UCC Fitzgibbon Cup manager Tom Kingston has described the demands on inter-county players as “crazy”, hitting out at a fixtures schedule which will see numerous top-level hurlers play five games across a 14-day period.
UCC opened their Fitzgibbon Cup campaign with a six-point win away to the University of Limerick on Sunday, a game which marked the beginning of a hectic fortnight of action for the Cork and UCC trio of Shane Kingston, Mark Coleman and Robbie O’Flynn, as well as Kerry’s Shane Conway.
This quartet will feature tomorrow evening as UCD visit the Mardyke for the second round of games in Group A; they are on Allianz league duty for their respective counties this weekend; UCC’s final Fitzgibbon Cup group outing will be played on Wednesday or Thursday of next week, while their fifth game in a fortnight will be in their county colours on Sunday, February 3, in the second round of the Allianz League.
UL pair Tom Morrissey (Limerick) and Conor Cleary (Clare) are likely to play close to 320 minutes of competitive hurling between Sunday, January 20, and Sunday, February 3.
Indeed, with UL’s second Fitzgibbon Cup fixture scheduled for this Thursday, away to NUIG, and Clare’s opening league game taking place on Saturday, Clare centre-back Cleary could well play two games in the space of two days and three in six days. That’s a tad excessive for the end of January.
With the Fitzgibbon Cup quarter-finals down for decision on Wednesday, February 6, and Thursday, February 7, inter-county hurlers attached to the colleges who emerge from either Group A or B (four-team groups as opposed to three in Group C and D) will play six games in 17/18 days.
“The schedule is very hard on the players. The demands on the inter-county hurler today is just crazy,” said UCC boss Tom Kingston.
“Our game against UL was championship hurling played in January. You had a lot of quality on both sides.
The game against UCD on Wednesday will be of the same standard. You then expect them to play national league at the weekend and play another Fitzgibbon game three days after that. It is really, really difficult. I don’t know how it is going to be worked but it is very hard on the player.
Attempting to pack so much hurling into a fortnight increases the likelihood of injuries, according to Kingston, which could leave players sidelined for a significant portion of the spring.
“Players, I believe, will break-down with injuries.
"It is very difficult on them as they are training so hard at the moment, particularly the inter-county lads. Even the non-inter-county lads are training close to seven days a week. It is very, very difficult.
"We keep the UCC training as light as possible to try and keep the lads fresh. That’s as much as you can do.
"There is no point in everybody training them hard. You have got to keep them fresh. Otherwise, they’ll only be picking up injuries and be out for weeks. It is a matter of balancing it.”