O’Neill hits out at College chaos as depleted squad gear up for life in Division 2

The Fixture congestion at this time of the year in the GAA calendar has again reared its ugly head again with the Sigerson Cup and National League’s colliding with each other.

Kildare have had seven players in action in the main third level competition over recent days with Conor Hartley, Aaron Masterson, Mark Dempsey, David Malone, Jimmy Hyland, Jason Gibbons and Mark Hyland all starring.

For Kildare boss Cian O’Neil this has been a particular headache and he argues the situation is even worse than normal this year.

“It’s very difficult trying to prepare but none more difficult than on the players themselves and obviously the management has its own job to do but it’s just bizarre that there have been no learnings from last year when Corofin’s Kieran Molloy played in an All-Ireland club semi-final against Moorefield and just an hour or so later he was down the road to play for his College in the Sigerson Cup”.

“In fact it’s probably worse as for the first time ever there is a backdoor and thankfully being selfish, UCD, Maynooth and the Garda College all won in round 1 so at least this week we will have our players”.

“ Maynooth played last Sunday which was strange as the weekends have been sacred for county teams in preparing for matches so all of them lads missed an opportunity to impress seven days out from the league so that was disappointing”.

There has also been a few changes to the squad with the All Ireland wining Under 20 pair of Brian McLoughlin and John O’Toole opting out before Christmas and Paschal Connell and Padraig Fogarty being released more recently.

On top of that both Neil Flynn and Mick O’Grady are suspended on Sunday from red cards they received against Kerry last August and Paddy Brophy has now joined his clubmates Kevin Flynn and Kevin O’Callaghan on the sideline with the Celbridge man injuring his hamstring with Maynooth University.

It leaves O’Neil with a big selection headache heading into the opening game and he also confirmed that he was disappointed not to get Neil Flynn’s ban overturned.

“If you want to put numbers on it we will be down eight players from team that started against Kerry with Peter Kelly clubtied, Johnny Byrne and Daniel Flynn who both stepped away, Mick O’Grady and Neil Flynn are suspended from the Kerry game, Niall Kelly is traveling and Paddy Brophy and Kevin Flynn are both injured”.

“We appealed Neil Flynn’s suspension as we thought the new evidence we had was quite stark but still no luck which was disappointing. We then appealed that to the CHC but it still wasn’t overturned”, he said.

There is a chance for lads to stake a claim however with a new look team set to take the field against Armagh.

“Being without a couple of lads presents challenges but also opportunities for the lads coming in and to be fair apart from the couple of knocks we picked up with Paddy Brophy in particular, we knew about the rest”.

“We have planned for this for quite some time as a result and we have been delighted with the lads that have come into the squad this year and they are challenging so it’s an opportunity for those guys to stake their claim in match 1 because you don’t really want to change a winning so if we can get the win on Sunday it then puts pressure on the lads that aren’t there”.