Slaughtneil v St John's: Cunningham feels Johnnies are a match for anyone on their day
It may be a cliche, but St John's manager Gerard Cunningham says his team will focus on themselves in Saturday's Ulster club hurling final against Slaughtneil (Athletic Grounds, 18:00 GMT) as setting up to stop the Derry champions "would be foolish".The Johnnies are back in a provincial decider for the first time since their sole success in 1973 thanks to their first Antrim title win in 52 years and an ultimately routine Ulster semi-final victory over Setanta a fortnight ago.The Slaughtneil challenge will likely be much tougher than what they encountered against the Donegal side in the last four, but that game in the new terrain of the Ulster Championship has "brought us on" according to the Belfast side's manager.Now, attention turns to a seasoned Slaughtneil team that is bidding for the club's sixth provincial title title in nine years with the versatility of Cormac O'Doherty, Brendan Rogers and Chrissy McKaigue just some of the puzzles St John's must solve this week."The hurlers they have are very versatile and if we were to prepare for how they went out against Portaferry [in the semi-final], they could throw something completely different at us and we would be caught cold," Cunningham told BBC Sport NI."We'll have different scenarios for how they may play, but as we've done all year, we'll focus on ourselves because when we play they way we can, we're a match for anyone."It would be foolish to go man to man and then ignore their quality hurlers."They probably have seven or eight (top players) and if we were to put seven or eight on them, it takes away half of our team."
