St Vincent’s set sights on retaining Leinster title

St Vincent’s senior football selector, Neil Curran, has pointed to the ambition of the Vinnies players as the driving force behind their continued success.

The back-to-back Dublin champions face Offaly’s Rhode in Páirc Tailteann, Navan this Sunday (2.0) hoping to retain the AIB Leinster Club SFC they captured 12 months ago en route to All-Ireland glory on St Patrick’s Day in Croke Park.

“The real test after winning an All-Ireland is whether the team feel that that’s it. That their job is done," says Neil.

“It’s so rare to win it that it’s fantastic on its own. But I think there is an ambition amongst this group of players that they don’t feel that they’ve achieved their potential and because they haven’t, they want to have another go and have another crack at it.

“And to be honest, once we saw that we wouldn’t have to overcome the challenge of hunger, then the decision was made much easier. And they’re working just as hard as last year, if not harder,” adds Neil.

Rhode manager, Pat Daly, is hoping his side can dethrone the reigning champions.

“We’d always be an attacking team. We don’t set up defensively,” says Pat.

“We feel we have the forwards, so we’ll be going at it that way. You have to go at it.

“If we go down fearing Vincent’s in any way we’re in trouble. And we don’t fear them.

“They’re a great club team, a massive team, All-Ireland champions, but we don’t fear them.

“If we did there’d be no point going down.”