Ahead of this weeks’ Longford Senior Hurling Championship Final, the Longford Slashers manager Niall Ward spoke with Tony Ghee.
Slashers ended a twenty-year barren spell in 2021 when they won the JJ Duignan Cup for the first time since Martin Glennon lifted the trophy back in 2001. Since that victory, Slashers have lost back-to-back county titles to outgoing champions Clonguish.
They go into Sunday’s decider against Wolfe Tones having won both of their matches against Clonguish and Wolfe Tones en route to the final, but Niall Ward insists that while it is great to be unbeaten, it will count for nothing if they are not crowned county champions.
‘It’s a good place to be having a one hundred percent record but that will mean nothing if we cannot win on Sunday and as we only beat Wolfe Tones by a single point when we met earlier in the campaign in Allen Park, we know that they are more than capable of beating us. We expect it to be very tight again especially when you consider that in our earlier clash, we got a few lucky breaks to come out on top in the end, and hopefully we will get those breaks again on Sunday.’
Looking back on the four-point win over Clonguish in Devine Park, Ward acknowledged the contribution of the younger players in the squad.
‘We have done a lot of work over the last number of years to get our underage set-up in good shape and that work is coming to fruition now. We used to get lads up to under 14 level only to see a significant fall off after that. We have had lads playing at under 15, under 16, and minor level in Westmeath Leagues and the Táin Leagues and also in Roscommon Leagues to give the lads more playing time and that has been a big help in keeping the lads interested in playing hurling all the way through to senior level.’
Having lost the last two county finals to Clonguish, Ward admits that they are very hungry to go one better on Sunday by winning the holy grail.
‘We have been very consistent over the last eight years as this is our seventh final in that time, but the 2021 success was our only title success over the previous seven years, so we have also been very consistent in losing finals, but hopefully, we will put that right on Sunday. Hurling within the club was not going well for several years after our 2001 success, and sometimes we could not even field a team and we went several years without winning a championship match when we did field teams.
However, as I said earlier, we have reconnected our underage teams with our senior team and we got some of the older players back into the fold to help develop our younger players and around 2015, we were back up and running and competing with the other two teams and that has been the case since then. We have our second wave of underage talent coming through now and hopefully that conveyor belt will continue, but the role of the older players has been very important too.’
On the injury front, Slashers are almost approaching full strength and the return of Karl Murray to the heart of their defence for the win over Clonguish was a great sight for the Slashers faithful, but there is no guarantee that star forward Reuben Murray will be fit for the final.
‘Reuben would be delighted to be available and so would we. Reuben is the captain and although he has yet to play in the championship so far, his contribution in the dressing room has been very important. He is fifty-fifty at best for it, but then we did not think that we would have Karl for the last game, so you never know.’