On paper University of Limerick have a panel of intercounty hurlers to die for.
In reality Brian Lohan had very little contact with his star players ahead of their opening Fitzgibbon Cup win over Cork IT on Tuesday.
For Tony Kelly, Jason Forde, John McGrath, Gearóid Hegarty, Stephen Bennett and UL’s other county players, the Fitzgibbon may be the most prestigious trophy on offer in the early months of the year – but county training takes precedence.
“They don’t really train with us,” Lohan explained to SportsJOE GAA editor Colm Parkinson on this week’s GAA Hour. “In our experience, we would try and get together and try and get them to do warm-up for 20 minutes, but generally they won’t train with us.”
Clare All-Ireland winner Lohan does not blame the county managers for this situation as he realises the pressure they are under to start strongly in the Allianz League.
“On paper you have a good squad but you might not have seen the players for 3 weeks prior to a game,” he said, citing the example of Limerick, who begin their Division 1B campaign away to Wexford in a fortnight’s time.
“There is a lot of pressure on John Kiely to make sure he gets the team up,” said Lohan. “So that in turn puts a lot of pressure on the players.”
UL were beaten in the Fitzgibbon Cup final by neighbours Mary Immaculate College last year. That they even reached the decider was remarkable considering they were without one of their best player for the whole tournament.
The 2013 hurler of the year, Tony Kelly, suffered an ankle injury that kept him out of action until the latter stages of the league.
The galling thing for Lohan and UL was that Kelly suffered the injury just before UL’s 2016 Fitzgibbon Cup opener at a Clare training session, run by Limerick IT manager Davy Fitzgerald.
This uniquely GAA clash of interests was not lost on Lohan, who was Fitzgerald’s full-back during their playing days with Clare.
“It’s a difficult one there because you have a scenario where Davy was manager of Clare and LIT and you have Clare players involved with LIT and UL. They were asked to train the night before or two nights before a Fitzgibbon game.
“It was the Monday or Tuesday and we were out on Wednesday,” said Lohan. “It was too much to ask.”
Lohan did not personally speak to his former team-mate about the injury.
“I didn’t ring him myself directly but we certainly had communicated on the issue,” he said. “Very messy situation, but that doesn’t happen with all managers.”
It is a quirk of the GAA calendar that some young hurlers and footballers will never be busier than they are in the earliest weeks of the year, which are not exactly conducive to flowing hurling and football.
Heavy pitches, heavy training and intensive schedules of games make injuries like Kelly’s depressingly familiar. Lohan intends to raise the issue with Ger Ryan’s Medical, Scientific and Welfare committee.
“If you look at schedule of the Munster League, in last 11 days, including Wednesday, you have players within the Munster League you have players being asked to perform on five different occasions.
“Five high-intensity, high-profile games in 11 days is just not really on. It does no service to the Munster League and the Fitzgibbon Cup. We have raised the issue with the Munster Council and we got nowhere with it.”
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