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Coralstown-Kinnegad Look To End St. Lomans Drive For Seven County Finals

Saturday, 30 October 2021 14:33

They've already played once during the championship.

The second of the Westmeath SFC semi-finals on Sunday will see champions St. Lomans Mullingar meet Corlastown-Kinnegad at TEG Cusack Park. 

St. Lomans under Declan Kelly have been a slow burner in a bid to defend their win in 2020. They've tasted defeat twice against The Downs and Coralstown-Kinnegad before winning their final three group games and then dispatching Caulry in a quarter-final to make it to this point. 

Liam McNeill's side on the other hand have only lost to The Downs and having secured second place in group one, were able to take a back seat and rest up the bodies for the last number of weeks. 

As mentioned earlier the tie back in August 22nd ended in an eight point win for Kinnegad (2-12 to 1-7) but you'd expect a much more battled hardened performance from the champions in a win and go home situation. 

Coralstown-Kinnegad are bidding to reach their first final in 23-years (1998) and boss Liam McNeill knows their opponents form so far will be irrelevant: 

Top teams like St. Lomans will always improve as the competition progresses. They come good at the right times and they've done what they need to do after losing the opening two games. 

We've been very unlucky by which I mean during the first couple of games we picked up a few injuries which turned out to be long term.

When we played Romans the first day they were dealing with a few knocks themselves and they got on with it and regrouped that's the name of the game so that's just the way it goes. 

I'm not going to complain about the guys we haven't got.

The guys who are on the pitch on Sunday will be representing Coralstown-Kinnegad and I've every belief in them.

There's a lot of young guys coming through for us and they've who no baggage.

Obviously there's also guys in the panel who've lost quarter-finals and semi-finals down the years and some were part of the Intermediate winning team in 2011. Young lads juts got on with it nowadays though they don't dwell on things in the past.

On whether he feels St. Lomans are there to be got at this season:

I don't see that at all. They've been in the last how many finals and won a couple and that's the core group of players that's there so no I wouldn't buy into that at all. 

Declan Kelly has enjoyed a lot of success so far in 2021 but this Sunday could be one of his biggest tests to date, he said: 

Few lads carrying knocks after the Caulry game but looks like a fairly clean bill of health coming out of it. 

Coralstown-Kinnegad  beat us fairly well the first day out and we had a lot to improve on since then. At the end of the day, it's a very competitive championship I think everyone in the last four will feel as if they can win it out. 

Westmeath's Championship is ultra competitive. We've lost two and the ones we have come out on the right side of, we've done so by very narrow margins so no-one is taking anyone for granted. I don't think it'll be any different Sunday either. 

We were under immense pressure going into our third game against Tyrellpass and whoever lost was going to be in serious trouble. We absolutely had to pull out a performance and luckily the lads did.

Running through it, we lost the first day to The Downs by a point and then with Kinnegad there was eight in it and we have just been getting out the right side of these kinds of results since. Especially the Tyrellspass game and again with Caulry the last day. 

I really don't think there'll be much in it either way when it comes down to it. 

On the impact his subs can have: 

With your bench you want to try and get impact. We were lucky there the last day Ken comes on and scores a goal to put some gloss on the scoreline that is what you're hoping you get when you have a deep panel at your disposal as a manager. 

 

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