O’Grady ready for season defining game

TYRONE senior camogie manager Paul O’Grady has dubbed Saturday’s All-Ireland Premier Junior Championship round-two match at home to Wicklow as “their biggest match of the year.”

The Red Hands claimed a 2-21 to 0-1 victory over Louth on their first day out, but Saturday’s game will be an entirely different kettle of fish.

When they met Wicklow in the opening round of the league in early March, Tyrone fell to a 0-11 to 1-5 defeat, and their manager firmly believes that scoring a reversal of that particular result could act as the catalyst for a successful championship campaign.

O’Grady said: “We have this earmarked from day one as the biggest game of the year. When we played them in the league, we didn’t get out of the blocks and Wicklow deserve credit for that, they pinned us back. When we got going, we showed the class we do have in our ranks.

“Wicklow are a bit like ourselves, they’ve brought in a lot of new players, they’ve a big panel, and I think Saturday will tell a story about our overall chances.”

“If we can get a positive result, it puts us in a really good position heading into our match against Armagh. If we lose we’ll be chasing our tails as Armagh have been pinned as the best team in the competition. We’re hoping to lay down a marker this weekend so we can push into the Armagh game with confidence.” Even though Louth only mustered a single point against Tyrone in their championship opener nearly a fortnight ago, O’Grady says it was actually a more competitive game than they had anticipated. Still, there could be no quibbling with the margin of victory with Tyrone running out very comprehensive victors indeed.

“It’s funny because in paper it was a very one-sided contest but personally I thought it was a far better game than I’d expected.

“We’d played them in the league and I thought they were far better than they were. Their weakness was that they couldn’t get scores, but their general play was very good. They’d a girl playing wing-forward who was brilliant. It was positive for Louth that they showed well and it was good from our perspective as well that we have a good game under our belts.”