Listowel Emmets are the visitors to Strand Road this Sunday for round 2 of the Kerry Petroleum intermediate championship where throw-in is @ 13.00. 

The upcoming clash promises to be a tough and close encounter, with both sides evenly matched and looking to secure a crucial victory.

Listowel narrowly lost their opening round to Kilcummin on Sat night, 0-11 to 0-09 whilst we were on the right side of a 2-09 to 0-13 scoreline vs Laune Rangers.

Listowel will have learned much over the last 12/18 months when their winning run in the junior championship took them all the way to Croke Park,  before they lost out to Arva of Cavan, 0-13 to 0-10 in the All Ireland final. 

They have a young side backboned by players who have recently represented Kerry at under age level, namely Eddie Healy, Darragh Lynch, Pa Walsh  and Jamie McVeigh - add in former Cork midfielder Joe Joe Grimes and one can quickly get a sense of the task that lies ahead.

They went toe to toe with seasoned campaigners Kilcummin on Saturday night and raced into a 5 point lead inside the first quarter; Kilcummin settled but were still in arrears at the short whistle, 0-07 to 0-06.

Listowel stretched their lead early in the second half and were two ahead, 0-09 to 0-07 by the 7th minute - this however was to be their last score as Kilcummin, mainly through the good play of Paul O’Shea and Cian Foley, took control and scored the final 4 points to run out winners. 

One of the key battles will be at midfield where Tom Hoare and David Moran will face Darragh Leahy and Joe Joe Grimes - the outcome of this clash could well determine the destination of the points.

Listowel will be hoping that their midfielders can gain the upper hand and supply enough quality ball to their inside duo of Darragh Lynch and Aaron Carey - these duo were to the forefront in their division 2 campaign and were regular goal scorers in a team which notched 21 goals over the campaign.

Marc O’Sé and Enda Murphy will have their homework done on our side and equally Ray and his management team will have prepared themselves tactically too - the ability of the players to execute their game plans under pressure will be key to determining which team comes out on top. 

Listowel were missing Niall Collins and Eddie Browne vs Kilcummin and if both were able to lineout they would add further firepower to an already developing team; for our part, the tried and trusted  like Ross, Darragh, Jake, David, Tom, BJ & Tommy should give us the edge in experience - add in the emergence of our exciting U20 duo of Ben and Tomás and one would hope that a winning score is attainable - it will not be easy, no championship game is, but one would hope that with our experience, footballing nous  and home advantage that we can progress to head the table and guarantee us a place in the knockout stages before we head to Kilcummin on the weekend of 10/11th.