Carlow panel down to the bone

CARLOW boss John Kearns has 17 players available to him for Saturday’s Tommy Murphy Cup game with Waterford.

Kearns, who took the helm after Andy Shortall resigned, saw his side massacred by Offaly in the opening round of the provincial championship and only 19 of the 27 man squad from that game, have made themselves available for the weekend. Two more have cried of due to injury.

Kearns stated: “We’ve had one training session when nineteen players made themselves available, but both James Ryan and Kieran Nolan are unavailable this Saturday, leaving us with just 17 players.”

The big-name casualties include Mark Carpenter, who has not made himself available for the competition, while team captain, Brian Kelly (back) and Christy Bolger (broken nose) are also out of contention.

“We will select a team from the seventeen players available to us.

“We may try and get a few more players in by Saturday,” stated Kearns.

Such selection issues are nothing new to Carlow. Back in 2005, Carlow were due to met Fermanagh in Enniskillen on a Saturday but officials notified their Ulster counterparts that they would be unable to fulfil the fixture only 24 hours prior to throw-in.

The threat of financial penalties was used to entice teams into the competition that year but was not acted upon with all sides receiving their allotted funding from championship revenue at the end of the season.

Kildare, Offaly and Westmeath were other counties to turn their noses up at the chance to extend their inter-county commitments after defeat in the qualifiers.

Carlow did play in the competition last year, beating London before bowing out at the semi-final to Leitrim but only before then manager Liam Hayes had threatened to give the event a “wide berth”.

County chairman Eddie Byrne said that he was confident they would be able to field a team but conceded that it was difficult to generate any enthusiasm for the competition among the players.

“There’s definitely not a lot of interest in it, especially at this time of year. Lads just want to get back to their own clubs and concentrate on the local championship when they go out of the All-Ireland.”