By Shaun Casey

PROMOTION to the intermediate ranks was secured last Saturday for Drumhowan, who won the Junior League, but now championship is the focus for manager Paddy Kelly.

They defeated Toome in the league decider, 4-16 to 2-14, and Blackhill Emeralds now await the league winners in the opening round of the Junior Championship this weekend.

Drumhowan are away from home the first day out and will also have to travel to Currin but will enjoy the comforts of home advantage when they face both Killeevan and Truagh.

“We have Blackhill on Sunday and that’ll be tough. People probably don’t give teams in Monaghan, especially Junior teams, enough credit. All the teams are well prepared,” Kelly said.

“There’s no game that you’re guaranteed you’re going to win, all the teams come out fighting and it sharpens our focus. The championship is a different campaign now and we’ve parked the promotion.

“The championship is something to look forward to and it’s a different competition, so we’ll start off from scratch again, a clean slate, then we’ll build on that.”

To get their hands on the league title, Drumhowan certainly had to do it the hard way. Their semi-final showdown was ultimately decided by a penalty shootout while they trailed for most of the contest against Toome.

“We set out to get a good league campaign and there was a good few young lads that came into the team this year,” Kelly added, reflecting on the season to date.

“We were probably in a transition because we had county players away and U20s, Martin Quinn and Darragh McElearney with the seniors and then Tom (McMahon) going to the senior as well.

“We really didn’t have those boys for the early part of the season, but we trained really well and we targeted the league and then we ended up going through it unbeaten.

“The semi-final maybe brought a wee bit of pressure because we were unbeaten and we wanted to keep that going so the satisfaction was that we completed the league series without getting beat and then winning it out.”

On the final with Toome itself, Kelly continued, “For nearly 20 minutes we didn’t score in the first half. They went nine up and they hit the posts as well but to be fair, we rallied back in and there were only two in it at half time.

“We went ahead in the second half, but they got a goal to go in front again, but our bench helped us power on then. To be fair to Toome, they gave it to us, and they knew what they were about.

“None of these games are ever won easily. We knew with James Wilson for Toome, he’s a good forward and scored 10 points in total.”