Rebel selectors’ club headache over top stars as Déise date nears

THE Cork hurling management will have to contend with key members of the team being involved in club games between now and their June 17 date with Waterford in the Guinness Munster Senior Hurling Championship semi-final in Thurles.

Selector Martin Bowen admitted that while they would obviously have preferred an uninterrupted preparation, they had to accept the situation that games were going ahead as scheduled.

For instance, the half-back trio of John Gardiner, Sean Óg Ó hAilpín and Ronan Curran will be playing next Tuesday with their respective clubs, Na Piarsaigh and St Finbarr’s in the County Senior Football Championship. And, there are hurling games next Sunday which will involve the participation of Joe Deane, Timmy McCarthy, Patrick Cronin and panellists Shane O’Neill and Martin Coleman.

“Obviously it’s a huge concern, but the games are fixed and that’s it. They are going ahead, we can only hope that everything will work out for us,’’ he said.

“In an ideal situation, the players would be able to focus on the Waterford game, but we live in the real world. Games have to be played!’’

As far as Bowen is concerned, Waterford will go into the game as favourites, particularly after their success in winning the league (and knocking Cork out in the semi-final).

The game will mark the seventh championship meeting between the counties at provincial and national level since 2002 (with two clashes in 2005 — in the Munster semi-final and the All-Ireland quarter-final). Cork have won four of the games, the biggest margin was five points (in the second of the 2005 games) and in total, the teams accumulated 20 goals during the period.

“They are the form team, they have beaten everything before them this year,’’ added Bowen. “It will be a major challenge for us and we know we’ll have to go up a few levels to compete with them. But, we believe we have the players to do that.

“It’s going to be a real intense game and it’s being viewed as possibly one of the games of the Championship. We’ll have to be firing on all cylinders. Waterford have brought in a few young lads who did well for them in the league. They have a fine all-round team. The way they came back and won the league final against Kilkenny showed how strong they are.”

However, it’s not as if the Cork selectors are in any way doubtful about their team’s prospects. Bowen accepted that they would have been happier to get a more testing game, except that this was obviously something they had no say in. “We were happy with our own performance. We were really only concentrating on how we performed ourselves. All the talk about the problems they were supposed to be encountering made us wary

“We had a number of young lads in the team and the first round of the Championship is always dodgy. Championship hurling is totally different, it’s a great learning curve. We had the opportunity to put in a few subs. Overall it was quite pleasing.’’

Even when Clare promised a recovery when they quickly reduced Cork’s early second-half lead from 11 points to four, he insisted that there was never any concern on their part.”

We were probably never worried. Obviously you would have been concerned about conceding a goal and three or four points in quick succession — but we felt we were in control at all times.’’