Two men on a mission

TWO men on a mission, both with the same aim in sight but coming from slightly contrasting backgrounds!

Utility player Eamonn O'Hara, arguably Sligo's best known player and Cork's Anthony Lynch, who is admired as one of the most competent defenders in the game, are members of the Vodafone GAA Allstars teams currently on tour in California. In common with the rest of their team-mates who include Derry's Gareth Doherty who won't arrive tomorrow after initial visa difficulties they are preparing for the start of the National League campaign and contemplating what the future holds for them.

O'Hara, only the third player from the county to win an Allstar, feels that while Sligo's need for silverware is immediate, he can't envisage them putting everything into the winning of a League title. "I can only speak from my experience, but why kill yourself if you get a good championship run," he comments. Thinking of what happened Cavan after they qualified for the League final last year, he wonders if they were burned out in the summer.

"It's hard to say if they lost their appetite, but at the end of the day they gained nothing from working so hard in the League." The Sligo approach won't be haphazard either, he insists. The emphasis will be on retaining their Division One status which means so much to them and playing well.

"We'll see how we cope against the big teams. Let fellows pitch their tent and if they are playing well, Peter Forde will give them their chance. When I think back to the time when we played in Division Four. It really was 'Mickey Mouse,' because you had so much time on the ball. But, when it came to championship time it was very different. You were left to wonder how teams were so fit and so fast. You'd come up against the likes of Galway and they'd blow you out of the water. We struggled, but once we got up to Division One it opened up our eyes. It was like a championship game every day.

"As far as this League is concerned, if we were to win five or six games in a row, than automatically we would say, 'let's go for it.' But, we won't put any pressure on ourselves. When we allow that to happen, we tend to collapse. In the past we would have gone 'gung ho' for the League, putting pressure on ourselves to win games, but we never performed.

"Progression is the word we have to use in terms of success which is nil," he adds.

"We celebrated progression last season, before being beaten by the eventual champions. There was talk we could have won that game, but statistics don't lie. We were beaten by Armagh. We had nothing to show for our year. Basically, we badly need a Connacht title at this stage."

For Anthony Lynch now Dublin-based after recently joining Davey Stockbrokers it's clear that the challenge facing the Cork team is to achieve greater consistency. He agrees that inconsistency affected the team performances during the year and again in the All-Ireland semi-final game with Kerry.

"It seemed to be the usual Cork thing, towards the middle of the second half of that game when Fionan Murray got an unbelievable goal. Then we nearly got another gaol before the sending-offs happened!"

Irrespective of that experience, Lynch says that Cork will be every bit as motivated as ever when they play Kerry in the championship.

"I wouldn't see it as being different from any other year, in that there is always pressure on you to perform." When the rest of the Cork squad resume training tomorrow, Lynch will be lining out with the 2001 Allstars team against the 2002 side, with John O'Mahony and Joe Kernan the respective managers.

His immediate plans will be to travel home at week-ends for training and games and possibly link up with some other team for training purposes in Dublin during the week.

"Larry is giving it another year, his seventh and while things went against us in the All-Ireland semi-final, we won a Munster championship. All the players are fully behind him. Hopefully we can do better this year."

* For Derry defender Gareth Doherty, there was good news yesterday when he was cleared to travel out to join up with the squad. He was turned back at Dublin Airport on Wednesday morning because of visa difficulties, but an official approach to the US Embassy earned him a reprieve.