By Shaun Casey

WITH two games remaining in the league, Down need a miracle to save their Division 1B status and boss Ronan Sheehan says they are starting to focus on the Joe McDonagh Cup.

The Mourne men currently sit at the foot of the table with zero points from four outings and look destined for a swift return to Division Two unless they can pull off a miracle.

Even if they do secure maximum points from their next two outings against Dublin and Antrim, it’s unlikely that Sheehan’s side will finish outside of the bottom two.

Down were missing key men like Eoin Sands, John McManus and Matt Conlon in last week’s defeat to Kildare and Sheehan insists he won’t be risking anyone carrying knocks on Saturday.

Speaking ahead of their date with Dublin, the Down boss said: “I don’t think we’ll see any of our injured players or unavailable players until the Antrim game at the earliest,” he said. “I think we’ll be going with what we have to Dublin, it’s a prep game now for the Antrim game and indeed for the McDonagh Cup.

“It would take a fairly significant run of results to go our way to keep us in 1B at this stage so our focus is turning towards the McDonagh Cup, so we won’t be chancing anybody against Dublin, we’ll bide our time a bit with that.

“Dublin and Clare are a step above everybody in this league, if you look at the results, there’s been very little between the rest.

“Realistically, we’re looking for a performance at the weekend and to get the most out of it that we possibly can.

“In terms of preparing for the McDonagh Cup, I think the game last week and the game against Antrim are more reflective of the levels that you’d expect to see in the McDonagh Cup as opposed to Dublin who are a good step above that.”

Reflecting on last week’s 1-23 to 3-24 defeat to Kildare, Sheehan added: “It was a disappointing result, and things didn’t go for us. We gave away three poor goals away that we’d be really disappointed with, just three individual mistakes.

“These things happen of course, it was three individual mistakes as opposed to really good play by Kildare, and I think that’s what is frustrating.

“In saying that, we battled back really well, did a lot of good things which was positive but in the second half, we were very frustrated that every time we seemed to get a roll of scores, they got a number of handy frees and that just seems to be par for the course at the minute.”