***Sunday June 25 ***

All-Ireland SHC preliminary round

Carlow v Laois, O'Moore Park, 3.30pm

By William Dunne

Two Saturdays ago, Carlow triumphed in Croke Park to claim the Christy Ring Cup which qualifies them to contest the preliminary round of the All-Ireland SHC.

They beat Antrim for the first time in 2017 – at the fourth attempt - to pencil in a Senior Hurling Championship fixture with round-robin table-toppers Laois, at O’Moore Park this Sunday.

Carlow manager Colm Bonnar says that at the beginning of the year, they targeted promotion from Division 2A and the Christy Ring Cup.

After failing to gain promotion, the county made amends in the Christy Ring Cup and although Bonnar is proud to compete in the All-Ireland championship, he feels no pressure heading into the weekend.

“There is no pressure on us whatsoever,” Bonnar told GAA.ie this week. “We didn’t do everything that we wanted to achieve this year, but there’s no pressure.

“This is a real bonus shot. We never talked about, or looked, at this, but it’s wonderful to be in it and we’re delighted to be in it and to get a chance to be thrown into the hat with the bigger teams.

“Our lads can hurl, and we’ve seen videos of Laois and they’re well capable of hurling too so it’s going to be a good game, but there is possibly more pressure on Laois to get a victory.”

Bonnar admitted that it has been difficult to get the intensity levels back up to the required standard after the Christy Ring final, and with nine squad members on under 21 duty this week, preparations have not been satisfactory.

“It hasn’t been the ideal preparation,” said Bonnar. “If your season was the be all and end all this weekend, and if we were being judged on this, we’d be in trouble.

“But we’ll regroup and we’ll see where Laois are. If we have any ambitions of going up to the round-robin next year - and that’s where Laois are, they topped that group - it’s a great chance to see where we are.”

Laois won all three of their Leinster SHC Round Robin matches against Westmeath, Meath and Kerry before falling to a 14-point defeat to Wexford in the Leinster SHC Quarter-Final.

Manager Eamonn Kelly says that they have been hampered with injuries since that loss to Wexford, but is relishing the chance to play Carlow this weekend.

The Tipperary native sees those injuries as an opportunity for another player to stake a claim.

“They (Carlow) are Christy Ring, but they are Christy Ring champions,” Kelly told GAA.ie.

“We’re looking forward to getting out. We’d love to have our full pick to play from, but we don’t. I see that as an opportunity for somebody else to put their hand up and say I’m ready to come to the fold.

“From that side of things we are delighted to give it a crack. I don’t know have Laois even won a game in the qualifiers so we’re looking to put our best foot forward.

“We know we’re down a lot of players but we want to give the best account of ourselves that we can.”

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