Trinity’s senior hurlers will face Garda College, Institute of Technology Carlow (Carlow IT) and Limerick Institute of Technology (LIT) in the group stages of this year’s Fitzgibbon Cup, following the draw in Croke Park today.
The College’s senior footballers, meanwhile, will kick off their Trench Cup campaign at the end of January when they take on University of Ulster Coleraine.
After exiting last year’s Fitzgibbon following difficult games against Carlow IT, Mary Immaculate College and NUI Galway in what was billed at the time as a group of death, the hurlers will be looking ahead with optimism to an easier set of fixtures this time around. They will take heart from a positive league campaign in which they earned two solid wins.
Speaking to The University Times, joint-captain Fionn O’Riain Broin said: “It’s a good draw, there’s a lot of good teams in the Fitzgibbon this year, and we’ve been put in with three very good colleges.”
O’Riain Broin said that Trinity’s hurlers are “really looking to push on this year and try and get to the knockout stages of the competition for the first time, after a very promising league campaign”.
Trinity’s footballers are also enjoying a positive season, reaching the Division 2 semi-finals before coming unstuck in their bid to regain Division 1 status.
In an email statement to The University Times, club chairperson Darren McGuckian said that the league campaign will aid the team’s preparation for the championship: “We know we aren’t far off the pace being very unlucky to lose against Letterkenny IT in the league semi final… we’ve adapted a more attacking style of football, which can be shown in some of our league score lines, and the lads have taken well to it.”
McGuckian admitted that their opponents from Ulster represent something of an unknown quantity: “We’ve never played them in our time in college but we are confident that we can build on from the promising league campaign and come out with the win.”
“We know there are quality teams in the competition”, McGuckian said, “but if we keep the focus coming into the new year, we remain hopeful of getting to the Trench Cup finals in Mallow come February”.
Trinity’s senior footballers line out on January 22nd while the hurlers are due to commence their championship endeavours on January 20th.
