GAA players looking to win All-Irelands don’t do Christmas
As you’re reading this, Jackie Tyrell and co. will be dusting down their speedos and sun cream for a well earned holiday after completing the clean sweep in 2014.
That just leaves the challengers from the remaining counties to sweat their way through the muck of January in an attempt to get a head-start on Kilkenny, who will really only resume training after they return for the Walsh Cup.
With that in mind here are five things we’re really looking forward to during the season to come:
The second coming of Clare
Ger Loughnane really does know how to stir it, doesn’t he? At the presentation of medals to the three-in-a-row winning Clare Under-21s, he said that the Banner county can take down the ‘ogre’ that is Kilkenny and take their place as the main men in town for the next few years.
Is that a fair assessment? Well Clare do have bags and bags of talent, of that there’s no doubt. But the wheels came off at senior level in a huge way in 2014. Davy Fitzgerald is an astute manger and no team apart from Kilkenny has cracked the code on how to win back-to-back All-Irelands. It was always going to be tough for Clare to try and recover from the high of winning a first Liam McCarthy since 1997 and that fatigue was evident in their Munster championship loss to Cork and the two-game saga with Wexford in the qualifiers.
Podge Collins is a massive loss and he may yet return to action, but for now they will have to forget about the Cratloe man. However, due to the Under-21 success of the last number of years there should be no end of players looking to take his place.
Kilkenny and Clare didn’t meet in the championship of 2013 or 2014, we expect that record to be set right in 2015 in the later stages of the championship.
The show must go on for Kilkenny
There was genuine surprise in Kilkenny at the number of players who have decided to call it a day after the county’s 35th All-Ireland success in September.
Granted, just one of those players started day two against Tipperary but you cannot take over 40 All-Ireland medals out of a squad and expect things to tick over smoothly. It’s a simple fact that those legendary training sessions in Nowlan Park were fueled by an incredibly intense effort by every single player on the panel to try and upstage the man who held the jersey. Brian Cody has always said that training form is key, just ask Walter Walsh or Kieran Joyce.
The full-back position vacated by JJ Delaney will prove most troublesome to fill. Joey Holden is a fine defender and will be the Kilkenny captain, but as Lester Ryan found to his cost for most of the season Cody doesn’t really care about who leads the team out. It’s leaders on the field that are most important.
Kilkenny will be at their weakest early in the season after their holiday and with new players settling into the squad. They used the league to experiment in 2014, more so than any other year under Cody. Expect them to find plenty of candidates to replace the famous five by the time the Leinster Championship rolls around.
Dublin need to sort their Dual problem
The vibes coming from Dublin under new manager Ger Cunningham are hugely positive. The former Cork goalkeeper is regarded as one of the brightest and most innovative coaches around. Jimmy Barry Murphy may have been the official manager of Cork but the brains of the team that came within 20 seconds of beating Clare last year belonged to Cunningham.
Anthony Daly did a fine job with the capital’s hurlers but he must have known that last year would be it for him. Cunningham will bring a new fresh approach but that also needs to be mirrored by the county executive and the structure around players picking one code over another.
When SportsJOE chatted to Daly about his autobiography it was clear that the frustration of not having the best 15 hurlers in the county available to him wore him down. Forcing players to pick one sport over the other is ultimately hurling’s loss and Cunningham could face a number of rows over new getting new talent into his squad. We doubt that he would have taken the job without some assurances and he is well aware that the Dublin hurlers do need some new blood.
Whether they get an all important transfusion from their footballing brethren is a different matter.
Tipperary must go again
John O’Dwyer thought it was over. Half the crowd in Croke Park thought it was over. Even Brian Cody must have suspected that it was the winning point. But it wasn’t. Tipperary would have to go again.
Ultimately in 2014, Tipperray lost two national finals against Kilkenny by a total of just four points. Eamon O’Shea must surely be thinking that with the long arm of the law in that Kilkenny rearguard, JJ Delaney, now out of sight it is his team, and not Clare, that are best poised to end the Black and Amber dominance.
All the signs are there but we said this in 2010 as well. Tipperary ended the five-in-a-row dream and looked set to dominate with their free-flowing style and incredible goal-scoring ability. Instead, they wasted three seasons and trying to avoid that scenario is O’Shea’s biggest challenge.
Division 1B of the league is where the real action is going to be
There was a time when the league was seen as a joke competition but not anymore and the GAA have to take much of the credit for getting it back on its feet over the last decade. It’s not an exact science by any means but it is still the best way for managers and players to try out and define their best side for the Championship. Kilkenny’s battle with Tipperary in last year’s final should have prepared us for more dramatics in September.
Division 1B shapes up to be a bear-pit of action. Munster rivals Limerick and Waterford, who would both have designs on a big summer, clash on day one, while Laois, who could (maybe should) have progressed further in 2014 meet Offaly. It’s Wexford that we feel could use the league most intelligently, though, as Liam Dunne looks to build on a frankly amazing year. He has time now to use the spring to take the next natural step forward from a summer that saw his side dump out Clare and beat Waterford.
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