The Slaughtneil captain opened up on the hurt caused by last season’s All-Ireland semi-final defeat after his last-gasp goal chance went over the bar
Just once more chance. That’s all Slaughtneil wished for as they saw their dreams of reaching an All-Ireland club hurling final slipping away.
With Sarsfields leading by two points in stoppage-time, the Derry and Ulster champions needed a goal and they almost salvaged it.
The rueful smile across Mark McGuigan’s face tells a tale. Even after 11 months, the pain of putting that last-gasp effort over, rather than under the crossbar in Newbridge still lingers.
While they’ll desperately hope to get a chance to atone for that loss later in the campaign, for now, their focus is fully on Portaferry and it has to be according to the Slaughtneil skipper.
“Yeah, that loss does drive you on,” said McGuigan.
“There’s no doubt, when you’ve tasted games at All-Ireland level, you want to get back.
“Every year, I’m being 100 per cent genuine, we don’t look past the Derry Championship. Once we get out of Derry, you obviously want to win Ulster.
“There’s no tougher test than Portaferry. They have won four-in-a-row in Down and, as they’ve said themselves, they feel they have unfinished business from last year’s Ulster final.
“So we’d be really foolish to look past Portaferry and start looking at All-Irelands at this stage.”
If Slaughtneil were heartbroken from their semi-final loss to the Cork and Munster champions, McGuigan can empathise with Portaferry.
The Down champions led 0-13 to 0-6 at half-time, but were reeled in by Paul McCormack’s men in a thrilling provincial decider at the Box-It Athletic Grounds – the venue for Sunday’s rematch.
“If I was in Portaferry’s camp, I’d have been leaving that game absolutely gutted,” added McGuigan.
“They hurled us off the park for probably 45 minutes or so. I will definitely feel probably that they’d done enough to win it and we just had a purple patch towards the end. So there was nothing in the two teams and I’d this time, it’ll be the exact same. It will go down to the wire, no doubt.”
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