A WHOLE NEW BOSS GAME
Five counties have fresh man at helm
ALMOST 50 per cent of counties in the Liam MacCarthy Cup will have a new manager next year.
This extraordinary rate of attrition — five new bosses will take centre stage with the 11 counties competing next year — may well be cyclical, or it could be a sign of the rising demands of the job.
Brian Cody’s retirement after 24 years with Kilkenny is certainly an outlier.
The longest serving manager by a distance is now Limerick’s three-in-a-row All-Ireland winning boss, John Kiely, who has just completed six years in charge of his native county.
Drop
Then there’s a huge drop to Clare’s Brian Lohan and Antrim’s Darren Gleeson, who have just finished out a third season with their sides.
Only Dublin are currently without a manager.
Taking the capital side out of the equation, five counties will have outside managers next year.
They are Antrim’s Gleeson (Tipperary), Wexford’s Darragh Egan (Tipperary), Westmeath’s Joe Fortune (Wexford), Galway’s Henry Shefflin (Kilkenny) and Waterford’s Davy Fitzgerald (Clare).
Three Tipperary natives will manage sides competing for the All-Ireland with two apiece from Kilkenny and Clare.
The others are from Cork, Limerick and Wexford.
We take a look at the 10 men currently in situ, their prospects and priorities for 2023:
JOHN KIELY
LIMERICK
KIELY has helped Limerick to four All-Irelands in five years with minimal changes in personnel.
For example, 2018 full back Mike Casey was reintroduced in the same role this season after years of injury woes.
Dan Morrissey has moved from wing back to full back and then wing back again.
Peter Casey will be fully fit next year and Cathal O’Neill will be a year older, so Kiely can tweak and re-jig again.
The importance of the team/ system over the individual is shown in the store placed in Graeme Mulcahy to start this year even though he is nearing the end.
Timing their run and freshness will be key again.
BRIAN LOHAN
CLARE
THE sheer exertion of competing as hard as they did in Munster left Clare flat for the All-Ireland series.
How can Lohan address this, with Munster such a bear pit?
They can hardly hold anything back and hope to slip into third place.
Strengthening his squad is one way, but Clare have enjoyed little underage success in recent years. It’s a long road back to the All-Ireland semi-final.
DARREN GLEESON
ANTRIM ANYONE with a pulse and half an interest in hurling will be looking forward to at least two Leinster round robin games taking place in Antrim next year — and it should be three.
This alone will surely have enticed Tipperary man Gleeson back for a fourth year.
After winning two Joe McDonagh Cups, can he get another kick out of the Saffrons? One home win would be progress and two would give Antrim a chance of making the top three and the All-Ireland series.
HENRY SHEFFLIN
GALWAY
THOSE 12 first half wides against Limerick in the All-Ireland semi-final, and the two in stoppage team, will niggle at Shefflin this autumn.
Galway had Limerick on the rack, matching and surpassing their work rate at times. Shefflin will have the players eating out of his hand for a massive push in year two.
DARRAGH EGAN
WEXFORD
WHERE are Wexford’s heads at? Are they competing for a Leinster Championship or an All-Ireland?
Egan got a superb result against Kilkenny at Nowlan Park to make an All-Ireland quarter-final, but a leggy Clare should have been put to the sword and weren’t.
Wexford appeared to hit the wall in a five goal League semi-final defeat by Waterford.
May invest less in the League this time. Require Lee Chin and Rory O’Connor at the peak of their powers to impact.
JOE FORTUNE
WESTMEATH
FORTUNE got a real kick out of Westmeath in his first year, defeating Laois in the Leinster round robin and drawing with Wexford.
Holding it all together and competing hard again is his challenge, with a playing pool nowhere near as deep as the vast majority of their rivals.
DAVY FITZGERALD
WATERFORD
THE inter-county hurling scene just got more colourful. Fitzgerald has repeatedly proven his ability to harness a group of players and win Championship silverware in the less heralded counties.
There’s no reason to suspect he won’t do it again.
It would be no surprise if Waterford won the League, but Fitzgerald may be wary of the impact this could have so close to the Munster Championship.
PAT RYAN
CORK
WINNING back to back All-Ireland under-20 titles (2020/21) is a ringing endorsement of Ryan, and the talent that is in Cork, given that they also lost the 2018 and 2019 deciders to Tipperary.
The players have to be there. It’s all about Ryan and co progressing them individually, putting a steely, ruthless edge into them, harnessing their quality and putting in place an effective game plan.
LIAM CAHILL
TIPPERARY
IT WAS probably a wise move for Cahill and Waterford to part company after three seasons, the first two of them very impressive.
Tipp is a big rebuilding job, but Cahill has shown an aptitude for getting a huge amount out of players. He’ll also know this group inside out having won All-Ireland under-21 and 20 titles with many of them.
His sole goal will be to escape the Munster round robin.
DEREK LYNG
KILKENNY
WE’LL soon find out if Brian Cody was over achieving or not with the current Kilkenny crop.
That deeply ingrained, team first work-rate won’t go away overnight and is a huge start for Lyng, as is TJ Reid’s decision to play on.
Cody left Kilkenny in a great position to compete. May need a bit more physical size and power to go with Huw Lawlor and Paddy Deegan.