By Niall Gartland

LARAGH United get their Senior Championship campaign up and running on Saturday night against Division One champions Cuchulainns after more than two months of competitive inactivity.

Manager Declan Farrell admits that it’s been a tricky balancing act on the training front, but they’ll hope that some decent results in Division Two will translate to their imminent championship campaign.

“We won five games in Division Two. We did all right. We weren’t far off the promotion places, but at the same time the big thing was winning games. Laragh didn’t win many games last year or the year before, so that was the priority. It was a very, very competitive league.

“There were eight weeks between the last league game and our first championship match. I’d say it’s stretched out to nine now, actually.

“We were caught between a rock and a hard place because you obviously can’t train the lads the way we were doing it – you don’t want to overload them.

“But everybody knows they don’t have a game for eight weeks, so it was about finding the right point to get back into it.”

Opponents Cuchulainns reached last year’s Ulster Intermediate Championship final, and more recently they claimed a historic Division One final victory over Gowna. Few would have tipped them for senior championship honours at the start of the season, but their impressive form isn’t a particularly big surprise to Farrell.

“Cichulainns are probably the form team. They would have fancied themselves to have gone up to senior three or four years ago. You could see it last year when they reached the Ulster Intermediate final, so they’re well capable of competing at senior level.

“You saw them in Division One this year – they produced brilliant performances against Crosserlough and Gowna to win the league title. As well as that, they won the Division One minor title too.

“They have good numbers coming through and they’re all playing at a high level.”

Farrell led Templeport to the delayed 2020 Junior Championship title in Cavan, and in more recent times he spent time as part of the Cavan U20 set up as well as leading Belturbet to a Junior final appearance in 2024.

On his latest role, he said: “The club are trying to reignite themselves in a sense. For a number of years, a lot of players were away in Australia and America.

“We’ve also suffered a lot of long-term injuries over the last two or three years, which has been desperately unfortunate.

“The minors this year are starting to come together and they had good representation on the county minor panel.

“The U15s and U16s are coming through as well, and James Tully was involved with the U20s last year. They’re definitely starting to rebuild – it’s just about getting the confidence back at senior level.”