Players count down to club semi-finals

THE four clubs remaining in the All-Ireland Club senior hurling championship are back in training and counting down to their semi-finals next month.

On February 12, from opposite ends of the country, Newtownshandrum of Cork meet Down champions Ballygalget in Portlaoise, while on the same day, at the same time, Thurles hosts Portumna and All-Ireland champions James Stephens of Kilkenny.

James Stephens were back into action early this year, albeit after taking a bit of a break, explains team manager Adrian Finan.

“We went back on January 2 after taking most of December off. We got back on the Bank Holiday Monday morning, and had three or four sessions a week since then, including matches.

“We played UL last weekend in our first game, with both teams trying out a few lads. We won by a couple of points and that was a good run-out. But it also showed we have a lot of work to do to get back where we were, and we’ll work hard at that.”

All-Star Ollie Canning was caught on the hop yesterday evening, just off the plane from China where he had spent the last week with the Galway team that had reached last year’s All-Ireland final.

But he was still up to date with what his Portumna teammates had been up to in his absence.

“The lads were back a few days after Christmas, we’ll be joining them now straight away. Damien Hayes, Kevin (Damien’s brother), Andrew Smyth (the other Portumna Galway panellists), were all on this trip as well, but we’re looking forward now to getting back into it with the lads.”

In North Cork, it was a similar story to that from James Stephens, with a month off after winning the Munster title, before returning last Tuesday night.

Team captain Brendan Mulcahy said: “The first night back was tough, but that is to be expected; a lot of fellas enjoyed the Christmas festivities. We’ve had rain most nights, but again, you have to expect that this time of year. We won’t complain, most clubs are starting back training now with nothing to aim for immediately other than a championship game in April or May. But we have an All-Ireland semi-final to look forward to, which makes things a lot easier. All over Christmas we were saying: ‘ah sure we’re not playing ‘til next February,’ and then all of a sudden it’s only four weeks away. The Cork lads are back with us next Saturday (Ben and Jerry O’Connor, Pat Mulcahy, Paul Morrissey, in South Africa with the Cork team), so the preparations will really step up from there on.”

There is one exception. On the Strangford Peninsula, Ballygalget have bucked the trend. Newly-elected club secretary Leo Boyhan explains: “The boys never stopped, they trained right up to Christmas week, trained on St Stephen’s Day and are training four nights a week since. We’d be a bit like Newtownshandrum here. We are short on numbers, with a very small parish but we have a full pitch and a floodlit all-weather training pitch, newly laid for the juveniles last year. We also have the use of the gymnasium in the secondary school in Portaferry during the winter, though most of the lads go away and do their own gym work.”

All set then, though doubtless Newtown will have taken note of the extra commitment in Ballygalget. A pity the GAA didn’t see fit to put these games at the same venue, or on consecutive days, enabling hurling fans to feast two terrific contests.