Daly to ‘give it a rattle again’ with Dublin

ANTHONY DALY is “99.9%” certain he will be in charge of the Dublin senior hurling team in 2012.

Daly was quizzed on his intentions at a Vodafone function in Dublin yesterday and revealed he is almost certainto take up the option of the second year of a two-year term with the National League champions.

He said last night: “There are a couple of little things to be cleared up with the backroom staff. I’m waiting for those things to be confirmed. Hopefully, all will be in place over the next two or three weeks and we’ll drive on from there. There are couple of i’s to be dotted and t’s to be crossed but we’re committed to giving it a rattle again.”

Daly was present at yesterday’s fufunction with the National League trophy while football boss Pat Gilroy showed off the Sam Maguire Cup following Dublin’s famous All-Ireland final victory over Kerry on September 18.

Meanwhile, Cian O’Neill will be ratified as the new trainer of the Mayo senior footballers at a county board meeting on Monday night. O’Neill, who brought his four-year spell with the Tipperary hurlers to an end last week, has been recruited by manager James Horan following the departure of selectors Paul Jordan and Martin Connolly.

The acquisition of the highly-rated Kildare native has been approved by Mayo board chiefs and now needs to be rubber-stamped at Monday’s meeting.

The frontrunner to replace O’Neill in Tipperary is Ross Dunphy of Wexford, who is well known on the club circuit in his native county and in the Premier county.

Meanwhile, Tipperary star Pádraic Maher will lead the charge for Thurles Sarsfields in tomorrow’s county senior hurling championship semi-final against Clonoulty-Rossmore at Semple Stadium.

The match is a repeat of last year’s final, which Sars won to complete two-in-a-row.

Maher admits the All-Ireland SHC final defeat by Kilkenny remains a video nasty he has yet to revisit.

The 21-year-old All Star said: “Not yet – I might watch it on Christmas day when there is nothing else to be doing.

“It is an awful lot different to last year. Hopefully we can learn from it. We were back with the club so didn’t have a chance to assess it. We’ll do that in November and December and learn from it. But in 2009 we were in the same boat and learned for 2010. Hopefully we are going to repeat that success next year.”

Tipperary looked unstoppable following their Munster SHC final demolition, when the Premier County rifled seven goals past Waterford to record a 21-point success. But Maher rejects the theory that they peaked and showed their hand too early in the year.

He said: “I wouldn’t say that because when you are playing the likes of Cork and Waterford you have to play to the best of your ability to beat them. We were just building up a bit of momentum but unfortunately we just met a different animal here in September. Kilkenny just outplayed us on the day, and outlasted us. We can’t say anything about it.

“We were the second best team on the day. We didn’t have the same free-flowing play as last year. We weren’t passing the ball around as a team as we usually do. That comes down to the pressure Kilkenny put on us on the day.”

Meanwhile, tomorrow’s Louth SFC final has been postponed due to bereavement in the St Patrick’s club. The final was scheduled to go ahead at the Gaelic Grounds in Drogheda but the Louth County Board issued a statement confirming that the decider will now be played on Sunday, October 16.

Elsewhere, the Westmeath county board have moved forward their county junior and intermediate football finals to Saturday, October 8 to avoid a clash with the TG4 All-Ireland Ladies IFC final replay between Cavan and Westmeath the following day.

The Cavan board have also brought forward their junior and senior finals from next Sunday to Saturday evening, thus ensuring that Breffni fans wishing to make the trip to Croke Park do not have to make a difficult choice.