Limerick Sport Eagles Head-Coach Niall McDermott previews upcoming Division One campaign

LIMERICK SPORT EAGLES Head-Coach Niall McDermott says his side are raring to go ahead of the upcoming Domino's Men's Division One campaign.

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The Eagles get their 2025/26 campaign underway with a trip to the 'Premier County' to face Tipp Talons, with a tip-off time of 6.30pm.

Head-coach McDermott says his side are 'excited' to get the campaign underway, statin that this year's squad has a healthy mix of youth and experience.

"Everyone is always excited this time of year, we have some young players stepping up, we have some new faces in, some old heads returning so everyone is just really excited to get the season started.

Last year for us was kind of a transition where we made sure all of our young and up and coming players Irish players were getting more and more experience and more game time and we are happy with the progress of those players," he said.

"We've brought in some new players to try and compliment those players to try and make us very competitive and try and challenge for silverware a the end of the season," he added. 

The Derry native says that there are injury concerns at the moment but reaffirms that the panel is strong enough to deal with any scenario that may arise.

"We do have a bit of an injury issue at the minute, we have 16 players and seven of them are currently out injured, it's not ideal because it has been a bit disruptive to our pre-season but it's a long season and we have a deep squad. This will give the opportunity for other players to step up in the short term to try and stake their claim," he said.

"We have a big squad, with a lot of players who are going to be fighting minutes and game time so that'll hopefully pay dividends come the end of the season," he added. 

With a heavy block of work put in over the last few months, the Eagles head-coach says that his players are 'bursting' to get into the thick of it. 

"We started our pre-season at the start of August so we've training for over two months now and at this point they are just bursting to play games, we've played pre-season games but it's not the same as a proper game."

McDermott is under no illusions as to how challenging today's opponents will be, especially given the fact they must travel to Scoil Ruain Killenaule in Tipperary. 

"Last year we beat them in Limerick and they beat us in Tipp, it's a real tough place to play, it's a tough court. Between their recruitment and their Irish guys, they have a really good squad and they're going to be a tough challenge.

The first game is always a bit of an unknown, you don't know a whole lot about what each team is going to do so we're just going to focus on ourselves and what we're trying to do, what we're trying to achieve," he said. 

"We're going to try make adapt to us rather than us worrying about what they're trying to do and that's our focus and hopefully that will cause them a few problems," McDermott concluded.