By Niall Gartland

MICHAEL McShane is playing it open and straight about the aspirations of the Sleacht Néill hurlers, who are set to face Ballygunner (Waterford) in Sunday’s All-Ireland semi-final showdown at Parnell Park.

It’s most definitely not the case that the men from Sleacht Néill are just happy to be here: not only have they lost three All-Ireland semi-finals in the last five years, but many of their dual players have suffered the bitter taste of defeat in All-Ireland final defeats to the Dr Crokes and Corofin footballers. It’s fair to say they’ll be motivated to the hilt for this one.

Ballycastle native McShane, who is in his seventh season in charge, said: “Every one of the players, whether they’re in their late or early twenties wants to win an All-Ireland.

“They’ve a boxful of Derry and Ulster medals but they one they want is an All-Ireland.

“A lot of these lads have lost two All-Ireland football finals and they want to get back to the big stage and win the ultimate prize, there’s no doubt about that.”

He continued: “We don’t talk about it out loud but within our group it’s obviously very prominent in our thinking. We’re one of the top teams in the country and we want to be the best one. We’ve every right to think that. We proved two years ago against Ballyhale we can mix it with the very best but ultimately we didn’t win that game. We want to rectify that – we want to get to Croke Park and if we do we can finish the job.”

Elaborating on the fact that his players are basically a self-motivated bunch at this stage, he said:

“Well if a player can’t get motivated for an All-Ireland Club semi-final he shouldn’t be there. But listen, this is our fourth All-Ireland semi, and in some of them we’ve done very well, some of them we haven’t performed as well as we’d like.

“We’re very determined to make that next step. We had to win our own club championship in Derry and then negotiate a difficult Ulster campaign, but now we’ve that done, we’re very focused on taking the next step.”

Standing in their way of a place in the final is Waterford side Ballygunner, and there’s some obvious parallels between the two sides. Ballygunnar have absolutely dominated Waterford hurling for most of the last decade, and they’ve won two provincial titles at this stage, but the biggest prize of all has proven elusive.

McShane commented: “The similarities are quite uncanny really, they’ve won eight county titles in-a-row and we’ve won nine. They’ve been dominant in Waterford but haven’t won as many Munster titles as they’d like.

“No doubt their thought process is that they want to break through the glass ceiling, of getting to the final and then going on to win it. One of us is going to make the breakthrough this Sunday.

“The similarities don’t just end there. Even the way they play and the type of players they have are similar to us, so it should make for a very interesting game.”

Sleacht Néill won the Ulster Hurling title in relatively comfortable fashion. They overcame Antrim contenders Dunloy in the semi-finals before shutting out Ballycran in the final (their Down opponents only scored from play twice as Sleacht Néill ran out wholly deserved 1-14 to 0-10 victors). McShane was pleased with their performance but recognises that there’s always room for improvement.

“Look it wasn’t a thrilling game of hurling but I thought we were very efficient on the day. Defensively we did very well – we conceded only our second score from play in injury time.

“We look at every game we’ve played and see areas where we can improve, so that’s something we’ve been working on in training. We’re a well-settled team and know exactly the way we want to play and we’re focusing very much on ourselves. We’re paying due diligence to Ballygunner but most of all we’re really focused on getting the best performance we possibly can on Sunday.”

McShane is also happy to report that – touch wood – they have no injury concerns leading into this weekend’s match. Their skipper Cormac O’Doherty was carrying a knock through their provincial campaign but is fully fit at the moment.

“Yeah thankfully full clean bill of health touch wood, It’s an uncertain world we live in with Coronavirus, we don’t know what’s around the corner. Cormac came into the Ulster campaign with a shoulder injury but he’s done a lot of work on that and got back to full fitness. He’s had four or five weeks of good work under his belt and is flying now.”