Erne boss Pete McGrath has described the imposed ‘closed season’ on county county teams as having ‘no merit at all’, while also revealing his regret that some of the best performers in the Fermanagh club championships this season are players who ‘for one reason or another’ are not available to the county.
Fermanagh will return to pitch based session ahead of the 2015 season on November 15 but McGrath revealed that strength and conditioning work has been ongoing while fitness tests and trial matches have also been carried out.
Looking ahead to the new season the Erne squad has quite an inexperienced look to it. Since the end of the 2013 season there has been a major haemorrhaging of players with the result that of the current squad only Ryan McCluskey and Barry Mulrone have started a game which Fermanagh has won in the Ulster Championship.
McGrath conceded the point that he would like a great many of the players who are unavailable for one reason or another to still be pulling on the green jersey.
“If you look at it James Sherry is still playing very good football, Marty McGrath was excellent at full back in the club championship. We have also lost Eamon Maguire and Tommy McElroy. Brian Cox has had to pull out due to work commitments and John Woods has had to put his career first and there are more as well. For a county the size of Fermanagh it is difficult to plug such gaps,” McGrath said.
From the team that started against Cavan in the Ulster Championship in 2013 only seven remain.
The Down man however was optimistic about the future and has great faith in the new players that have been drafted into the squad.
“We have brought in 14 in total and I already know that some of them will make excellent inter county footballers. We also have young players from last year like the Cullens, Richard O’Callaghan, Ruairi Corrigan and Tiernan Daly who I would like to think will learn from the time they invested last year and really kick on this coming year.”
The two time All Ireland winning manager is also keen that those with a number of years under their belt really step up to the plate in the coming months.
“I am looking at Ryan McCluskey, Ryan Jones, Eoin Donnelly and Tomas Corrigan, fellas like that to really lead things and I know that they will. And if we can get those players leading from the front, others learning from last year and the new players really bringing some freshness to the squad then I have every faith that we can be very competitive.”
Fermanagh have been carrying out fitness tests, trial games and strength and conditioning work over the past number of weeks but are prohibited from training on the pitch until November 15 due to GAA rules relating to an imposed off season with the Fermanagh boss far from happy with the arrangement;
“I think there is no merit in this rule at all. I think the GAA is the only sporting organisation in the world that actually prohibits its players from training for a particular time. We exited the Championship in June and we have guys who have been out of the club championship for a long time and who have been finished with their clubs for quite a time yet we can’t get out on the pitch,” McGrath said before adding,
“We adhere to the rules because they are there but I don’t think they are in any way sensible at all. We would love this time to get out on the pitch and really work on some ball work but we can’t do that and just have to wait until the middle of November for collective pitch based sessions.”