Declan Coleman for first experience of Collingwood football with UCC 

This is the biggest week of the year for UCC as the college is taking part in the Collingwood Cup, a first experience for new manager Declan Coleman.

The Skull and Crossbones are aiming to win a trophy at this level for the first time since 2019, when their 14th overall victory was achieved by defeating UL.

There's also the fallback option of the Farquhar Cup, should the college fall to University of Galway in the opening round.

Coleman is spinning a lot of plates going into this week long festival of football, as his side takes a break from the week to week pressures of the Munster Senior League Premier Division.

“Good yeah - we have a fairly big squad so obviously not everyone was able to travel in terms of the restrictions on squad size for the actual competition,” he gave an insight into the UCC camp.

“So we narrowed it down to a 20 to 23 man squad, probably we'll say just a 22 man squad in the middle."

Coleman has experienced this kind of competition once, which bodes well for UCC this week.

“I played in the Crowley alright, when the J2s won it for the first time,” he said.

“I played in it up in Coleraine, that was probably 2008 I think. 

"I played in that but this is my first time being involved in a Collingwood now.” 

There’s a huge difference between the Crowley Cup and Collingwood week, with the standard cited by most as the majority of squads are made up of current and former League of Ireland players. 

Coleman and his backroom ream are looking almost exclusively at the schedule as there may be a game a day.

“I mean it's not ideal in terms of trying to have a high performance culture and all that, like three games in three days is stretching things a little bit thin and obviously you have to use your squad as best you can then as well and manage players' freshness and things like that,” he explained.

“We'll still fancy that we'll be able to do it and we'll be staying in a hotel where we'll have access to a pool and a gym and we'll have a physio with us so we'll concentrate on getting our recovery right after the game, get the nutrition, hydration and all the other stuff that goes with us in terms of the pool, the gym, massages.

“We'll look after the players properly and be ready to play on Wednesday, all going well. 

"We'll be playing in all of the bigger games hopefully.

“Yeah, look, it's grand. It's not the most ideal situation to play in, especially as well when we have a team that's playing in Munster Senior League as well, so you can be at the mercy of fixtures locally as well. 

"Unfortunately one of our recent games against Cobh Wanderers was called off so we haven’t have played an actual fixture in a good few weeks but we had seven players at Harding Cup so they were involved in three games in three days there.

“They got to the final at Harding and then they'll be involved in Collingwood two weeks later or two and a half, three weeks later so from a player perspective that puts us under a small bit of pressure because if lads have played in those three games will probably be involved in all our three games as well. 

"You could be having a knock-on effect then, certain muscles, hamstrings and calves, you feel the effect. 

"If you play three games in three days you can actually get through that period sometimes but then you pick up an injury the following week.

“We've had to really be careful with our training load since the Harding and in the lead-up to the Collingwood we've had to really be careful with how hard we train and what we do.

“From a preparation point of view, while you're trying to manage the load a little bit, it kind of brings you away from the proper match intensity so then you go into a game and you need to raise it up again so it can be quite difficult that way as well. 

"So that will probably be the only real concern but I still think the players and staff will be capable of picking it up again but just in terms of preparation it kind of throws it over a small bit.”