Five things we know as the Wicklow Senior Championship goes knockout

Irish Independent

2 days ago

Twelve teams have been cut to eight: Baltinglass, AGB, and Kiltegan have advanced as Group winners; Tinahely, Carnew Emmets, and St Pats as runners-up; and Rathnew and An Tóchar as the two best third-placed teams. The quarter-final draw is due to take place tomorrow, Tuesday, at 8pm.
The Wicklow County Board has confirmed that teams will not be seeded based on their group-stage performance, meaning the draw is entirely open aside from one restriction: teams who already faced each other during the group stage cannot be drawn to meet each other in the quarter-finals.
The quarter-finals are due to be played on the weekend of August 30 and 31.
Bray Emmets, Blessington, and Dunlavin finished bottom of their respective groups, so they now face into the relegation round-robin, and whoever finishes bottom of that group will be relegated to Intermediate for 2026. Points earned in the Senior Championship to date do not carry forward.
Éire Óg were also eliminated from the Championship on Sunday but, having finished third in their group, are spared the relegation dogfight.
Who's looking the best, then?
This was touted as the most open-looking of Championships and, after 18 games, the picture hasn't become a whole pile clearer. Most teams have thrown in at least one iffy performance.
Baltinglass had the best first-round record, winning two and drawing one, but they would have been disappointed to draw with newly promoted Carnew, and their win over An Tóchar could hardly have been less comfortable. That said, they are surely contenders.
One team that has impressed our reporters over the past fortnight is Kiltegan, who have bounced back from an opening-round defeat to win two on the spin and top their group. Reporter Ciaron Noble described their showing against St Pats on Saturday as 'a full-blooded annihilation', a 24-point victory, following on from a seven-point win against Éire Óg. They might be worth keeping an eye on.
Will the real An Tóchar please stand up?
Tipped by this newspaper to win the Championship, An Tóchar have the worst record of the eight teams who have qualified for the knockout stages. The fact the draw won't be seeded means they won't be punished for their form to date, but a one-point win over Bray Emmets was a poor return from the group stage, even allowing for the narrowness of their defeat to Baltinglass.
They looked to be clicking, at last, in slickly moving through the Carnew Emmets defence on Sunday, while their opponents didn't look to have a clue how to break down the An Tóchar rearguard. An Tóchar had finally arrived in Championship 2025.
And then they sort of imploded in the second half and meekly offered three second-half points as a response to dogged Carnew Emmets.
They have the talent to light up from nowhere in the knockout stages – but there isn't any more room for the inconsistency they've shown to date.
Carnew came up from Intermediate last year. Are they the closest thing to a plum draw?
Carnew only had a point coming into the weekend and looked destined for the relegation round-robin, but their stunning victory over An Tóchar flipped everything. In the end it was An Tóchar, not Carnew, sweating over qualification.
But they have form. Their win from four points back against An Tóchar could be dismissed as a fluke if they hadn't pulled off a similar comeback against another contender, Baltinglass, in Round One.
In other words, the team that draws them would be well-advised to take them seriously, lest Carnew add another big name to their list of victims.
Will Éire Óg be left to wonder what might have been?
Yes, simply. Dire defeats in the opening two rounds have been their undoing; it says a lot that a 16-point win on Saturday only brought their score difference up to -4.
Reporter Daniel Kennedy believes the League runner-ups showed tremendous 'grit and determination' to come back from that position to avoid the relegation round-robin, and they 'still have an exciting team going forward, but defensive fragility has cost them this Championship'.
A further two points score – or two saved at the other end – across any of their three matches would have been enough to make it to the last eight. The margins couldn't have been finer for the Greystones outfit.