Did that ever happen? Were they not just getting dogged by the intercounty managers anyway in that time and turning up fucked for the club games?
Clifford has spent much of the last 18 months injured. He didnāt even look that fit for Kerry last season.
I donāt think him running riot against junior footballers proves much tbh.
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Agreed, didnt Sheedy bring Tipp on a training camp in middle if club window in April?
Still turned up and played, carrying his club.
Again Iām not sure it proves anything.
Then sheedy should get a five year ban from all levels of the association.
The gaa have no issue banning poor players if they make a mistake when transferring to the us for the summer.
Posters are stating county players are too tired to play for their clubs. Tj Reid another example, played all year.
Tj reid didnāt play in the league for Kilkenny I thought?
2020 and 21 players got rested like never before in my life time due to Covid.
You repeat the current structure over four or five years and youāll see what state players are in.
Be like rugby and nfl.
I think also this year there is a natural appetite for spectators to get out and get to games after not being able to in 2020 and 2021. In 2022 there was still a bit of a feeling of tip-toeing back to normality which isnāt there any more.
Regarding the round robin, itās still in its infancy as a format so there is still quite a bit of novelty there. That novelty tends to wear off. The International Rules used to carry a lot of novelty and was able to fill Croke Park at its peak, but then suddenly the novelty wore off and people didnāt care any more.
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It doesnāt have to be Club Championship. But County players should be playing club games in Mid April/Early May.
@the_man_himself it did work well and was a good thing for County players until idiots like Mick Ryan held training sessions the morningās of Club Championship games around 2016. Instead of tackling that issue, they ripped up the whole calendar which has resulted in the current sorry mess.
Iād say in a couple of years, County managers will be begging to be able to release players back to their clubs after the league. Kiely would have loved to after the League final this year anyway.
It wouldnt be a bad idea but the horse has bolted.
Aside from the main starters, the rest of the Clare panel have been released back to their clubs at different times to play league matches during last year and this years league and round robin.
If you have 36 lads on a county panel there is no reason 10 to 15 of them couldnāt play a handful of club games during I/C season especially as there is little room for I/C challenge matches these days.
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I think thatās good idea but canāt see it happening
Thats good to hear but the frontliners should all be playing Club too after the League.
Its no wonder they hit they wall in Croke Park last year and the same will happen teams again this year I think particularly the Munster Hurling teams and Iād worry for Derry/Armagh/Galway and a couple more in Football too.
Clare didnāt try a leg in the league this year. Lohan has gotten his timing spot on Iād say.
They didnāt try a leg either last year. If they win Munster they might get a break and freshen up but if they lose it again, theyāll bomb out in Croke Park after beating Dublin or someone in a QF.
In fairness Wexford should have taken them out last year.
Iād nearly go the whole hog and hold club championships from the start of April up to the end of June. Then have the inter-county stuff in July, August, September, possibly into early October, and come back for provincial club championships in the winter.
I think something which was fairly overlooked with Clare last year was that of the 20 lads who played v Kilkenny plus Conlon around 15 of them missed big chunks of the season with injury.
Conlon, Kelly, Duggan all missed the winter with operations and didnāt return to training til towards the end of the league in late February. OāDonnell only returned around Paddyās day.
Diarmuid Ryan missed six weeks with a fracture in his back before championship, Meehanās hamstrings acted up before championship ruling him out of the round robin, Rodgers got injured at the tail end of the Fitz and only returned for the Munster final.
Reidy, Ian Galvin, Cian Nolan, Paudi Fitz and Shanagher all only made one appearance each in the league due to injury while David Mc missed a good chunk of the league too.
Only Quilligan, the full backline, Taylor, Malone and David Fitz got a clear run at the year. I think it was a remarkable job that Clare actually got to the level they got to last year given the amount of hours missed on the training field and lack of depth in the panel due to injury that the tank collectively ran empty after the Munster final.
The panel depth and health of the panel is in a better place this year - Lohan acknowledged as much after the match on Sunday.
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The Leinster championship will be Box Office on Sunday with the possible relegation permutations. Wexford going down to the Joe McDonagh would be headline news on the same day Everton or Leeds are relegated from the Premier League.
Leinster delivered a similarly dramatic final day in 2019. If you had added a competitive Offaly to that round robin it would have been a minefield. Make no mistake, Offaly are coming too. Theyāll be a threat in Leinster within the new few years.
Funnily enough, even though Wexford are potentially going to be relegated I still donāt think thereās an astronomical difference between themselves and Galway/Kilkenny. There was a much larger chasm between Wexford and Kilkenny in the 2008-2012 period.