County SHC: All eight clubs assessed

COUNTY SHC ROUND 1

WHILE Sunday’s clash between Causeway and St Brendans is probably the pick of the first round bunch, Saturday’s clash between Kilmoyley and Lixnaw goes pretty close in terms of interest and excitement.

It’s the type of pairing that wouldn’t look out of place on county final weekend and, if things go a certain a way over the next eight or nine weeks, there’s a half decent chance at least that we could end up with these two heavyweights in the final.

Nothing will be decided on that score in this first round clash, but don’t for a second think that there’s nothing at stake here. The losers’ round is shaping up to be a potentially difficult assignment for whoever loses here. There’s going to be nobody holding back.

As always we take league form lightly, but it does point to a Kilmoyley victory and we’re probably leaning that direction too. Not because we think that if both were operating at 100% there’d be much between them, more so because of the losses Lixnaw have to cope with.

Kerry full-back John Buckley has gone on J1, as has Liam Mullins. Jason Wallace is Canada bound, while Brian McAuliffe is doing his Leaving Cert and will not be available for the opening fixtures at least.

Add in the long term injuries to Conor O’Keeffe and Maurice Corridan and you can see that manager Fergus Fitzmaurice will have a job on his hands to keep them as competitive as they were last season.

Kilmoyley will be without Paudie O’Connor, but for the most part they’ll have the same squad of players available to them as last year. That should prove the difference here, even if we suspect that with Michael and Shane Conway in the mix Lixnaw will still be there or thereabouts.

Potentially Lixnaw might have the capacity to score that little bit more freely. As ever Kilmoyley will be reliant upon Daniel Collins, but with O’Connor not available he’ll have a greater burden to bear around the middle of the park.

It’ll be interesting to see how that dynamic plays out and it’ll be interesting to see if John Griffin – having missed last year’s replayed final – can put the Kerry tyro on the back foot.

It promises to be an intriguing affair. Lixnaw will make Kilmoyley work for it.