Beragh face their litmus test against Pomeroy

THE Tyrone Intermediate Championship commenced last Wednesady night with a meeting of Division Two champions Clonoe and the Rock, with the remainder of the first-round matches to be played off across the weekend

Footballing fanatics have the chance to fill their boots but for those at the coalface, the overriding priority will be booking their spot in the quarter-finals and anything else would represent a stinging disappointment.

Beragh head into the Paddy Cullen Cup race on the back of a particularly fruitful league campaign, but Pomeroy make for formidable first-round opponents so it has the potential to be a gruelling battle when these two teams meet on Sunday afternoon in Carrickmore.

It’s a real litmus test for a Red Knights side that faltered in last year’s quarter-final clash against Edendork, but they’re certainly on the right track under their manager Noel Slane, now in his second year in charge, and they will be hopeful of achieving promotion one way or another.

“It’s been a really, really positive year. The lads have developed really well. If you look across the panel, every player has improved in some way which is really what you want to see. At the start of the year I didn’t envision a season like this so it’s very positive.

Honing in on the details of where exactly Beragh have made their improvements this year, Slane pinpointed their kick-passing and scoring. The effort on the training pitch has certainly paid dividends and they were full value for finishing second only to a rampant Clonoe team in the league.

“If you look at last year we lost a lot of matches by single scores even though the effort the lads put in was unbelievable.

“Looking at how they played, we knew there was good spirit in the group. Two key areas we fell short on was our kick-passing and our ability to take scores. What we focused really hard on in the pre-season were those two key areas of the game and you saw evidence of that in our league campaign this year.

“Terry McKenna did a good job in preparing the lads in that respect, a lot of kicking and shooting in pre-season and hopefully it was enjoyable for the players as well.”

There are a few different ways where Beragh can viably win promotion between the play-offs, winning the Intermediate Championship, or advancing to Division One by default if Clonoe complete a league and championship double. It’s an exciting period for the Red Knights but they have a seriously tough opener against Pomeroy now only a matter of days away.

“Pomeroy without doubt are favourites for Sunday. They have the Burns, the McGearys, Jude Campbell, Gavin Goodfellow, the Loughrans. They have a lot of good seasoned players who won the Ulster Intermediate in 2016. They also had a really good run in senior football. Outside of Clonoe they’re probably the favourites for the Championship, they have a lot of senior experience.

“They were probably at a bit of disadvantage in that they have a few county players, it makes it harder for them to get a league run going, but when it comes to the Championship they’ll be all guns blazing. It’s a really tough draw for us and we know that, we’ve prepared well like every other match but we know they’ll be a serious proposition.”