Valley men targeting coveted final berth

CLOGHER Valley’s first XV are hoping to book their place in the All-Ireland Junior Cup final for the second time in the club’s history this coming Saturday when they tackle Newcastle West at The Cran.

It was eight years ago that Clogher reached the showpiece before losing 10-9 to Enniscorthy who have since gone on to become a senior side in the All Ireland Leagues.

And the agony of that narrow defeat is still felt around The Cran and while Clogher Valley head coach, Stephen Bothwell, is more focused on winning the Ulster Championship this year, he knows what it would mean to win the All Ireland Junior Cup.

“A lot of senior boys in the club feel it’s one that got away from them, so there are players who really, really want it and I always said that if we’re going to go up you have to go up in style!,” he said.

Playing with style is something Clogher have been doing over the last few seasons, their expansive running game being built on a solid pack that allows their flair players to shine.

However, this coming Saturday, that side of their game could be limited as the wet weather and a busy schedule has taken its toll on their pitch.

“The pitch got cut up [during Saturday’s league win over Ballyclare] and I’d love it to be a day that we can go and express ourselves, play our rugby but it’s unfortunately a bad time of year for that,” Bothwell added.

“They will have a big heavy pack from what I hear so it’s going to be hard work and we’re going to have to work hard but we’ll deal with whatever comes up.

“It’s nice that it’s a change of competition, so we can relax a bit but it’s a semi-final and we’ve never won that competition. We’ve got to the final before so we want to get over the line next week and see how we go.”

Clogher go into the semi-final in great form, having won all but one of their games this season across three competitions – Ulster Championship, Ulster Junior Cup and the All-Ireland Cup.

And they have shown they can do so in emphatic style, but also by digging deep and rolling up their sleeves, which is what was required to see off Ballyclare last weekend during a 14-7 home success.

“It was tough going. We got a good early score, which I was pushing the boys for,” Bothwell added.

“It was probably 50-50 or Ballyclare might even have shaded it in the first half, but we took a lot more control of the ball in the second without turning that into points.

“In saying that, we weren’t camped on their line, we were on their 10 metre line and every time someone got an edge there was a mistake and the other team eased the pressure.

“It was just a hard old game. We couldn’t play the width they way we wanted to. They defended pretty wide and then we couldn’t get going quick enough to get outside them. We had to resort to going tight and we did that but we went with single runners too often and didn’t do it well enough.

“It was a frustrating game and we got the win so that’s the main thing.”

On Saturday, the Valley young guns were forced to dig deep against Ballyclare in a nip and tuck encounter that was mainly played out in midfield.

Two Matthew Bothwell box kicks set up the platform for Ewan Haire to open the scoring with a try converted by Paul Armstrong, but Ballyclare levelled before the break with a touchdown from Robbie Reid, converted by Mark Jackson.

In the second half, Clogher enjoyed more of the ball, but were unable to do much with it until Callum Smyton dotted down following a five metre scrum and with Armstrong firing over the conversion they had thei victory.