Cats facing anxious wait on star Hogan

KILKENNY are sweating on the fitness of senior star Richie Hogan ahead of Sunday’s All-Ireland U21 decider with Clare.

Manager Michael Walsh revealed Hogan sustained an ankle injury in Sunday’s senior victory over Tipperary and has been unable to train. Lester Ryan, a nephew of the former Kilkenny senior of the same name, is also on the injured list and the management will wait until tomorrow evening before finalising their line-up.

Walsh explained Hogan won’t train before the weekend: “He started a teaching job last week in Dublin and is gone back to work this morning. He is going to get physio but until the swelling goes down, we can’t assess the damage.

“It happened in the first few minutes. A ball came down the wing and he got caught underneath it and gave the ankle a twist. He is a leader and a massive player for us. Obviously we would be hoping he would be okay.’’

Clare, who only won the Munster title for the first time this year, have to plan without Sean Collins, who suffered a shoulder injury playing football, while leading scorer, forward Darach Honan, remains a doubt. On the credit side, Colin Chaplin may feature despite breaking a finger in the All-Ireland semi-final against Galway.

Manager John Minogue, vice-principal in St Flannan’s College, confirmed yesterday that Honan is still struggling with a hamstring problem and has a 60/40 chance of playing.

“We’re just hoping that he makes it,’’ said Minogue. “We’ll know Thursday night. We’re hopeful.’’

Meanwhile, Minogue said that while it was disappointing for his players not to be able to have a run-out on Croke Park last Sunday – because of the damage to the pitch following the pitch invasion after the All-Ireland final – it was not an issue at this stage.

“We did walk around Croke Park, (but) it was in a poor state. There probably was glass on the pitch because there was everything else on the pitch. Obviously we’d have preferred to have got a puck around,’’ he commented.

However, he doesn’t believe his team will be handicapped by not having any experience of playing in the stadium. “We’re hoping it won’t be a disadvantage at all – that they realise that the chances of playing in Croke Park for a Clare team will not be as regular as the Kilkenny lads and once you get a shot at it, you really take that chance.

“You can’t guarantee that young fellas suffer stage fright when they get out there. If you don’t play against Kilkenny for the first eight or nine minutes, the game can be gone. So we’re hoping they grab it with both hands and get stuck in from the very word go.’’

Reflecting back on the build-up to last year’s final, Michael Walsh agreed that the challenge of trying to create history (after the success of the senior, minor and intermediates) placed his team under a “massive” burden, starting when the senior and minor teams returned the night after their All-Ireland triumphs.

“Under-21 All-Irelands are big events in themselves but it became a massive event because of the Grand Slam and everybody wanted that,’’ he commented.

“The young fellas themselves were only 18, 19, 20 and it was a huge thing on them. That is why I would regard last year’s win as massive because it was very hard to shield them away from it. We didn’t, there was no point and thankfully we got the result.’’

He was particularly disappointed by the defeat of the minors last Sunday, for the reason that his son Ollie was midfielder on the team. Earlier, Kilkenny had lost to Cork in the intermediate decider.