
February 5, 2010 10:52 by
Tony

Tony Leen
YES, he's left-footed, plays corner forward and answers to the name Barry.
But the impressive talent we're eyeing as one of the potential Under 21 stars of the summer is not Tommy Walsh's brother in Kerry.
Barry John Walsh is selected by the Kingdom for Sunday's National League opener against Dublin, but he'll do well to impress the footballing cognoscenti in the manner UCC's Barry O'Driscoll has these past few weeks.
You won't see O'Driscoll appearing any time soon for Conor Counihan's Cork – the Aghada man's too smart for that - but the Nemo Rangers No 13 (yes, another one) could turn out to be the go-to scoring forward Cork desperately need in years to come.
If he's allowed mature an an appropriate pace, that is.
O'Driscoll's only nineteen, and has two seasons of Under 21 football to play yet. But he's been bedevilled by injury this past year and if it isn't down to serving too many masters, it will be soon enough.
This season O'Driscoll is in demand at Sigerson level with UCC (quarter-final against GMIT next week), Cork's Under 21's (who face Kerry in little over a month), and his club Nemo at Under 21 and senior level later in the summer.
Conor Counihan won't get a sniff of O'Driscoll and doesn't want to see him, I'd wager, for a while yet. Counihan is also lucky that Cork have a savvy Under 21 boss in John Cleary who will also see the folly of unnecessarily exacerbating O'Driscoll's injury problems.
When he came on to salvage UCC's Sigerson Cup tie against Dublin IT last week, it wasn't hard to see he was troubled still by the thigh injury which precluded him for starting.
But it didn't stop him bagging 1-1 and setting up another point.
Ditto last Wednesday. Another cameo produced two points, including a gunslinger's winner from the touchline.
He's precisely what UCC didn't have at the business end of the pitch in both games thus far - a focal point of the attack. Plenty of smart movement (David Kearney) and power (Paul Honohan), but no-one to, er, win a match...
What's impressive is the economy of movement, the little amount of space and time O'Driscoll needs to shoot. The defender's nightmare - work the play, isolate the target and let him do his stuff. At inter-county level Colm O'Neill is strong and powerful, and put his name to an excellent All-Ireland final goal, but he doesn't have the surgical precision of this lad. Different strokes etc.
Are we adding to the pressure by highlighting him now – as one of my colleagues in the sports department suggested?
Only if no-one has heard of the lad from the South Douglas Road who's been over and back to Ipswich Town and the like since he was fourteen.
Counihan can afford to be patient watching him light up UCC's Sigerson stumble (run would be stretching the point) to the last eight.
Another one off the Capwell production line (fine, Trabeg, whatever) – Corkery, Kavanagh, Masters....
But he needs to be handled properly. First off, he needs to shake off those niggling injury problems because eventually they will start to become psychological issues too. But he knows where the posts are and he can find them from a tight situation, as he proved over the past two weeks.
It might be March 13th (injury permitting) before he's introduced to a wider audience – the Cork Under 21's visit Tralee that day to face Kerry.
And as opening night reviews go, there's scarcely a more learned audience on skilful corner forwards than the Boherbee boys.
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