O’Mullan to rotate with Armagh’s semi ticket guaranteed

By Shaun Casey

ARMAGH can see out the final two rounds of the group stages in the comfort of knowing they’re already in the All-Ireland Premier Junior semi-finals and manager PJ O’Mullan is delighted with how things have been going.

They’ve certainly been the in-form team in the championship and sit at the top of the group with three wins from three outings ahead of their final round clashes against Wicklow and Laois.

This weekend, the Orchard County head south as they take on Wicklow, who have only earned one victory so far this season. O’Mullan admits his side don’t know much about their hosts, but suggests they’ll be focusing on themselves.

“We’re going okay at the minute now, we seem to be hitting a wee bit of form but we’re just hoping to keep building and take each game as it comes and see where that takes us,” said the Antrim native.

“We were happy enough with the break, we had a lot of games and we’ve been training very hard, we’ve gone through a heavy period of training. We took a chance and now we’re starting to come through that and we’re at the other end of it now, so the break was no harm.

“It’s something different, we haven’t met Wicklow, we haven’t played them this year, so we don’t know a terrible amount about them, but we’ll concentrate on ourselves and get ourselves right before we worry about anyone else and it’s the same this week.”

With a spot in the last four secured, O’Mullan sees the last two games as an opportunity to get a look at his full panel.

Following comfortable wins over Roscommon, Louth and Tyrone, Armagh are in a position to rest players as well.

Like every team, there is the odd niggle here and there and the Orchard boss won’t be risking any of his injured players over the next two weekends in the hope of having a full hand to pick from for the semis.

“The semi-finals are on the 19th of July at Breffni Park and that was the goal at the start,” the Armagh boss continued. “It would be nice to keep the momentum going and to keep winning, it’s a good habit to be in.

“We have a panel of 27 and over the next two games, we’ll get a look at everybody again and see where that leads us going into the semi-final. We have a couple of niggles at the minute and a couple of injuries. The fact that we’re already in the semi-final, we’re not risk too many players that are carrying knocks. We have a good panel, it’s a very young panel and it has changed a lot compared to what Armagh have had in previous years.

“We only have five or six in the panel that would have been here for the last five or six years and we brought four minors in after their campaign as well so it’s a young squad and hopefully we’ll have everybody ready for the All-Ireland semi-final.”