Cahill’s balancing act in busy spell

By Shane Brophy

Some people might saw that senior inter-county panels are bloated with both Tipperary senior hurling and football squads carrying 43 and 41 players respectively, but at this time of the year panels are under pressure after just one weekend of the National Leagues.

The Tipperary senior hurlers are particularly stretched with the treatment room already including Brian McGrath, Alan Tynan, and Aaron Morgan, added to by Robert Doyle and Joe Caesar who limped out of their hurling league opening round win over Galway on Saturday night.

This midweek, twelve of the panel are involved in the quarter finals and relegation semi-finals of the third level Fitzgibbon Cup, with a number of Brendan Cummins under 20’s called into train with the seniors last week due to the level of players not fully at the disposal of Liam Cahill at the moment.

“We have a number of under-20s integrated in and out as well, that are not officially named on our panel, because we have to,” he said after the win over Galway.

“At the end of the year you always see these dramatic headlines about expense in preparing inter-county teams. When you have a congested schedule like we have in January at the moment in particular, you have to have players and you have to have numbers and you have to look after them when they come in and that's all expensive. It just doesn't happen overnight and they have to have the proper expertise around them when they come in if you're going to ask them to play at the level we're playing at.

“It's difficult, but we're fortunate in Tipperary that we have that support in the background from the county board. We have the numbers in and we're going to be using quite a number of players throughout the course of the league.”

With Tipperary facing a trip to Cork for a rematch of the All-Ireland final on Saturday week, six days after next Sunday’s tricky trip to Offaly, it’s a delicate balancing act for the Tipp manager to ensure he has a team able enough to get the two points in Tullamore but ensuring they are strong enough to face their Munster rivals in the one of the marquee games of the early rounds of the league.

Cahill said next Sunday might come too soon for captain Ronan Maher to return but it could see Jason Forde get his first minutes of this campaign after being an unused sub against Galway.

“You just don't want to maybe introduce these fellas immediately and then run the risk of something going wrong with them,” Cahill added.

“A few of the more established players, as we’ll call them, have come back in early January so we'd like to maybe have another little bit into them before we go pressing any buttons. But you could see one or two of them featuring on the matchday panel.”