the year with a cruciate but other than that we hope to have a clean bill of health going forward.”

Having reached the league semi-final, Carrick entered the championship in fine form.

“We’ve made a good start, we won our first home game against Toome and then we went down to Drumhowan and beat them as well, so it’s been a good start, but we have a lot more to do yet.

“We have Donaghmoyne who are only down from senior so that’s going to be a winner-takes-all top of the table clash and we expect Donaghmoyne to be a very difficult game for us. We’ll be giving them full respect and attention.”

Callan was involved with Crossmaglen in Armagh over the past few seasons as part of Anthony Cunningham’s management team but is back with his native club for the first time since 2019 and the return took a bit of getting used to.

“It was getting used to the new rules and getting used to the new structure in Monaghan with nine league games while the last time I was involved or would have played it would have been 18 games so that was a change.

“You have the semi-final and then the league is parked, we’re in the league final so it’s just getting used to that and balancing everything with the lads, when to go
after training and then when to pull back.

“I think we have a fairly good handle on it at this stage and we’re happy enough with the position we’re in.

“We’ve parked the league and whenever that will be it’ll be but it’s full concentration now on the championship at the minute.”