St Nick's boss Robert Brosnan hails 'elite' Downey brothers ahead of crunch clash

St Nick’s head into their final group game in the McCarthy Insurance Group Premier JFC with destiny in their own hands.

After a number of years of struggle considering they were a top-tier championship club in 2019, there are signs that they have steadied the ship. 

St Nick’s have three points going into their meeting with Urhan in Dunmanway tomorrow evening at 7.30pm.

Confidence will be high for St Nick's especially after their 2-16 to 0-15 win over a strong Canovee side last month.

St Nick’s manager Robert Brosnan was a relaxed figure when he spoke with The Echo ahead of a crucial weekend.

“It’s great that we can kind of look forward rather than look behind us,” he says.

“If we win, we go directly to the semi-finals and if we lose, we are out, it’s a knockout tie.

“It’s a change though for us in the sense of the last number of years at the final group game stage, we were worrying about relegation.” 

Building on the seven-point success over Canovee will be the target now for the Blackpool-based team. That victory shouldn’t have come as a huge surprise when St Nick’s had pretty much a full complement of players available including the Downey brothers, Robert and Eoin.

“We have only lost two games this year, Kildorrery in the league and then Canovee in the league final,” the St Nick’s boss said.

“We have had a massive influx from our underage structure this year. We are bearing the fruits of hard work at underage level over the past decade or so. We knew coming into this season that we would be competitive.

“The U21s got to the county B final last year and when you have young lads coming through, you have something to work with. I am not surprised to a certain degree with how well we have done to date.

“We have put a lot of structures in place this season and also professionalism from a management perspective, we fixed that as well, so players are coming into a set-up that they could buy into.” 

Brosnan has praised the impact of Robert and Eoin Downey. The pair starred in the win over Canovee.

“The lads gave us a huge boost and played their part against Canovee,” he states.

“Number one, they are elite athletes, number two, they are extremely good footballers and number three, the lift the other players get when they see them walking into the dressing room.

“One of the biggest failures we had in the draw with Ballydesmond in the first group game was that we didn’t manage the game well enough. You could see then the composure Robert and Eoin brought to the team the last day.

“We learnt the lessons from the Ballydesmond game helped by the two lads returning. They have All-Stars and played in two All-Ireland finals. Even if they didn’t kick a ball and only had a few words to say, they would still give the team a boost.

“If you're in trouble on the ball and if you have an option of giving the ball to Robert or Eoin, then you're doing well with those options.” 

This game tomorrow is effectively winner-takes-all for both St Nick’s and Urhan. The two teams know each other pretty well having met frequently over the last few campaigns.

“There’s not much between ourselves and Urhan. It will all come down to who performs better on the day to be honest. In a way, if you want to look at it from our point of view, it’s a quarter-final game.

“We know what we have to do, but we also know what will happen if we lose, it will be the end of the road. We have nothing else to think about only Urhan. We won’t be taking our eyes off them, that’s for sure.

“We know how big of a game this is for the club and how much it would mean to the people of St Nick’s if we were to get into the last four with a win.”