Niall Ó Ceallacháin reflects on League campaign to date ahead of Laois tie

Tue, 18th March 2025

by Cormac O'Sullivan

With Dublin’s Senior Hurlers facing into their final league game next weekend against Laois, we caught up with team manager Niall Ó Ceallacháin to reflect on the league campaign so far.

We began by asking him how he felt after the Carlow win.

“We’re back on track from a results perspective. We wanted to get back to winning ways and we achieved that. And we want to continue that in our last league game against Laois.”

“From a performance perspective, we were very pleased with the first 20 to 22 minutes in the first half against Carlow.

"We were very good, as good as we’ve been really. Things did fall away a bit in the second half and the challenge for us now is to get to the point where we’re more consistent and that’s a focus we’re going to have in the coming weeks.”

Niall continued, “The second objective of our league campaign was to give lads opportunities and that’s going to continue.

"It happened in the Carlow game and will continue in next Sunday’s Laois game. We’re also very intentionally narrowing things down towards getting to our first 15 for Championship and getting a picture around that and also what a panel will look like for Championship, so we will be narrowing things down over the next week or two.”

Niall shared some of his thoughts on the upcoming Leinster Championship:

“We’re looking forward to the upcoming first two rounds of the Championship. Particularly Offaly and Wexford where we’ll have those two games in the space of a week. These will be two huge games in terms of setting the tone of what our Leinster Championship and what our year will look like.”

And in a special appeal to Dublin clubs and all Dublin fans, Niall says that the lads are looking for big home support in Parnell Park.

“Both those games will be on home ground in Parnell Park. We only had one League game in Parnell Park and had great support for it but we’re now looking forward to two huge back to back games in Parnell Park, in our home ground and we want to get all the clubs behind us and to pack the place out.

"Essentially we want and a big Dublin crowd Parnell Park to be our sixteenth man.”