Sheehan hits out at his old Kerry pal Ó Sé

FORMER Kerry captain Bryan Sheehan has accused old teammate Darragh Ó Sé of going easy on the Kingdom’s team management but accepts that not enough of the current panel are pulling their weight. ‘Darragh had a bit of cut at them alright, but Darragh knows and will have played with a lot of the management on the Kerry team, so it’s probably easier to have a cut at the players,’ stated Sheehan. ‘In my view, it’s never an individual that wins you a game, it’s a team game and for some reason the team haven’t gelled. That is the big problem that Kerry are having. They’re getting 8 out of 10 or 9 out of 10 performances from only a handful of players. Not enough players who are starting are having an impact.’

Michael Ryan has explained that the need of the Tipperary players ‘to hear a fresh voice’ led him to quit as manager this week. Ryan led the Premier County to the All-Ireland title at the first time of asking but lost out to eventual winners Galway by a point in last year’s semi-final and failed to win in four Munster round-robin games this season. ‘Ultimately, the real driver of the decision was, we want to give the group of players that we had the absolutely best chance going forward,’ he stated on Tipp FM. ‘They just need to hear something new. I’ve been there a very long time and I’m sure those guys needed a break from me. It has always been my belief that change is good. I’ve been on the positive side of that change, where we were part of something that came in and it was new.’

Former inter-county managers Fergal O’Donnell and Terry Hyland are being linked to the vacant position in Leitrim, since Brendan Guckian’s decision to step away from his role as senior football manager. Guckian took the decision to move on after he was asked to re-interview for the position and now former Roscommon boss O’Donnell and ex-Cavan bainisteoir Hyland are front-runners to replace him. A committee has been appointed to assess the candidates and other names in the mix are believed to include local coaches such as Pádraic Davis, who took Mohill to the county title last year, and David Casey, who led Aughnasheelin to last year’s IFC title.