IF YOU are a follower of Tipperary club football it might seem like the 2014 club season will never come to an end, but across the border here in Limerick, the 2015 campaign is just around the corner with only a week to go until the start of the McGrath Cup. And since the Limerick Post will be taking a week off next week, now is the ideal time to have a look at the two Limerick-based teams that are involved before the odds are released by Powers closer to the throw in.
Limerick’s senior footballers won’t get into action until the 11th of January, but there will be some local interest in the meeting of Waterford and UL at Fraher Field a week earlier. UL haven’t got a good track record in this competition but they did show some signs of improvement when they came desperately close to beating Queens University in last year’s competition, while they have several young footballers who have made considerable strides forward over the winter in various club competitions. However the shoulder injury to James O’Donoghue is a massive blow as it robs them of one of the best forwards in the country and most likely, gets Waterford off the hook in the process.
Mary I are also set to open their campaign but while we’d have been happy to recommend a bet on UL if the University students were fully fit, frankly we wouldn’t back the trainee teachers here even if they were fully fit and in the best form of their lives. Cork football will undergo a lot of changes this year as many familiar faces won’t be available to Brian Cuthbert and their management team, but they still have plenty of depth in the Rebel County and are unlikely to struggle against a team like Mary I, who will always have to field one or two very ordinary players due to a lack of numbers.
Instead, keep an eye out for a few counties who have looked fairly decent in preseason games, starting with Westmeath, who enjoy home advantage for their O’Byrne Cup opener against Meath at Cusack Park. The Lake County endured a torrid year in 2014 but they’ve a good new man at the helm now in Tom Cribbin, while Athlone IT’s defeat to NUI Maynooth in a qualifier tie means that he will have access to several key players that would otherwise have been on college duty.
Roscommon have been working very hard for some time now and have also shown decent form on the challenge match circuit, and while they will be short a lot of their younger players due to college commitments, they still could cause a few surprises in the FBD league, while up north, Armagh are very advanced under Kieran McGeeney and shouldn’t have any difficulty in getting to the semi-finals of the McKenna Cup competition at the very least.
