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You are > Home > Little respite for busy Déise’s hurlers
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Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Little respite for busy Déise’s hurlers
IT may still be only January but I don’t know of a busier group of players anywhere in the country right now than the members of Davy Fitzgerald’s new look county hurling panel.
Three games in four days last week—against Wexford on Wednesday night, Laois forty eight hours later, and finally against Tralee IT in the quarter final of the Waterford Crystal tournament in Tralee on Saturday afternoon. Little enough direct information about any of them to be truthful, but at least the good news came in the qualification for the Crystal semi-final with a five point win, 1-16 to 3-5, over the Tralee students.
A five point margin was probably tighter than we would have expected, but I’m told a few late goals put a more respectable gloss on it for the Tralee lads. Again Davy and his selectors were very much in experimental mood, with their insistence that everyone on the extended panel is going to be given a decent opportunity of staking his claim before the cut off point is arrived at in the very near future.
Shane Walsh’s goal gave our fellows a handy enough 1-8 to 0-4 half time lead, and the second half wasn’t too long under way when goal number two came.
However with the purpose of the exercise—-a win—already under wraps there was a rather visible easing off, and those late IT goals made it look like a much more difficult game than it really was for the lads.
Next up is a semi-final joust against Tipperary or Clare and whichever of them it is should be the most stern test of the tournament for our fellows to date.
No definitive news either on a date or venue as I write, but its one that will probably tell us a whole mote more about ourselves than the first two games against Cork and Tralee ITs have done.
One thing I have been assured of is that there is a tremendous good early season atmosphere among all of the players who seem to have also struck up a really excellent rapport with management.
That can only be positive, and one is to hope that things will continue and indeed flourish still more in that regard in the crucially important weeks and months to come.
Incidentally the expectation is that the panel to set out on the National League trail on February 21 will be officially announced inside the next week or so, but the policy of resting some of the more “elder statesmen’’ will continue to be persevered with.
It’s certain then that we’ll kick start that league campaign without the likes of Ken McGrath, Tony Browne, Dan Shanahan, Seamas Prendergast and, possibly, John Mullane, too, and while they will surely be sorely missed, the hope is that when they do return a little further down the road they will be refreshed and just rarin’ to go.
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