Monaleen target All-Ireland glory

MONALEEN are within touching distance of an historic All-Ireland title when they face Mayo’s Tooreen at Croke Park on Saturday.

The Castletroy club are the first Limerick side to reach the All-Ireland Intermediate club decider and are just 60 minutes from completing a remarkable year. They have already tasted success at county and provincial level and are in with an excellent chance of continuing that upward curve against their Connacht opponents.

Key to that turnaround has been the appointment of Eoin Brislane as team manager: "You come into a new club that has just been relegated from Senior to Intermediate and from Junior A to Junior B together,” Brislane said ahead of the game. "You set your stall and build things from the ground up.

"It's a clean slate and you take it week by week and session by session. We built momentum from the senior league and things just really snowballed from there."

Monaleen have come out on top of arguably the most competitive championship grade within Limerick GAA, Premier Intermediate.

The city side won five or their seven group stage games, before defeating Effin and Bruff in the semi-final and final respectively. All in all they have played 13 championship games in the 2022/23 season, winning 11, drawing once and only tasting defeat on one occasion.

Brislane and his backroom team have been keen to ensure the players' enjoy training, especially after the impact that Covid-19 had on sport in recent years.

"A lot of that had to have been down to Covid-19,” Brislane explained."Lads weren’t able to go out, do anything really. Dressing rooms were locked. Lads were coming to games and to training already togged out. It was a nightmare for everyone.

"When we came in, we made a conscious decision that every six weeks we would do something together. That varied from a getting away on a bus for a night out to barbeques, it could have been anything. We tried to ensure lads went home with a smile on their faces."

Monaleen face a Tooreen side that have been Connacht champions for the last four years and are also into their first All-Ireland Final at this level. The Mayo standard bearers saw off Down’s Liatroim in their last four clash.

The Mayo club have 12 players on the county hurling panel and will also be full of confidence heading into the game. Saturday evening's big showpiece final at Croke Park has a 7pm throw-in at Croke Park. The game will be live on TG4 for supporters unable to travel to Dublin.