IT’S BACK TO business this weekend with the start of the National Hurling League. Yesterday, you’ll recall, we took in half the sides that will line out this season and assessed their hopes and expectations. Today? Here are the also-rans like Kilkenny and Tipperary…
KILKENNY
Manager: Brian Cody (14th year)
Aim: To win it all again.
IT’S continually suggested that time ticks loudest for Kilkenny but it must be remembered that they have lost just a single championship game since August 2005. Four of the last six Hurlers of the Year – Henry Shefflin (2006), Eoin Larkin (2008), Tommy Walsh (2009) and Michael Fennelly (2011) – still backbone the side and indeed each were crucial to a fifth Liam MacCarthy Cup title last season.
That the uninitiated blithely assumed the Cats were losing their grip at the top of the game after the 2011 NHL final loss to Dublin was to ignore the absence of three of those four players, with only Larkin – who improved hugely as the season went on – lining out in that May clash. That September, much like this one, saw Kilkenny in attendance when the medals are being handed out. As might well be the case for the league and Leinster championship finals.
LAOIS
Manager: Teddy McCarthy (1st year)
Aim: To restore pride in the jersey. Brendan Fennelly resigned as Laois manager after Cork thumped his side for 10-20 in the qualifiers in 2011.
“WE were expecting it (the resignation),” said Laois chairman Brian Allen told the Irish Examiner at the time. “I know he was disappointed with how the year had gone. He couldn’t understand why players would not play for their county. He tried to get players in, but the harder he tried he just couldn’t get them in. For some players, club commitments were their first call… Brendan couldn’t believe that there were players who would rather play for their clubs, and that they didn’t want or feel the need to play for Laois.”
Which one could not say was the case under Niall Rigney who got the team to within a few pucks of the ball of an All-Ireland quarter-final in 2009. It was a game they should have won in Semple Stadium and things have gone south ever since. Teddy McCarthy has a massive task in keeping his side in Division 1B and even if beating Dublin in the Walsh Cup recently suggested some green shoots, Galway blew those and the county away in the semi-final by 14 points in the next round. 2011′s showing put them bottom of the championship pile and they have won just two championship games (excepting a defunct relegation play-off win over Carlow in 2008) since July 2006.
New Limerick manager John Allen. Pic: INPHO/James Crombie
LIMERICK
Manager: John Allen (1st year)
Aim: Promotion to Division 1A and be competitive in the championship.
LIMERICK won Division 2 last year with some comfort and it is a shame they must do so again, albeit with a couple of slightly heavier hitters thrown into the mix. John Allen has shown in the past that he can take the baton off Donal O’Grady and build, though doing so in his non-native county could put a fly in the ointment.
Allen will now get back his Na Piarsaigh contingent and while Kevin Downes showed glimpses of his class in the last 12 months, Shane Dowling is a new star in waiting. Limerick look to be on the way up and they will need to be more ruthless in 2012 – they threw away great chances of championship wins over both Waterford and Dublin when things were in the balance.
Odds are that they will come up short against Tipperary but they can give the provincial champs a fright, meaning they can do so to most teams in their season thereafter.
OFFALY
Manager: Ollie Baker (1st year)
Aim: Promotion to Division 1B and a Leinster final. Coolderry have put some hope and pride back into Offaly hurling by winning the Leinster championship and qualifying for the All Ireland club final. The challenge for Ollie Baker – in his first season, and after an underwhelming spell with Roscrea – is to gain promotion.
Without his Coolderry players that will be a challenge, particularly after the Faithful endured relegation and losses to both Dublin and Cork in the championship last year with them. But that would be to ignore that it was only on the final day that they were demoted and that the losses to the capital and faux capital (if you will) sides were by a single point. the previous year, Joe Dooley’s side pushed Galway to a replay. The hurling is there, if Baker can get it out of them.
Lar Corbett: sitting this one out. Pic: INPHO/Donall Farmer
TIPPERARY
Manager: Declan Ryan (2nd year)
Aim: Win back the All-Ireland.
FOR Declan Ryan and Tommy Dunne to regain the Liam MacCarthy Cup, they will need to learn from 2011′s mistakes.
Number one: lose the predictable route-one, long ball tactics that worked against tactically naive Cork, Clare and Waterford and were exposed by Dublin and moreso Kilkenny. That is more key than getting Lar Corbett back on board, which some might have put down as a key aim to facilitate all others. Corbett’s absence will not stop Tipp from being competitive, but they are at present missing the man who makes the difference in tight games; 19 goals in his 16 most recent championship games says so.
Should the Thurles man stay away, it is up to a Brian ‘Buggy’ O’Meara or a Pa Bourke to fill the gap. It is also key for Eoin Kelly not to hang in the square like a millstone around the team’s neck – thus allowing the likes of a solid full-back like Noel Hickey stand there too and give the defence some structure.
Let Kelly move about and thus encourage the free-flowing hurling that typified the Liam Sheedy years and the Munster campaign under Ryan in 2011. If the tactics don’t improve, Tipp will stay still.
WATERFORD
Manager: Michael Ryan (1st year)
Aim: Win Munster and make a league semi-final.
WATERFORD will need to rid themselves of the inferiority complex that has cost them so dearly over the years. No top team has suffered as badly in the big games – the 2008 All Ireland final, the 2011 Munster final – and perhaps new boss Michael Ryan can bring through that extra bit of belief.
For one, he is unlikely to pick a team based on the opposition’s threats as Davy Fitzgerald did in the 21-point loss to Tipp last year. Ryan must be brave in his selections and he will get results, as Davy did latterly against Galway and in the performance against Kilkenny. Forget about who has retired – Michael ‘Brick’ Walsh, John Mullane (when he returns), Kevin Moran, Shane Walsh, Stephen Molumphy and Tony Browne are still capable of taking this team to a provincial win.
That is, if Ryan can get them to produce big performances and not just in the wake of heavy defeats.
WESTMEATH
Manager: Brian Hanley (2nd year)
Aim: Promotion from Division 2A and a championship win. Westmeath brought in Brian Hanley after a torrid league campaign last season and he helped them almost shock his native Galway before securing a great win at Carlow. Gaining promotion to Divsion 1B is the challenge for 2012, as is putting in place structures for the future of Lake County hurling.
“There hasn’t been a proper inter-county set-up with Westmeath in years and the players and clubs have told me their frustrations at the way things have been done,” Hanley said late last year.
“We have got to want to play… I don’t care where you are from if you are not giving 100%, you will not be playing. It’s either my way or the high way.” Hanley dropped a number of prominent players at the end of last season so it remains to be seen if his way ends in smooth sailing or in running aground.
Newly-installed Wexford manager Liam Dunne. Pic: Inpho
WEXFORD
Manager: Liam Dunne (1st year)
Aim: Promotion to Division 1A and a Leinster final.
WEXFORD remain firmly under the heel of Kilkenny in the Leinster championship but they can dare to dream of a provincial final if they can beat Offaly and surprise an unpredictable Galway side.
Liam Dunne is possibly not the most popular man in his own county but the feeling is that he is the best man to motivate the current group.
Diarmuid ‘Gizzy’ Lyng is back on the panel and if he can rediscover his form from prior to a rare energy-sapping illness, he can be another weapon is a panel with plenty of quality.
Keith Rossiter, Rory Jacob, Darren Stamp, Jim Berry and Harry Kehoe being just a few others. Promotion will be a close-run thing but they showed last season – in avoiding relegation, albeit later demoted off the field – that they can squeeze out results. Need to show improvement.
What do you think?