John Horgan on hurling: Cork will look at new faces but a settled team is still important
Cork underage star Daire O'Leary is set to get another run in defence next spring. Picture: Eddie O'Hare
CORK hurling supporters will have the opportunity of seeing their team in action on at least five occasions when the 2023 competitive season gets underway on the first weekend in February.
There will be three national league games on home soil in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Limerick, Westmeath and Wexford all visitors to the Cork headquarters while Waterford and Tipperary will be hosted in the Munster championship.
And with a new management team to guide the team’s fortunes, there is going to be plenty of support for those games.
After all, when Limerick come to town for the opening league encounter on February 4 that will be Cork’s first competitive assignment in over seven months since they were eliminated from the All-Ireland series by Galway.
Taking that into account, there is certain to be a great appetite among supporters to get out and observe for themselves what direction the team is likely to be travelling in under new team boss Pat Ryan.
There are still very divided opinions on having the inter-county season all done and dusted in the month of July It will be a week later in the new season but there will remain a strong body of opinion that believes it’s still too early for it to finish and a date in August would be met with more favour.
It was certainly strange last season to have the All-Ireland final played in mid-July. In the past that might well have been the date for the Munster final with the first Sunday in September reserved for the big day in Croke Park.
That’s no longer the case, of course, and it is what it is now even if it’s not to a lot of people's liking.
For the most part, the split season has worked out quite well and here on Leeside, the majority would be in support of it. It certainly provides greater clarity in relation to club fixtures which can be much better adhered to and which certainly wasn’t the case in the past.
The new concept certainly worked well here in Cork and a huge domestic programme could not have been run off any more efficiently than it was and once again the powers that be down the Marina deserve a lot of credit for that.
But it will be first things first in February and the commencement of the NHL.
There is certain to be a greater focus on the secondary competition, particularly in the earlier rounds because of the fact that there are so many new management teams setting off on the journey. Supporters will want to have a look at how the teams line up, what playing strategy will be adopted, use of sweepers, two or even one-man full-forward lines, all that sort of thing.
How many eggs will the new management teams put into the league basket, will they want to put down a marker for the far more important provincial championship campaign or will they use it as more of an experimental tool in order to ensure that their players are mentally and physically better prepared for the make or break format of the group stage in the championship.
Will they take a leaf out of last season’s book when the two finalists, Waterford and Cork failed to deliver when the championship questions were put to them which resulted with one of them failing to emerge from the group stage and the other being dumped out of the All-Ireland series at the quarter-final stage?
All the new management teams will want to make an early impression in the league but how far will they want to take that particular process?
Every supporter wants to see their county do well but not at the expense of the championship.
Cork and the rest of the counties will be finalising their squads after Christmas and it will be imperative that every squad member is looked at over the course of the five league games. And with three home games that is even better still for supporters to make their own judgement on whatever amount of newcomers will be integrated into the set-up.
If there are three goalkeepers in the squad all three must get game time in the league and so on.
What will be most required from the league will be more settlement in key positions going into the championship. Down the middle, from full-back to full-forward, those positions must be nailed on, similar to the situation in Limerick.
There has been too much chopping and changing in Cork in relation to those key areas and it could not be said who would fill them from one game to the next.
He will be fully aware of the need for a greater physical presence throughout the team, being able to match teams like Limerick in that area. That is why there probably is plenty of work being put in by the Strength and Conditioning Coaches during the pre-season.
Every new season brings renewed optimism in every county and more so with those who have new personnel at the helm. There is already a school of thought that the current Limerick team and more importantly their squad will not be taken down when the championship gets underway.
Of course, they are a great team, one of the best of the modern era and right up there with the great Kilkenny team of the past when they completed four in a row. But they eventually got beaten and this Limerick team will be too. It has been suggested that they are coming back into the pack to some degree and maybe they are.
But they have always found a way to extricate themselves when the alarm bells started to ring and those that have them odds on again for more glory in the new season are fully justified in that belief.
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