Players offered clean slate by new boss Canavan

PETER CANAVAN has promised all Fermanagh players will be given a fair shout of making his 2012 panel.

As the Tyrone legend attempts to repair the fissures created during John O’Neill’s season in charge when some players withdrew their services, he insisted he will let bygones be bygones.

“We will be starting with a clean slate on a lot of people,” maintained Canavan. “A lot of people would have said that [I am] mad going near that because things are not good there.

“I am going in holding no grudges against anybody. I want to see players committed, working hard and do whatever they can to play for their county. If I didn’t believe that there was ambition within the squad, within the players in Fermanagh, I wouldn’t be there.”

Canavan will face his native Tyrone in the McKenna Cup in January after the counties were drawn in Section A of the Ulster pre-season competition.

Meanwhile, Armagh forwards coach Oisín McConville has dismissed the team’s chances of reaching an All-Ireland final in the immediate future.

McConville, who worked alongside Paddy O’Rourke this year and is expected to do so again in 2012, said the Orchard County have too much work to do to bridge a gap to their last final appearance in 2003.

Speaking about new blood in the team next season, McConville said: “The only thing I would say about the young fellas coming on is that a lot of them have won minor titles, a lot of them have won U21 titles.

“They shouldn’t have any baggage really coming onto that panel and should be able to express themselves.

“Hopefully we can start building back to where we were. Realistically, it’s not going to happen next year.”

Mayo midfielder Aidan O’Shea revealed he was handed a four-week suspension for lashing out at Kerry’s Paul Galvin in August’s All-Ireland semi-final.

The 21-year-old swung an elbow in Galvin’s direction but was awarded a free by David Coldrick.

The Central Competitions Control Committee proposed a four-week ban, which would have threatened to rule O’Shea out of the All-Ireland final had Mayo won.

“I got suspended after it for it,” said O’Shea, speaking at the launch of the GAA’s alcohol-free January scheme. “I got an email from my club secretary about a month later and I was thinking, ‘I never even heard of this.’

As Mayo’s championship finished at that stage, O’Shea won’t have to serve the suspension but if he is dismissed for a similar offence at inter-county level up to July (48 weeks) he will have the ban doubled to eight weeks.

His switch to midfield from the full-forward line was one of the successes for Mayo this year as was their steelier style of football.

“I would see myself as just a big, brawny midfielder who throws himself around the place,” he said. “I think I have more to offer than that.

“It’s probably something Mayo haven’t been for awhile, we’ve been too nice, I think.

“Even talking to some of the Kerry boys, Jack O’Connor came into the dressing room after we played them this year and he said for once Mayo had a hard edge and he couldn’t get over it. That is a huge turning point, bringing a bit of an edge.”

O’Shea also slammed the amount of Mayo pundits in the media, claiming some of them don’t know what they’re talking about.

“I think we’re a media-driven county,” said the Breaffy man. “There’s a huge appetite for GAA in Mayo; it’s crazy, like. That’s what happens when guys finish up — they get involved in the media.

“Some of them I don’t know how they’re on television — they haven’t a clue!”

Ahead of Sunday’s Leinster SHC final against Oulart-the-Ballagh, Coolderry’s Cathal Parlon admitted the club’s second successive county title this year was met with derision in some quarters in the county.

“We didn’t enjoy our county title last year,” recalled Parlon of a game which preceded being knocked out of the provincial competition by Westmeath’s Raharney. “We were always trying to get back this year. We wanted to show that there was a big win in us.”