This article is from page 72 of the 2011-08-30 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 72 JPG
THE start of the newly established Premier Division Cup offers clubs the opportunity to pick up some silverware and generate momentum ahead of the start of the league proper.
Early season consistency was the bedrock of Newmarket’s successful title challenge last time around so the champions are well aware of the importance of hitting the ground running.
Momentum is one thing. Winning back-to-back titles is quite another. Or so recent history would suggest. You have to go back to Avenue United sides of 1996 and 1997 for the last time a club has mounted a successful defence of the premier league title.
Since then, the league is littered with cautionary tales of teams slipping and sliding after reaching the summit of Clare soccer.
Bridge United (2006), Bridge Celtic (2007), Bunratty (2009) and Newmarket themselves (2008) all followed league winning seasons with fairly miserable campaigns.
The omens are ominous. Little wonder then that the effort to guard against complacency is at the forefront of Celtic’s management team for the coming season. “It’s second season syndrome that seems to be in Clare soccer. You win the Premier League and then you struggle the second year,” says co-manager and former player Ronan Arthur.
He continues, “Obviously we’d be aiming to win it again. But when we won it in 2008, we had a disastrous year the year after. You’ve seen the likes of Bridge Celtic being nearly relegated and Bridge United struggling after it and Bunratty also. It hasn’t been won back to back in a long time. It hasn’t been done in a good few years. We’d be aiming to challenge for it this year”.
The task of preparing Newmarket falls to Arthur, fellow manager Liam Murphy, (who also intends to return to the playing ranks after injury) and Donal Cullinan. The challenge is to match the appetite and work rate that propelled a well-balanced Newmarket panel to the league last year.
Arthur, an Ennis based auctioneer, is confident the squad will be ready once the real business begins.
He says “We’d like to think that we have enough young players coming through and a couple who were playing with the B Team for a couple of years who if they set their mind to it could play with the A team no bother. They definitely have the ability”
Arthur adds, “Last year, we worked hard, trained hard, stayed focused and tried to get points on the board early on. Then again no league is won until you’re playing two or three games a week”.