Egan keen to brighten Rebel outlook

EVEN in the convivial confines of the foyer of the Grand Hotel in Limerick yesterday for the media day in advance of this evening’s Bord Gáis Energy Munster U21 hurling final, captains Kevin Downes (Limerick) and William Egan (Cork) were marking each other.

Both selecting the healthy lunch of chicken salad in a wrap, both leaving the added crisps piled to one side. “Can’t give him any advantage!” laughed William.

They could find themselves in even closer company before game’s end this evening, however. William is the point-man in the Cork defence at centre-back, Kevin the strong-man in the Limerick attack at full-forward, but occasionally given license to drift. Now that would be interesting!

They both made their respective senior teams this year, Kevin a star from Limerick’s opening-day loss to Waterford, William keeping no less a luminary than Ronan Curran off the Cork team. In fact it says something for the quality in both teams that each of them have several players with senior experience, not least the Limerick attack, with Kevin himself, Declan Hannon and Graeme Mulcahy in the ranks.

“Yeah, we’re confident enough, we think we have a good set of players,” says Kevin, “We have a young team but we have experience from the Harty and Fitzgibbon, things like that. We’re coming up against Cork and they’re strong as well. I think they also have six from the senior panel. They’re a very strong team for U21 so we’ll have to be at our best to match them.”

Cork too will have to be at their best, a repeat of the performance in their semi-final win over Tipperary the least that will be required. In that Clare game, Limerick were strong in every sector, their senior stars especially prominent, impressive in its own right given that they were coming off the disappointment of losing to Dublin in the All-Ireland quarter-final just a couple of days earlier.

“Yeah, we had Dublin on Sunday and then Clare on the Tuesday so it was a very quick turnaround. Probably that was the best thing, you get back on the horse again. If we lost we would have been inconsolable altogether but thankfully we got the win.”

Much the same will now be required of Cork this evening. Powerful senior footballer Aidan Walsh – one of the stars of the Tipperary win — reverting to the small ball, after Cork’s disappointment against Mayo last Sunday. The county minor footballers too were beaten then on Monday. A bit of despondency then in Cork GAA circles lately, added pressure?

“I suppose a small bit,” says Egan. “But not too much. We’re only young lads, most of us have only played a few games and a lot of us aren’t even on the senior panel.” Anyway, says William, they’ve already dealt with that pressure in the win over Tipperary.

“We kind of felt it then alright but we knew going in that we had a lot of work done. So we knew it was a matter of performing to our potential and fulfilling our potential and thankfully we achieved the result at the end.”

Performing to potential, fulfilling potential — that’s what this grade is about, potential, and with that in mind there should be a huge crowd in the Gaelic Grounds this evening. Certainly William believes there’s more potential within this group than a few people he met in Cork last weekend believe.

“I was at a wedding and people were saying to me that it’s a bad time to play for Cork because they’re kind of screwed. But I don’t pay much attention to that. The players are still good players and it’s only a matter of getting everybody pulling in the right direction and maximising the talent that we have. There’ll be a massive Limerick crowd there, but it’s only have an hour down the road (from Cork), it’s our first final since 2007, so there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have the same.”