Limerick GAA Discussion Part 2

slegs wrote: »

Dowling and Engilsh are big losses but never in Limerick's history have we been better placed to deal with big blows like this. Costello for English and Flanagan for Dowling aren't bad replacements and could work out very well. Flanagan was very good in first half against Cork and seems to be getting his confidence back (wasn't at yesterday's game so don't know how he did there)

I would be careful in terms of expectations on Costello for the very fact that the standard set by Finn, Casey and English over 2018 and 2019 was as follows; 6 All-Star nominations, 3 All-Stars won, 1 Munster hurler of the year. The standard set by those three is outstanding, huge shoes to fill for Costello, he's not a like for like replacement. But for a rookie he's relatively experienced, has county and Munster medals at club level and has experience of an All-Ireland club final.

Its unusual for a player to be 26/27 years old before making his championship debut at the moment, but on the flip side he's about as experienced a rookie as you could hope for, and he has been very solid at club level.

You mentioned Flanagan; one of the few positives from yesterday, he's going very well this year. The whole thing was very sluggish, a lot of them made sloppy errors, hand passes and short passes gone astray, they got themselves into trouble a few times with unforced errors. I'd give them a free pass on account of the fact they looked tired which after a week training in Portugal is understandable, they started very well (11 points to 1 up after 15 minutes or something like that) and just seemed to completely run out of steam.

The question of depth; I feel we have a good core of 20 players we can have full confidence in to start a game, and another dozen maybe on top of this who can be called upon to finish a game.

It seems to be this dozen that the management have really focused on by giving them plenty of game time to help bring them on a bit more. The likes of Barry Hennessy, David Dempsey, David Reidy, Aaron Costello, Robbie Hanley and Barry Nash have received more game time this year than they ever had up to now previously. And I was very happy to see starts handed to three young lads yesterday in Considine, Ryan and O'Connell.

It seems there is an emphasis on competition and giving those who weren't starting every opportunity to stake a claim in 2020, I feel complacency may have been an issue at times last year because we tended to go on runs of 2/3 games being phenomenally good last year only to inexplicably fall flat. I don't know if they just fell into a comfort zone last year but it would seem the selection policy this year suggests very few players are safe on the team now.

The full back line will be Finn, Casey and Costello. He has done enough to keep that jersey ahead of Tom Condon I feel who like last year was extremely unlucky at the timing of his injury. And I feel Lynch and O'Donoghue are almost certain to be our midfield pairing. Outside of that though, we pretty much have 5 solid options across the half back, half forward and full forward lines. Very difficult to predict a starting 15 come May.

Pogue eile wrote: »

There may be less games but the schedule will be more condensed, I would argue that it leaves teams more exposed t injuries and squad depth will be even more important.

Depends, how condensed will it be? If the mooting of mid December for finals was correct then it's loads of time to play 5/6 games, compared to one month for 4 games as it currently is in Munster under round robin.

Though there might actually be an advantage in winning Munster for once.