Royal School face ‘fair’ test at Wallace

GARETH McClintock believes his Royal School Dungannon charges face a ‘fair challenge’ at Wallace High School in the fourth round of the Schools’ Cup this coming weekend.

The sides are yet to meet this season, which should make for an entertaining clash in Lisburn on Saturday morning when McClintock hopes his team can overcome the challenge away from home.

“It’s probably a fair challenge for us this year,” he acknowledged.

“Wallace is always going to be a challenge. Any side you get in round four is going to be but for us it’s a really realistic challenge and it’s one we’re looking forward to.

“It could have been a lot worse. Of course, anyone wants to get a home draw in round four, so we have a wee bit of an extra challenge with that, but we look forward to it.

“The boys have played a good few away matches this year so they are well used to travelling and playing.

“We haven’t played Wallace yet this season, they aren’t on our fixture list.

“We had been looking for them earlier in the season but they weren’t able to play us.

“So we haven’t played them and they haven’t played us, which isn’t a bad thing. They don’t know much about us.”

The Tyrone outfit enter the competition at this stage and with several key players returning to full fitness at the right time, McClintock is quietly confident about their hopes of progressing.

Having started the season with a run of wins, those injuries derailed their progress somewhat. However, things are looking up and he believes the timing couldn’t be better for his men.

“We had quite a strong start to the season, we were unbeaten for a good part of the season up until Halloween time and then we had a number of injuries to a number of our key players, some of our Ulster boys, who are now making their way back into the squad and who have been filtering back in over the past few weeks,” he explained.

“The fixture has come at a good time for us. We had gone with no injuries up until that time at Halloween and then we had quite a number of them but we knew they were going to be due back before the cup, so we had a bit of a dip results wise after Halloween but we knew we would be able to peak again at the right time.”