By Jonathan Brown
Castlewellan Town manager Conor Fegan is eyeing up a promotion charge as the second half of the Amateur League season gets into full swing. The Town sit third in Division 1C, five points off second-place Bloomfield.
Although Fegan believes the league title is out of reach, given the form of table-toppers St Mary’s, who defeated Orangefield 4-3 in the only 1C game to go ahead on Saturday, he feels Castlewellan are more than capable of finishing second and clinching promotion to Division 1B.
“St Mary’s has been the best team we’ve played all year. In our last game against them, we were 1-0 up, then 2-1 down, got it back to 2-2. We felt we needed to win that game, so we tried to press on and get a winner, and they ended up hitting us for a few goals.
“For me, St Mary’s will win the league because of where they are, how many games they have left to play, and the fact they’re a good team.”
The Saints, back-to-back winners of the County Antrim Junior Shield, are top of the table on 40 points and have two games in hand on Castlewellan. Bloomfield sit second on 38 points but have played one more game than Fegan’s men.
“I set out targets at the start of the season – trying to win the league and trying to get promoted. Winning the league is probably out of reach now. We’re sitting a few points behind Bloomfield in second, but promotion is still in our hands.
“We have very winnable games, whereas Bloomfield still have to play Woodvale twice and a lot of tough teams around them. We’ve still got a lot of bottom-half teams to play, which is good for us,” Fegan explained.
Former Rathfriland, Dromara, Loughgall, Warrenpoint and Newcastle player Fegan admits he’s not where he would like to be at this stage of the season. “It’s been indifferent and, if I’m being honest, probably a bit disappointing in terms of where we are in the league and the amount of points we have.”
The loss of Fegan’s starting centre-backs has had an impact. Club captain Conall Corrigan has been out since the back end of last year with a medical issue, while Ruairi Fegan is also missing through injury.
In the full article Conor goes on to highlight another statistic that he used to motivate his team.
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