By Shaun Casey

FOLLOWING their promotion to Division Two, Munterconnaght began the Junior Championship campaign on the front foot, but boss Stephen McGovern suggests there’s still room for improvement.

McGovern’s men defeated Kildallan by four points in round one, with Ryan Nwaneri’s early major proving crucial in their 1-16 to 0-15 victory. Munterconnaght will now face Swanlinbar in the next round.

The St Mary’s men were the only team to get one over Munterconnaght in the league, so McGovern and his side know a tough test awaits.

“The bank holiday weekend is free and then we have three games in three weeks,” said McGovern.

“We absolutely won’t be looking past this one. They beat us in the league and beat us well, they beat us in the championship last year as well so if you were a betting man, you’d be putting all your money on Swanlinbar.

“It’s in Belturbet too, which is like a home venue for them but we’re just going to try and put our best foot forward and we’ll see what we come out with. I’ve no doubt they’ll be confident of beating us again, but we’ll get our own ship in order and go at it.”

On the first-round victory, Munterconnaght defeated Kildallan handily in the league, but the underdogs posed a much stiffer examination of them in the championship, which McGovern hopes will stand to his side going forward.

“We had to really dig it out and it was uncomfortable at times, but it was all about getting over the line in the first round and it’s onto the next one now,” he added. “Hopefully it’ll stand to us because you get nothing from winning a game by 20 points.

“They had Ryan O’Neill, who plays with Cavan, and he had to be really stifled, and we exerted a lot of energy into that and that left other lads free, and they kicked two-pointers, and they made it a really edgy game for us.

“In fairness to our lads, we didn’t lose a league game all year, only to the guys we’re playing next, so there’s maybe a habit of not losing games and we drew a couple of games that we had no right to get anything from and that has probably carried through.”