National Football League Division Two
Down v Offaly
Saturday, Páirc Esler, 5pm

By SHAUN CASEY

JAMES McCartan hopes his Down side can “embrace” the relegation pressure that currently hangs over them to earn their first win of the season against Offaly on Saturday.

The Mourne men sit on one point along with Offaly and Cork while Meath rest just above the trio with two points.

“There’s pressure every time you take the field. Nobody in our group wants to play in Division Three next year and we know if you go down there it’s certainly going to be a massive struggle to get out of it,” said McCartan.

“There’s pressure every day you go out. There’s pressure to perform, there’s pressure to win games. We feel it, hopefully we can embrace it and it’s a challenge and overcome it and go and put in a decent performance.”

The bottom four all face off this weekend and with the Tailteann Cup looming large for the relegation pair, a win for Down would help them on their way to safety.

“We’ll be doing everything we can to ensure that doesn’t happen (relegation) and I suppose we need to put our best foot forward and put in some decent performances to try and ensure that’s the case,” said the two-time All-Ireland winner.

From the outside, it seemed that the return of the Kilcoo contingent would help McCartan and his men secure their Division Two status.

But injuries have limited their impact so far and it’s unclear how many will be available for this weekend.

“To be honest it’s been strange because a lot of them are coming back with knocks and injuries after a long club season, that needs looked after.

“The amount of time they’ve spent on the training field has been minimal at the minute. They’re in the group but as regards to taking part in training, there hasn’t been much evidence of it so far.

“Ryan McEvoy was unable to train this morning (Saturday), Anthony Morgan limped out of training this morning. Niall Kane trained, Jerome (Johnston) hasn’t trained yet and Ceilum Doherty is abroad.”

It’s not all negative however for the double All-Star winner. McCartan feels that their attack has a lot to offer, with the likes of Liam Kerr impressing, but it’s their ball retention that causes the most concern.

“I think attacking wise, I know the scoreboard mightn’t reflect it, we didn’t move the scoreboard at all in the second half against Meath, but we still felt we were a big attacking threat.

“I think whenever we get the ball in our hands, we’re a useful enough team but the problem is probably retaining our kick-outs and putting pressure on opposition kick-outs. We’re finding getting possession is the big task for us.

“Against Roscommon I thought that we were hit on the break several times, probably because guys had left positions and followed the men. So, there might be a bit more structure to our defence hopefully this Saturday night and we can’t just leave ourselves wide open.”

READ MORE…Joe Brolly pays tribute to Kilcoo. Click here…