Brudair: Missing McGrath Cup no big deal

New Limerick football manager John Brudair doesn’t believe his side are at a disadvantage by skipping this year’s McGrath Cup.

Limerick, along with Clare, Tipperary and Waterford, withdrew from the competition as a protest against the Munster Council’s decision to seed Cork and Kerry in the provincial football championship. As a result, Limerick’s first competitive game under the new ‘black card’ rules will be the Allianz NFL opener against Sligo on February 2.

With challenge games lined up each weekend during January, though, Brudair feels Limerick will cope with not playing in the McGrath Cup.

“Only time will tell,” he said, “but I don’t think it will be a big issue.

“We have matches arranged all the way up until the start of the league, and they’re good quality games. It’s disappointing the way things panned out with the McGrath Cup, you never like to have friction between counties, but that was the situation I was told of when I came into the job.

“The games we’ll have won’t be competitive ones in the strictest sense, but we’ll be taking them just as seriously as we would the McGrath Cup.”

With no serious injury worries, Brudair, who led St Patrick’s to last year’s Limerick SFC final, almost has his panel finalised ahead of the league, though he is still waiting on some players to return.

“We have one or two players in rehab at the moment, but nothing serious thankfully,” he said.

“The panel is fairly sorted, we’re just waiting on a couple of senior players to make up their minds. I won’t name anybody as I don’t want to be putting pressure on them but they have been told that they’ll have to make a decision in the coming weeks.”

Limerick will compete in Division 3 of the league this year after winning Division 4 in 2013. After promotion from the bottom division in 2010, they were relegated and Brudair is hoping to avoid a repeat of that. As a result, consolidation will be the primary aim.

“The reality is that the main objective is to make sure that we stay in Division 3,” he said. “If we got into a position where promotion was a possibility coming to the last few games of the league, we’d be delighted and obviously do our best to try to get it. We have a lot of new players on the panel though and playing in the league will be something that they’re not used to. We’ll have to see how they respond to playing winter football in February and March.

“Giving them experience without going backwards in terms of our progress is the most important thing during the league. We’re hopeful we can blend the new players with the more experienced ones and I’m confident we’ll be in a good position in terms of preparation by the time of the Sligo game.”