By Shaun Casey

NEW Armagh management duo Darnell Parkinson and Joe Feeney are looking forward to getting their tenure underway as the Orchard County travel south to Kerry on Saturday for the opening round of the National League.

Both Parkinson and Feeney were members of Greg McGonigle’s management team last season as Armagh won the Division One title and were the natural successors once McGonigle stepped down.

Armagh are the current league holders, but Kerry have the All-Ireland crown having defeated the Ulster champions in last year’s semi-final, so Parkinson knows his side are in for an extremely difficult test.

“It’s probably the perfect game in many ways; it lets you know exactly where we are,” said the Pearse Óg clubman. “The reality is Kerry probably aren’t going to be flat to the mat either at the moment, you’d imagine they’ve probably got a bit of extended break.

“They obviously changed their management as well. It might be better to get them at this stage than towards the end of the league, when they’re a bit further down the line but you probably wouldn’t have been picking it if you had your choice of fixtures to start.”

Having won the league last year for the first time in their history, Armagh now go into the campaign with a target on their backs, but Parkinson insists his team will only be concerned with their own performances.

“You obviously aim to win every competition that you’re in to begin with but we’re also being realistic. We’ll be going into the league a lot more undercooked than we were last year. We’re going to be down a few key players in the early stages.

“We have to just approach it that we’re the current holders and every game we go into. We’re looking a performance first and foremost. We probably just have to target our home games and aim to pick up some points in our away games along the way.”

Armagh will be without the injured Aimee Mackin, who is on the mend, and may be missing a few of the Clann Éireann girls for the early rounds, but Parkinson is content with the squad they have built for the year ahead.

“We decided to give the Clann Éireann players an extended break,” Parkinson said of the back-to-back Ulster Club Championship winners. “They’ve been on the go now for quite a while without a break.

“We knew that off the bat that we were going to be going in with a good bunch of players undercooked as such. There are some girls rehabbing injuries but that gives us the chance to basically give exposure to the players who maybe didn’t get much exposure last year.

“That’ll help to build a bit of squad depth along the way and once we get those Clann Éireann players and the rehab girls back into the mix, then that should hopefully make our squad that little bit stronger down the line.”