Pearl Slattery

For everyone involved, it's a great first fixture.

There's a bit of storyline, his ex-team and stuff like that.

That's what you want.

I love that.

I love those games.

The expectation for me is always there when you play for Shells in every game.

We're a competitive group.

We're competitive in training.

When we rock up to the top of the first game of the season, of course, we're expected to win.

But as I said to you, some of our most difficult games last year were treaty with good players, obviously new management as well.

We'll give them the utmost respect, but we know that if we perform on our day, that'll be our main concern.

If we perform on our day, we're as good as anyone and we can beat anyone.

And I suppose that's our motivation over the next few weeks.

And Sean's been brilliant in saying that, you know, really work hard in pre-season.

So when you know you're starting the season, you've given everything in pre-season, you're ready to go, the expectation's there, but as I said, you're prepared as much as you can.

And yeah, we'll be ready to go.

We look forward to it.

I did a stint at Shell's 16s at one stage when I was doing a coaching license and then I was in with James Scott's under 17s Irish squad for two seasons as well so I was coaching that 15-16 age group so yeah very enjoyable.

tough one isn't it?

It's a battle for everyone, it's the facilities piece, it's games being off at times.