Star of the Sea will reach the halfway point of their season on Sunday afternoon in Dublin when bottom-of-the-table Tolka Rovers are unlikely to prevent the champions from continuing their strong defence of the title.
Having won nine of their last 10 matches, the club which became the first from the North to win the league last season is again beginning to find the kind of consistently good form they enjoyed under their former coach Danny Fulton.
His decision to step down in the summer followed the retirement of long serving Javan Dupree and the combination of losing such influential figures in the club precipitated an unsettled period as under-19 coach Darren O'Neill took over the senior team. Dupree was effectively replaced by a (Bosman) signing Drew Moir and the new mix took a while to settle as first, Star losing early in the campaign away to Marian and again in Limerick a month later. Even accounting for their difficulties, those were unlikely defeats but O'Neill and his squad have steadily consolidated since mid-November and they have now gone six weeks undefeated. With the Sprite Cup weekend and a semi-final meeting with Blue Demons just a month away, O'Neill feels that it is extremely important to keep their winning run intact up to the play-offs because Star have a punishing league roster to follow in February. "After the Cup we have to play both Neptune and Blue Demons down in Cork and then Waterford and Limerick back to back, all in the space of three consecutive weekends," O'Neill explained. "If we are going to win the league I think it will be determined to a great extent by how we fare during that fortnight," he added.
Before then, the players and coach in the Belfast club cannot get the Cup out of their minds. Star had a strong record in the 1990s of qualifying for the latter stages of the competition but a poor record in front of the television cameras. "It's very important for us to keep winning up to the Cup because it is huge for us. We have come close a couple of times and its something we need to rectify," he pointed out.
As far as the league is concerned, O'Neill says that he will be very happy to make it 11 wins out of 13 starts against Tolka on Sunday and then repeat that ratio in the second half of the campaign.
That would leave Star with just four defeats and to most observers that will be enough for the Belfast club to retain the title. Given their experience and strength in depth, Star are clear favourites to successfully defend the trophy. "But we're still not firing on all cylinders and we have to improve more in the coming month," O'Neill stressed.
One of the teams O'Neill fears most is Neptune who have a tough-looking fixture at home to St Vincent's on Saturday while Waterford, are at home to struggling Killarney.
Neptune's Nick Chapzimikolis will be out of action for at least a month after breaking a bone in his foot while training on his own over the holiday period. The Cork club have brought in 6 ft 11 in Derrick Izilein as a replacement.
In Women's Division One, the leaders Wildcats take their unbeaten record, which stretches back to early 1997, to Sandyford on Sunday where they play their main title rivals, Meteors.
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