O’Gorman eager for Munster football boost
Waterford managed just one point from play in their loss to Clare (0-9 to 0-7) a match which Clare selector James Hanrahan described as “terrible” while Tipperary boss John Evans admitted their 1-5 to 1-8 defeat to Limerick was “one awful game”.
Said O’Gorman: “Unfortunately for followers in the province, football does not arouse the same depth of passion and interest as hurling. The most that saw the two games was three and a half thousand. That speaks for itself.”
The Council is awaiting the report of a special sub-committee chaired by Limerick man John Landers which has been looking at the situation in the counties aside from Kerry and Cork. Continued O’Gorman: “We will see what they have to say and what steps can be put in place to help the situation.’’
O’Gorman, understandably, is much more positive about the hurling championship and strongly rejected suggestions that it should be dispensed with in favour of an open draw.
“The people who say that are being very unfair,’’ he commented. “We have the perfect championship in Munster. We should be looking at where the problems are — and the problems are in Leinster and in Connacht. We have the best championship and we should be left have it.
“An open draw would not make sense when you look at our championship last year. The three games involving Limerick and Tipperary attracted 85,000 people. We had a crowd of 35,000 at the Cork/Waterford game and 50,000 for the final (Limerick v Waterford).
Returning to the football issue, Hanrahan, goalkeeper on the winning team of 1992 which was coached by John Maughan, was brought in by new manager Frank Doherty last year, along with ‘92 panellist Kieran Kelliher, who had worked for the previous two years with Paidí Ó Sé.
“Some of the football was very poor, no words can describe it. But, at the end of the day a win was vitally important for us. Our players were very down last year after they had lost to Waterford. The pressure was on us this year and maybe that was why fellows did not perform. I thought we created a lot of chances but our finishing was very bad.”
In mitigation, he pointed out that they had a relatively young squad of players (including eleven current under-21’s, six of whom played on Sunday) and they had been missing up to six players through injury, among them, team captain Michael O’Shea.
“In the last couple of weeks we seemed to be going very well in training. But, when we got out on the field we did not perform. We were lucky at the finish to get a win out of it. Our main aim at the start of the year was to get out of Division Four but we failed to do that. In Kerry we will be playing the best team in Ireland. It’s going to be a big test, but that’s what people play sport for — to encounter challenges.
