Sarsfields manager Johnny Crowley pleased with standards as champions stay on course for league final

Sarsfields strengthened their push for another RedFM Division 1 Hurling League final place after a dominant 1-34 to 0-13 win over Douglas in Riverstown on Sunday morning. 

The champions, who have lifted the league title for the past three seasons, are second in the table with two games left and look well-placed to contest the decider again.

Manager Johnny Crowley was satisfied with the performance while acknowledging that Douglas were short several regulars.

“You can only face what’s in front of you,” he said post-match.

“To be fair to Douglas, they were down a few big hitters today and numbers and stuff like that. This time of the year you’re coming into the real holiday period and you’d find teams will be down on certain players. That has to be accepted. 

"But from our own perspective, irrespective of who you’re playing, you have to set your own standards.” 

Sarsfields set the tone from the opening minutes, hitting early scores and taking control of the contest before Douglas had a chance to settle. Crowley said the focus was on their own approach rather than the opposition’s circumstances.

“We have to be in control of ourselves, we need to control our controllables,” he says. 

“We set the tone early this morning. You set your own standards. You don’t know what you’re going to be playing at this time of year, but you have to have your own targets and how you’re going to play.

“If we set a template of how we want to play, we expect the lads to hit those templates and those figures. I thought we played well. We did some very good things. 

"There’s a lot there we have to work on within the system. We made a lot of fundamental hurling errors, which can happen at this time of year, but overall it was good.” 

The win keeps Sarsfields in a strong position as the league enters the final two rounds. Crowley, though, was not getting drawn into talk about standings.

“The league will sort itself out,” he states. 

“We just need to get to where we want to get to. We’ve done an awful lot of what we needed to do early doors, and we’re doing a lot of hurling now over the last four weeks. The lads love hurling and they want to hurl. 

"Unless you put the fundamentals and the foundation in to be able to do what we want to do come championship, there’s no point. We’re happy where we are, but we’ve a lot of work to do systematically.” 

Attention is already turning towards the Co-Op SuperStores Premier SHC, where the holders Sarsfields open against Charleville at the start of August. Crowley said everything is geared towards being ready for that first group outing. 

"We’ve always used the league for what we need to do for championship. At the end of the day, it’s all about the first game. That’s where we need to be right and that’s where we need to be the best version of ourselves.

“We can’t go in there blind. We’re going to have a hell of a battle against Charleville up in Castletownroche. We went up there last year for the quarter-final and it was a right game. I’d nearly say it was probably our toughest game last year against Charleville. We’ve no illusions about the task ahead of us. 

"Unless we’re 100 percent right, mentally, physically and hurling wise, we will find it tough. But that’s the challenge and that’s the goal.”