Injuries and retirements offer opportunities to new faces

Kildare will go into a tough-looking Division 2 National Football League campaign with a much-changed panel, one severely lacking in experience at that level, and with injuries also taking a large chunk of playing resources away from him, you couldn’t blame Brian Flanagan for being a bit concerned by it all.

If he is, he wasn’t giving anything away in St Patrick’s Park, Enniscorthy, on Saturday. Ever the optimist, the Kildare manager accentuated the positives of being able to give a clutch of aspiring inter-county seniors their chance to stake a claim.

The retirements, with David Hyland being the latest over the weekend, were well signposted according to the manager but the extent of injuries on top of that are forcing Flanagan’s hand somewhat as the pre-season Dioralyte O’Byrne Cup returns to the calendar after a one-year break.

“We probably knew that there was a couple of retirements likely to come so that hasn’t necessarily shocked us, maybe the extent of injuries is something that, you know, you never want them, there’s never a good time to have them, but if there was a preferred time it would be now and let’s hope we can clear a lot of them up in the next six or eight weeks,” Flanagan told the Kildare Nationalist.

“But on the one hand it creates a challenge for you, on the other hand it creates opportunity for other lads and the important thing is those other lads who get the opportunity take it. Training has still been decent quality, the games and level of competition for places is still good. But we would like to try and get as many lads back fit, healthy and on the pitch as we can over the next couple of weeks.” 

He described Saturday’s exercise as a “good workout”.

“That’s exactly what you want at this time of the year. It’s about games now for the next couple of weeks and giving as many lads an opportunity as you can. See if you can unearth a few fellas that are really stepping up and in fairness, I think today anyone that was given the opportunity took it.” 

“That was always part of the plan when you knew the O’Byrne Cup was coming back. And then we’ve obviously Sigerson which is going to have a big impact on us, then we know the experienced heads from last year, we just wanted to manage the panel and the full extent of the panel as well as we could.” 

Without giving too much away or naming individuals, Flanagan praised the development squad members who took part against Wexford and is a big fan of that set-up.

"We have a development squad that Eddie Holton’s been running for us and there’s probably eight or ten fellas there that we’ve been keeping a very close eye on and we wanted to give them an opportunity today regardless of circumstance or otherwise. I thought everyone stepped up across the board. It adds to the competition, adds to training and there’ll be boys fighting for places probably going into next week.” 

Next week of course means Dublin in Cedral St Conleths Park, albeit most likely against a similarly experimental capital team. Flanagan is looking forward to it.

“It will be a decent workout. I suppose you’ve put in six or eight weeks of a pre-season at this point and once you turn into the new year the lads want to play football and as much as it’s bitterly cold at here, the sun’s still shining and it wasn’t a bad day for football and we’ll see what next Saturday throws at us. But games are important now, see who’s ready for this level and see who’s going to push for a place in a couple of weeks in the National League but at the minute competition for places and delivering on days like this is important.”