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You are > Home > Déise hurlers under starters orders - weather permitting
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Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Déise hurlers under starters orders - weather permitting
HAVING taken a merciless battering from an equally merciless weatherman over the last two weekends fingers are being kept tightly crossed that the county senior hurlers will get their 2010 competitive season under way next Sunday with a first round game in the Waterford Crystal tournament against Cork I.T.
With both Fraher Field and Walsh Park presently closed along with a number of other club grounds East and West, the venue for Sunday’s game is Ballyduff Upper and that just might be an historic “first’’ for this famous old club straddling the north Cork border.
Quietly, and very much behind the scenes, manager Davy Fitzgerald and his co selectors Paraic Fanning and Pat Bennett, have been nursing the panel back into the training groove. Nothing too serious let it be stressed, with a number of the longer established team members nowhere near making a return as yet.
That said however, there’s a whisper that the players took to the beach last Saturday for a training stint try to get your ears around that one given the day, and the weather, that was in it!
Fitzy has brought a number of new faces onto the panel Mount Sion’s winner of the Munster Young Hurler of the Year (2009) Award, Martin O’Neill, among them. Clearly Sunday’s game will be used largely for experimentation purposes, though having said that it would be nice to kick start the new season on a winning note and to go on perhaps and claim another win, or two, in this “Crystal’’ tournament.
Better still go on and win it, although the results at this stage are a long way off being paramount. The purpose of the exercise at this stage, I would imagine, is to string together a panel for the National League which gets under way in little more than a month’s time.
Speaking with John Jackson last weekend there was the assurance that Ballyduff will do everything possible on their part to have the playing surface in as good a state a possible for next Sunday’s game which has a 2 o’clock throw in time.
“As we speak’’, said John, “the pitch is frozen solid and is totally unplayable. Unless a very definite thaw sets in later in the week then one cannot be certain that the fixture will stand’’.
Fingers crossed then that things will improve dramatically on the weather front between now and next weekend. Already competitions like the McGrath Cup in football are being threatened with wipeout, and it would be a major loss if the same thing happened to this Waterford Crystal tourney.
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