Chance for ambitious Moycullen to spring an early season shock

MOYCULLEN begin their second Superleague season on Sunday with a mouth watering tie against last year’s league and cup champions, Killester from Dublin, at 3pm in the Kingfisher gym in NUIG.

12 months ago, this young Galway side may have feared facing such vaunted opponents, but with the team a year older and a good showing in their pre-season games, head coach Enda Byrt is looking forward to the challenge.

“You want to play the best teams first, I’ve always believed that and Sunday will be a great opportunity to see where we really are,” said Byrt. “We have all our Irish players back from last year and adding Mason Ambler (from Atlanta, Georgia) will bring a whole other dimension to our play this season.”

The Moycullen outfit certainly look to have the capabilities to mount a serious play-off challenge this year around. A solid summer of off-season work outs looks to have paid dividends ahead of what will prove to be an interesting season for the team that were named the best supported side of the 2009-2010 campaign.

Sunday will truly test the team’s continuing maturation as they face the well-oiled machine that is Killester, who have been the team to beat for the past five years in Ireland.

“They have a fantastic tradition of winning,” noted Byrt. “They undoubtedly have some of the best players in the country and are led by an outstanding coach in Mark Keenan, but we learned a lot from our ups and downs last year and I like the energy our guys have entered pre-season with so far.”

“It was great to see the team being so dissatisfied with what was a very good first season in the league by everyone else’s accounts, but these guys are ambitious and that showed with some terrific wins at the end of last year, including that triple overtime game against Hoops in Dublin and another against Ulster Elks in our last home game” added Byrt.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.