LISTEN – Shannon Head Coach Tom Hayes says his young table toppers don’t feel the pressure of past club successes.

Tom Hayes won an All Ireland League Division 1 title with Shannon in 2002 and led the club to consecutive league titles in 2004 and 2005 as captain.

The Cappamore man has now guided his youthful Shannon side to the top of Division 1B with less than half the season remaining, with a return to 1A starting to feel like a strong possibility.

The Parish side have the record for the most AIL titles with 9, almost doubling the tally of second best, Cork Constitution.

Although Shannon have a rich history in the competition, Hayes believes that this does not put added pressure on his side to gain promotion back to the top tier.

“There are no players left now that were attached to the glory days. I don’t think these boys feel the weight of having fellas like that around, like we did in my day. There might be a bit of speculation or some bit of chatter going on in terms of this is Shannon possibly making their way back up. These boys in fairness to them are concentrating on the here and now.”

Last season the former Exeter Chiefs captain took over at the helm following the departure of fellow Shannon legend Marcus Horan.

The coaching change happened at the mid-way point of the last campaign with Shannon rooted to the bottom of the table and looking as though they could drop down to 2A. Hayes says that the goal coming into the season was to try and avoid a relegation scrap rather than challenge for a title.

“Starting out one of the first things was to take the pressure off ourselves and not be stuck in the relegation zone because that’s where we were over the past couple of years. We tried to put that to bed as quick as we could because it allows you a bit more freedom to go and play.”

Shannon made a huge statement of intent in their last outing before the Christmas break in their second meeting in as many weeks with another high-flying side, Ballynahinch.

They came into the game in second place having suffered their biggest loss of the season at the hands Hynch a week earlier and claimed an emphatic 49-19 victory to power into the break in top position.

“One thing we wanted to try and avoid was to go on a two-game losing streak. We did it after the Naas game, we followed it up with a win over Ballymena. Then we bounced right back against Ballynahinch to make sure that it didn’t become any sort of a negative thing hanging over us. It looks that little bit better us being top of the table going into a little bit of a Christmas break.”

Listen to the full interview with Tom Hayes below.