The Desmond District League face their Wexford counterparts in the Oscar Traynor Cup this weekend hoping to take a step further towards qualification from the group stages.
The Desmond Junior's are relative novices in this prestigious competition, but a win in Wexford would leave them on the verge of emerging from a tough group, including Kilkenny, Clare and this week's opponents.
However, should qualification prove elusive, manager Noel Murphy will still look to the future. The last time the Desmond league were represented in this tournament, Murphy, from Newcastlewest, was captain and his current assistant, John Neenan from Broadford, was the manager.
Lying in the midst of fervent GAA county has been a problem when attempting to bring together a representative side, but interest has been encouraging to date. "Everyone we asked was interested in turning up for trials," Murphy noted. "Only three of the squad have played with the Desmond League before and our average age is only 23 or 24. Five or six of the lads are just out of youth level, so we're hoping to develop a squad over a couple of years and give them some experience."
The opening game of the group was against Clare. Being a neighbouring county, both sides were familiar with each other and the young Desmonds' side was perhaps a little unlucky to emerge with only a 1-1 draw.
Wexford are more of an unknown quantity however, and Murphy's side will travel down with little knowledge of what lies in wait for them in Campile.
WNewcastlewest played North End a few years ago when I was still playing and we only lost to the them in a penalty shoot-out. They were supposed to be one of the best club sides in Wexford so you never know what might happen," Murphy concluded.
"We have a few younger fellas with older guys mixed in I would say. This is my third year in charge. My first year we reached the quarter-finals when Wexford beat us. They went on and won it that year and they won nearly every game 1-0 I think. The second year we went down badly. We had seven of the previous year but Clare beat us 3-1. We had our chances that day but the game didn't go our way. We're a good footballing team. We wouldn't be too tall or small and we have a good spread of players from different clubs. I'd be fairly close to Alfie Flanagan (the Limerick manager) and we talked on the phone a fair bit before the draw. We haven't talked as much since then.
We have been trying to train every week for a couple of weeks now. We had arranged a match with Limerick but obviously the draw put an end to that. We played Kerry on the bank holiday Monday and lost 2-1 but I would be expecting a big improvement from that day."