By Shaun Casey

A FAMILIAR face will walk through the gates at Ballycran this weekend and Down boss Ronan Sheehan is hoping for a familiar result when his side lock horns with old foes Kildare.

The sides clashed three times across league and championship last year, with the Mourne men coming out on top twice. Their one defeat was the final round of the Joe McDonagh Cup and Kildare went on to win the competition.

Down had beaten the Lilywhites in the opening round of the league last season (at Ballycran) and repeated the result in the Division Two league final eight weeks later.

“We’d be very familiar with Kildare right down through the years,” said Sheehan. “This Kildare team and ourselves have probably fought battles against each other going back maybe seven or eight years, certainly as long as I’ve been involved.

“They look to have kicked on a bit, the Joe McDonagh Cup success last year will have given them a great boost of confidence but we’re always confident when we play Kildare. We always feel we can give them a game; we always think that it’s a 50-50 match.”

Down have zero points on the board so far but with crunch ties with Kildare, Dublin and Antrim still to come, Sheehan is hopeful that his side can secure enough points to remain in the division.

Two of their final three outings shall be played on home turf. Kildare travel north this weekend while Down welcome Antrim to Newry on the final day, either side of their trip to Parnell Park.

“We’ve been playing well in Ballycran over the last number of years. The last time Kildare came to Ballycran was last year in the National League and we beat them on that occasion,” Sheehan recalled.

“We were up by six or seven points at one stage before they came back and we kicked on to win by five in the end. We’re hoping for something similar on Sunday and hopefully a big crowd comes along to try and push the guys over the line.

“Home advantage is really important, for the likes of ourselves and Antrim in particular. I think outside of our game, the biggest distance that Kildare have travelled is maybe 40 minutes for the whole of the National League.

“In comparison, the likes of ourselves and Antrim routinely travel three, four, maybe five hours on a bus to get to some of the games, particularly when we were away to Clare, so home advantage is massive.

“In the vast majority of games we’ve played in Ballycran in the last number of years, we’ve made that count. If you look at the results in Division 1B, in amongst that group of four that are fighting to stay up, the results have more or less gone in favour of the home team.

“We’d be hoping to make that count. It certainly doesn’t guarantee victory, you have to perform well but it does give you a boost and we’ve performed well against Kildare at home over the past number of years and hopefully we can do the same on Sunday.”