Monaghan GAA players made best use of snowy pitch with training called off

There's no stopping the Farney army.

GAA pitches from Derry to Cork and from Dublin to Galway are clad with inches, nearly metres of snow. Matches from the Allianz League all the way down to the club games have fallen victim. Training sessions have gotten the boot. Storm Emma has defeated many of us as we sit at home with a deadly case of cabin fever doing the rounds. It'd be a great country if we could put a roof over it but it's also great to see some lads making the best of the bad situation. The men of Killanny GAA club, county Monaghan were doing just that. Ryan Duffy, Gareth Yore, Michael Vernon and Seán MacDomhnaill were supposed to have training with the Killanny senior football team on Wednesday evening in preparation for the opening round of the Monaghan county League on Saturday. https://twitter.com/SportsJOEdotie/status/969194057250504704 Word filtered through that both outings had been struck down by the Beast from the East but it would take more than that to dampen the spirits of these boys.

"Everything was called off because of the storm and the pitch not being playable," said Seán to SportsJOE.

With work off for the for a few days and a lack of interest in twiddling the thumbs at home, the four lads met up in the GAA pitch with the intention of raising a sweat and building a team of snowmen.

"We are all off work so decided making a team of snowmen would be as good as any training session...We also thought it would be a help for clearing the pitch while we were at it."

After making a full forward line, with two nippy lads on the top of the left and the right, and a big target man down the middle, the lads were getting tired. They pushed on to build a referee, a goalkeeper and kitted them all out, too. After a few kicks between themselves, they gave the pitch the all clear.

"We had the team made but decided a referee was needed to make sure the pitch was now playable."

Some great work was done by the lads. That can't have been easy done. They're made of stern stuff up in Monaghan. Fair play, lads.