Counihan freshens up Cork panel
Neither saw game time in the 2010 championship with the O’Regan’s last appearance coming in the league against Mayo last year.
Club commitments with Nemo Rangers commanded O’Regan’s attention in the early stages of this season’s league but O’Flynn appeared on four occasions for Cork as a substitute in the league over the past few months and was notably employed as a defender as manager Conor Counihan experimented during the secondary competition.
The Cork management have freshened up their squad by drafting in U21 attacking stars Barry O’Driscoll and Mark Collins into senior training since their All-Ireland U21 semi-final defeat to Galway last month.
The inclusion of O’Driscoll and Collins after their U21 commitments ended was well-flagged as both had been hugely impressive this season in UCC’s Sigerson Cup triumph and Cork’s Munster U21 success.
The departure of O’Regan and O’Flynn brings to seven the number of players from the Cork squad that claimed the Sam Maguire last September who will not feature in manager Cork’s plans in the 2011 championship campaign. Goalkeeper Paddy O’Shea, defender Kieran O’Connor and attackers John Hayes and Kevin McMahon all opted out of the panel over the past few months, while Colm O’Neill is sidelined for the season after tearing his cruciate ligament. O’Neill is set to perform the role of water boy for Cork as he doesn’t expect to play again until October at least.
The 22-year old will pull on the Maor Uisce bib for the first time on Sunday when Cork face Clare.
“I’ll be given the role of water boy for a few games,” revealed O’Neill. “It’s a new scene for me. In fairness to Conor (Counihan) and the backroom team, they’ve kept me involved and my physio happens while up at training so I’d be in and around the scene. I don’t feel I’m missing out on anything. Some people would be totally cut off from it for the year. I suppose I’d prefer to be up and around and having the craic with the lads. So I’ll be Maor Uisce for a while. It’ll be a different approach to a game. I might see things that you wouldn’t normally see in a game.”
Meanwhile, Fermanagh manager John O’Neill is optimistic that several members of his panel will have recovered from knocks to take part in Sunday’s Ulster Football Championship meeting with Derry in Celtic Park.
The Ernesiders have had a tough start to 2011 with a number of players leaving the panel and a big turnover of new names coming in due to some differences in opinion in the county.
O’Neill will definitely be without Conor Quigley as Fermanagh look to cause a massive upset in the province.
The manager said: ‘I suppose we have a difficult time with injuries. With the club season kicking in after the national league season being over, we picked up a number of injuries in the first couple of rounds of fixtures. We have definitely lost Conor Quigley to a medial ligament injury so he is out for the Derry game.
’We have a number of other niggles and knocks that we have been working on these last couple of weeks. We hope that they will all clear up before Sunday.’
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